I am annoyed that no one seems to be stating who the real winner of the local elections was. This is the data, from the Guardian:
Expressed as percentage gains and losses that looks like this:
The Greens were easily the biggest winners.
So why aren't they getting fair air time?
And why do we keep getting Reform instead, especially on the BBC?
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I would suggest that caring is still not regarded as an essential part or under-pinning of democracy in this country or many others for example. You have to break “caring” down though because clearly it’s a matter of balancing caring for yourself, others and having a planet that will sustain the first two types of caring. Then because much “caring” is expressed through monetary transactions it becomes necessary to understand how and by whom money is created to enable these transactions. It’s obvious that most people don’t understand the latter necessity despite the relatively recent GFC and Covid bail-outs in the first quarter of this century by government created money. They still dumbly cling to the lie promulgated by the rich that government has no money of its own. Here’s the root link between democracy and caring:-
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3471369/pdf/nihms401950.pdf
The excuse before was number of votes I believe, and that UKIP had more MPs etc. But if you put this percentage rise on a graph over the last 10 years you see clear exponential growth in numbers of Green councillors and also councils where they are the lead party or lead opposition party.
It has to be something to do with funding. Reform has big money behind it, whereas the Green party is largely funded by small individual donations. And we know how biased most of our MSM is. Look at how much airtime the likes of Kate Andrews are given. They also don’t fit the two party narrative traditional commentators want to focus on. The big story from these elections was the loss of Labour vote to independents over their stance on Gaza and the fact that much of the lost Tory vote did not go to Labour.
What I find even more annoying is the way Green spokespeople are treated when they are given airtime. They are often talked over or attacked for a single issue out of context.
However despite all this they are continuing to make sustained progress and in areas like Bristol have the critical mass to win another MP. And thankfully most people likely to vote Green are not informed by the Daily Mail or the MSM.
In my arrogant Yank opinion, too many people pay too-too much attention to the Daily Fail.
The Daily Fail goes out of its way to portray the “Greens” of all countries as a bunch of “dirty unwashed 1960’s Hippies”.
I totally agree with you. But sadly it is Daily Fail readers, that the 2 main parties are aiming at. I now live in rural Devon and totally despair at how otherwise lovely people are totally taken in by Brexit, the Angela Rayner debacle etc. They also are angry about ULEZ without having the slightest understanding of what it is. Our climate crisis is the most serious issue for our country, but it’s barely mentioned. At least we have some really intelligent and articulate Greens able to deal with the rubbish thrown at them by the MSM. That gives me some hope.
Here is the concluding paragraph of the paper I referenced which clearly states caring and democracy have to be linked together:-
“Our goal in this project has been to address a question older than social science: how can self-interested persons come together to create a stable, self-reproducing, and peaceful society? Our basic answer is that, as long as self-interest is the only motivation, people cannot create such a society. And as long as social scientists continue to use self-interest exclusively in their theories, we cannot understand how such societies come to be. Only when we social scientists recognize that humans also have a genuine motivation to nurture one another, a motivation that is strongest in the family but that generalizes to other parts of the social system, can we understand clearly how a cooperative and peaceful society can exist.”
I recently came across a scientific paper which said, if I understood it correctly (which is perhaps doubtful), that care is (at least to some extent) intrinsic to life – it’s Care on Earth: generating informed concern, by Holmes Rolston, III (at https://www.academia.edu/87223359/Care_on_Earth_generating_informed_concern?uc-sb-sw=69933358)
More generally, my thought is that the fundamental distinction in society and politics is between the me-ists and the us-ists.
The paper by Holmes Rolston is one of my favourites because he puts the boot in on the Neo-Darwinists who of course are also the Market Fundamentalists or Perfectionists! His chapter is supported by quite a lot of books, papers and recent scientific research especially hologenomics.
The anthropologist, Matgaret Mead, when asked what she considered to be the earliest sign of humanity, answered ‘a human skeleton with a healed broken leg’. Without care from another individual an animal with a broken leg will rarely survive.
True
The analysis tells the story. I am on repeat I know however there is evidence that PR would see The Green Party achieve circa 20% of votes.
The Tories were completely invisible for my Local Election and suffered losses. Building from a local base is a slow painstaking process however the trend will be ongoing and the foundations strong
I think it would be higher than this. Green policies are very popular. It’s just under our electoral system it’s seen as a wasted vote. And without big funders or fair media coverage it’s harder to get the message across.
