@Rachael_Swindon

It’s make or break time for Keir Starmer.  Now, you wouldn’t be wrong if you said Starmer chose the “break” option some time ago, because the facts speak for themselves.  In just under two months the Labour leader has lost control of 8 councils and 322 councillors. Starmer has also lost the former Labour stronghold of Hartlepool to the Tories, and just a couple of weeks back he ensured a humiliated Labour were dealt their heaviest by-election defeat in 100 years in Chesham and Amersham, where they did so awfully they actually lost their deposit.  Before I go any further… can you honestly imagine Jeremy Corbyn getting away with a record like that?  An angry Tony ‘Skeletor’ Blair would escape from his mausoleum to appear on Radio 4 to insist ‘hard-leftist’ Jeremy should be at least 104 points ahead of the Tories. The Parliamentary Labour Party, barely a sniff of socialism between them, would burn effigies of Corbyn in Parliament Square. Peter Mandelson will slide his way through the door

I expect many of us have got our stories of our journey to a protest.  Mine sort of started some months ago really.  I think my friend and seasoned protestor Wren ( @wrenasaurus ) first pointed out to me the magnificent People’s Assembly National demonstration had been announced for June 26th, and said something like “ARE WE HAVING SOME OF THAT SWINDON?”.  So we agreed to have some of that, with our partners in tow, the lucky lads.  “That” turned out to be an extraordinary gathering of some of the best speakers, activists and demonstrators from across the British left. A perfect example of what a movement coming together should look like. I can’t even begin to imagine how much organisation went into an event of this magnitude, and huge credit must go to Ramona McCartney and the superb team at the People’s Assembly for making this such a memorable occasion for the many thousands in attendance.  Our actual journey on the day wasn’t probably that dissimilar to many others. Junction 5-6 cl

The Labour Party has broken trust with the British people twice this century. We broke trust over Iraq and we broke trust over Brexit. The former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has apologised on behalf of the Labour party for Tony Blair leading the country into an illegal war of aggression against Iraq and I am here today to apologise for Labour trying to stop Brexit.  The attempts by Labour to overturn the democratic decision to leave the EU were undemocratic and wrong. We promised to deliver Brexit and we broke our word. Labour is a democratic socialist party. Democracy and socialism are our two core principles. There was no excuse for Labour failing to accept the largest democratic mandate in the history of British democracy.  Although Labour members were well intentioned, wishing to avert an outcome they believed would cost jobs and harm the economy, there is no excuse for ignoring democratic results. That is the antithesis of Labour's values. Bad faith actors were also involved

While most political observers have been focussing on the upcoming Batley and Spen by-election, the scale of Labour’s defeat at the Chesham and Amersham by-election could prove to be the election result which seals Keir Starmer’s political fate and ends his leadership of the Labour Party. Chesham and Amersham has been a safe Tory seat since the constituency was created in 1974. The seat is a remain constituency, 55% of constituents voted to remain in the EU. Labour won its highest number of votes in the constituency in 2017, when it won 11,374 votes and increased its vote share by 7.9% under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.  In this week’s by-election for the seat Keir Starmer won just 622 votes, lost Labour’s deposit and recorded the worst by-election defeat in the history of the Labour Party. Why did the Labour vote collapse? How can such a large drop in Labour’s support be explained? Starmer’s supporters claim the result was due to tactical voting. While tactical voting will have played

Well, it’s been a few weeks since I last wrote about the adventures of Keir Starmer and the Labour Party.   Not because I’d forgotten about them - far from - I just thought there weren't many more barrels the personality-free potato and his band of hapless halfwits could possibly scrape.  But how wrong I was.   Starmer hasn’t just scraped the bottom of the barrel - he has cut his way through the bottom of it and buried himself and his Party at least six feet under.  If Hartlepool was a disaster, Chesham and Amersham was a lamentable cataclysmic catastrophe. It was worse than that in reality.  Humour me for one moment. Had Jeremy Corbyn gone into a by-election and achieved Labour’s worst result in 100 years, wouldn’t I be writing about the departure of Jeremy Corbyn today? What if Mr Corbyn did so badly at that by-election he ended up losing his deposit? Even the most loyal of Corbyn supporters would struggle to spin their way out of that one.  But here we are. Starmer remains uncha