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Zack Polanski declares two-party politics dead after Hackney mayoral win (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
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Zack Polanski has declared Britain’s two-party politics “dead and buried” as his Green party won its first ever mayoral election.

The Greens unseated Labour from mayoral power in the east London borough of Hackney after 24 years. The new mayor, Zoë Garbett, told reporters she was “elated” and promised it was just the beginning, after the party won with 35,720 votes to Labour’s 26,865.

“Across London and the country, people have made it clear that they are desperate for an alternative to this failing Labour government,” she said. “It’s not old politics … versus new parties. This is about a system of fear versus a movement of hope.”

“All the work I’ve ever done has been to change the system and services that let people down, harm people and widen inequality. Our borough has over a quarter of a million people,” added Garbett, who succeeds the Labour mayor Caroline Woodley.

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[–] 32 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Was listening to the BBC brief this morning and they mentioned Conservatives, Labour, and Reform. Absolutely nothing about the Green Party at all.

Love my British political news coverage.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago*

    Because the greens are marginal. c.1300 seats now, against LAB c.4400, CON c.3700, LIB c.3300 and REF c.2400.

    They had a modest +400 increase this time, but Reform are the big winners with +1400.

    So the two parties of government are still the two parties of local government, Reform are the upstarts, and Greens remain in the mid-tier.

    The main story of this election is the punishment of Labour, the strengthening of Reform and the marginalisation of the Tories

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    because the greens didn't do that well

    reform did astonishingly well

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago*

    Greens performed exactly in-line with projections. Average of the projections from Reform put them at 1625 seats, so they missed it by ~200.

    In terms of vote share, Greens were at 18%. Up 7%, the only other party to increase their vote share was the Conservatives (2%).

    And these were local elections, which have lower youth turnout.

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    • [–] 7 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Wonder how GB News covered this

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    • [–] 7 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    As an american, I am genuinely curious: are there really that many people in England who are looking over here and saying, “That looks good. Let’s do that”? I don’t understand why Reform is making such huge gains.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    so there's the first past the post system. reReform is able to make huge gains despite polling at around 25%

    but also yeah, of course there are people like that. like, about a third of Americans think Trump is doing pretty well. of course there will be people like that on this side of the pond as well.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Yeah, I live in a neighborhood full of trump signs. Bizarre trump or 1776 bumper stickers. I’ll never understand it. Luckily with petrol prices being as high as they are now, he has lost some of his base/cult members but, as you stated, there seems to be roughly 1/3 of people who are just going to stay aboard no matter what.

    We had local elections where I live this week too and the candidates who performed best are ones who campaigned solely on “I’m a trump supporting republican” and that was the entire campaign. No talk of policy or plans or wants. Bizarre times.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    We just had a by election here in Australia for a vacated aeat and our Reform aka One Nation Party also won.

    I am not sure why they hate the country, other people and the.environment so much and it's appalling but it is what it is.

    The party leader was just gifted a private jet the other day from one of our truly repugnant billionaires and apparently this means she'll be able to connect with the everyman.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    The UK has leaned right for 40+ years.

    The only reason Labour won under Tony Blair is because the party adopted conservative socio-economic policies that appealled to the right leaning mainstream press and thus large swathes of population.

    You then had a decade of neo-con Labor followed by neo-con Tories. Then Brexit and now this, more right-wing popular politics. Nothing has changed.

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    • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

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    [–] 4 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Fuck. Not nearly good enough.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah the elections are a disaster for the UK.

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  • [–] -1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    The UK is and always has been a disaster

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    • [–] 4 points 6 months ago*

    I mean even in the best case scenario it's just gonna be a two party system with Greens vs Reform instead of Labour vs Tories. Also damn that's some terrible turnout.

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    [–] 0 points 6 months ago

    Did he miss when there was a coalition government recently? Was he too “hypnotised” to notice?

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