If you look at areas where the Greens are doing well like Bristol they’ve won with very high votes. And most candidates increase their majority each time they stand.
Because the BBC has been taken over in its Govenors and editors by the right wing?
Well, regarding your final point, this is why I no longer fund the BBC with their licence fee. No, I don’t watch live broadcasts but I find plenty of alternatives on streaming and YouTube etc. When I do see the BBC content out and about it seems to be wall-to-wall sport, cookery, dancing and plugs for their other output let alone the trivialisation of important events and the focus on personalities over substance.
Don’t get me started on current affairs such as the News and Question Time…..
The media focus on Reform is hard to explain given how small their voting support actually is. I suppose 17% in one by-election is something, but not quite at same as the 29% that they got (as the Brexit party) at the by-election in Peterborough in 2019, or the numerous MEPs they had. Two new Reform councillors where elected at the 2024 local elections, but another three sitting Reform councillors (all Tory defectors) lost their seats. So they actually lost council representation. http://opencouncildata.co.uk/councillors.php?p=459&y=0
Nice Green people saying sensible things about local politics in the area where they were elected is perhaps not as good TV as unhinged Reform gobshites spouting their xenophobic, climate change denying populist “common sense”, fuelling the anti-woke culture war, and dragging the Conservatives and Labour further right.
As with the Lib Dems, I suspect the Greens will achieve a sustainable power base in local politics which in due course will deliver more then one MP.
If Labour want to remain in power for more then 5 or 10 years, they need to move on voting reform. They would rather continue swapping with the Conservative under FPTP than form a sustainable progressive government supported by the majority of the population. Too many are too busy fighting for control within the Labour party to see the alliances that could be formed outside it.
Found this article today via The Independent link(s). The Reform party is mentioned as taking votes away from the Tories. I found this very interesting as it sorta explains why many people do not properly understand what they ‘Hear” on MSM.
Did not know where to post so I am posting it here.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/elections/election-countdown/66017/is-labour-on-course-for-a-majority?lid=gbkv6rxlf3n2&utm_medium=email&utm_source=braze&utm_campaign=View%20From%20Westminster%20Newsletter%2007-05-24&utm_term=IND_VIEW_WESTMINSTER_cdp
The Green Party now occupy (relatively speaking) that of the former Labour Party leadership: left-of-centre policies intended to benefit the majority of the population. What better way for corporate mass media to harm their chances than by omission – an act that can be deflected from fairly easily in short, on-air exchanges. The mendacity of Britain’s mass media outlets (broadcast and printed) is so overbearing and harmful that amongst the plethora of desperately needed improvements, media reform must take a place of very high priority.
Overall the local elections were a huge success story for the Greens – and the shenanigans deployed against them in Bristol (the weaponised use of AS) appears to indicate that the Labour Party leadership is feeling quite rattled by the level of support the Greens have amassed there. Consider this behaviour of the LP in conjunction with their projected (so questionably reliable) failure to reach a majority in the upcoming GE and the fact that most polls now have the Greens co-leader Carla Denyer unseating one of Starmer’s key allies (Thangam Debbonaire) will doubtless trigger some knee-jerk reactions in the LP. The contest for Bristol West is going to be dirty even by the current standards of British politics.
I live in the NE and the city of Newcastle have just elected their first two Green councillors in Byker and Elswick: two of the roughest and most impoverished places in the region. The fact that the Greens have managed to succeed in these two wards is genuinely impressive. However, the big story in the region was that of South Tyneside council. Back in 2018 the LP won 53 of the 54 council seats – an exceptional achievement, on Friday they barely kept control of the council winning only 28 seats. In the six years since that near white-wash the Greens have picked up 11 seats on South Tyneside council while a whopping 15 council seats have been taken by independents. Beating the LP in the core of their reddest heartlands is no mean feat. People are sincerely sick and tired of empty promises and tepid ambitions.
With the Tories looking likely to completely evapourate (rather than implode) at any moment, the Labour Party’s future – even in the short-term, doesn’t look particularly secure let alone robust. Reflecting on the near no-show of Reform last week it’ll be interesting to see what nonsense this lot (and the remaining extremist Tory rabble) conjure up in the intervening time until the GE is announced as they predictably attempt to use the culture war tactic with apparently declining success.
the weaponised use of AS
Whats that?
“And why do we keep getting Reform instead, especially on the BBC?”
