Bristol Central

[sanders]

Oct 22, 2024 0:17:11 GMT bsjmcr said:

Oct 11, 2024 14:25:36 GMT stb12 said:

Others may know better but it just seems to me like this was a perfect seat for the Greens to gain under the circumstances rather than it being anything wrong with Debbonaire as such

She obviously did something right to get 47,000 votes at one point, though some of that would have been down to the Corbyn surge, but I think the issue for her and Ashworth was just pure complacency - going round all the TV interviews and perhaps being perceived to be seen in front of a camera and not in the constituency, thinking it’s in the bag (locally and nationally!). On top of that, given her quest for a cabinet role, having to toe the party line, so a case of the Starmer Labour Party moving away from the constituency? 

I’m sure this is a very well informed electorate and as we have seen not the sort that blindly votes for any Labour candidate. I wonder if someone like say Zarah Sultana was the Labour candidate she may have hung on here - I can imagine her ‘student union’ style might play well here. 

That’s very patronising. Everything people on here don’t like is ‘student union’ politics. Zarah Sultana actually believes in things. Thangam Debbonaire only seems to believe in Thangam Debbonaire. This was an excellent result.

[batman]

I think that's an Oxford man being snobbish about a Cambridge woman

[sanders]

Oct 22, 2024 8:54:12 GMT batman said:

I think that's an Oxford man being snobbish about a Cambridge woman

There's more to life than Oxbridge. 

[YL]

I would caution against overpersonalising this result. It’s possible that there are some Labour figures who might have held it, but fundamentally the electorate of this constituency preferred a Green MP to one from Starmer’s Labour, and I suspect Debbonaire did better than a “generic Labour” candidate would have. I also don’t think Labour were complacent: they knew this seat was under threat.

I am not sure about this, but Leicester South might be a different matter. It has its own thread, though.

[stb12]

It was part of a very narrow targeting strategy by the Greens (made sense under FPTP of course) and the long time certainty of Labour becoming the government meant that any cautious anti-Tory government Labour vote would be minimal (which we know can happen even in seats where the Tories aren’t actually a threat)

[The Bishop]

I basically agree with the above, though it was commented before the election that TD didn't really seem to be making much effort to "adjust" to her seat's increasingly pro-Green inclinations - instead remaining a down the line supporter of pretty much everything the Labour leadership did.

But generally speaking, I think that the factional alignment of incumbents matters little when the tide is really running against them; for another example at this election, pretty much all Labour candidates in July saw substantial drops in heavily Muslim seats regardless of how much (or not) they deplored what was going on in the Middle East and called for a ceasefire - a historic parallel is the Tories getting swamped in 1997 regardless of their stance on the EU, with strikingly few exceptions. It might still possibly make a difference on the margins, but not with as decisive a result as this one.

[andrewp]

I don’t think Debonnaire was a particularly bad fit, on the Lab spectrum, for Bristol Central. It would have been interesting to see if a really left wing Labour candidate would have been able to stem the tide.

I actually think Kerry McCarthy in Bristol East might be a worse fit for a battle with the Greens in that seat in 2029. That seat has changed quite a bit with the boundary changes. A good third to a half of it is similar to Bristol Central now. There are still bits like Brislington and Stockwood which are a bit white van man and you’d think would be more difficult for the Greens but you’d think a Lab majority of 6500 should be in their sights in 2029. McCarthy will be 64 by then though so is not certain to stand again.

[sanders]

The West of England mayoral election will be fascinating. Now that it's FPTP, might a Green surge in Bristol Central and Bristol East hand the Tories the mayoralty?