Because news is not about “news” it is about entertainment. Reform are entertaining (in the style of the Carry-On films) by contrast the Greens ain’t. Thus air time for Reform (they make people laugh) and slim picking for the Greens or the Indys. Think of it as a reflection of the deep unseriousness that pervades much of UK society (e.g. the tories don’t like “experts”).
“Reform are entertaining (in the style of the Carry-On films) by contrast the Greens ain’t.”
Exactly! It is the same with the truly crazy MAGAts and Main Stream Broadcast Media in the USA.
USA Main Stream Broadcast Media will run a clip of a truly crazy MAGAt(s) over a Green any day of the week.
Why indeed? I think that, like the Lib Dems, the Greens are now making good inroads into local politics. Whether that can be repeated at a General Election, remains to be seen. FPTP will not help them. In my constituency, the tactical vote to beat the Tory is Labour, the Greens are too far away to challenge. Unfortunately, that is the way it is.
The media obsession with Reform. Why? Sure, they are damaging to the Tories, but they can’t win seats in FPTP, or, it seems, Local Government.
Local election results.
Workers Party of Britain (George Galloway’s new party) – 4 Seats.
Reform UK – 2 seats.
During the election, I didn’t hear much about the socialist Workers Party of Britain. I heard plenty from the far right of Reform. They lost 4-2. Tells you a lot about the UK media.
Here in Scotland we are well used to BBC editorial bias, which was barely concealed during the Indyref campaign a decade ago. They parachuted James Naughtie into Good Morning Scotland from London because they could not trust the mostly pretty effective local journalists from ‘going native’, by reflecting strong support for independence.
BBC bias has only got worse since then. as Cameron deliberately stacked senior editorial positions with Tory supporters, and that has been reinforced over time at Board level.
C4 and ITN news is fine on a daily basis, supplemented by Sky and Al Jazeera, , but the BBC is the state broadcaster and we are all the worse off for its demise as an unbiassed news source.
Indeed Richard – why Reform?
But this seems to be the default perspective of BBC politics coverage . On the Sunday/Monday after the Tories catastrophic weekend results , BBC were quick to make the main story not about massive Green / Dem/ Labour gains, but about what Braverman and other Tories were saying. The central pivot of BBC coverage always tends to be the Tories (‘the natural party of government’) internal drama – rather than about the policies or even personalities of other parties.
For the ‘public service broadcaster’ (see The BBC: Myth of a Public Service – Tom Mills ) to use ‘entertainment value’ (Mike Parr above ) as a cover , or the default perspective – is beyond inexcuseable – and there seems to be no holding them to account (Ofcom?)
BBC has convincing – looking editorial guidelines https://www.bbc.com/editorial guidelines/guidelines/, which include ‘not to mislead’, ‘to hold power to account’ etc. They break these guidelines every day .
BBC politics-as-entertainment correspondent Chris Mason binges on the day to day manoeuverings of the two main party’s personalities – his excitement knows no bounds .
The small amount of serious research that has been done on BBC bias – clearly shows its essentially right wing perspective – from participants on main politics panels over the years, election coverage, making a false balance between ‘facts ‘and ‘opinion’ , acknowledged day to day interference by government, political appointees to its management etc etc.
There should be a regular independent audit of its coverage, but there wont be.
If the media always present an Overton window to the right of the reality, the actual Overton window tends to follow. An annoyingly simple and effective trick.
Give them proper airtime and they might end up talking about their ideas to totally reform the corrupt banking and monetary system. Such things might open up some minds to the crazy idea that somehow the current system is rigged. We can’t have the plebs considering how the fraudulent, undemocratic financial system has been created and engineered to get us to where we are today, a rentier economy with an unsustainable growth based model that is destroying the planet and enriching the gilded 1% whilst the middle classes and poor get totally screwed over. The BBC and their like can’t have discussion on new ideas that might actually reform and re-engineer our financial systems for the common wealth and fix our huge problems before its too late. I mean who wants, needs or could possibly benefit from any of that?
See here for for polices EC660 to EC679 with EC663 being a particular favourite of mine:
https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/policy/economy/
Probably because bigger picture wise the General Election will probably be decided by Conservative/Labour marginals and how well these main voting blocks hold up against challengers. (A split on one side may let the other through etc).
‘Of the 36 seats won by less than 2%, eight were Conservative gains from Labour, and seven were contests in which Labour fended off a Conservative challenger. Across the UK, 141 seats out of 650 were won by a margin of less than 10 percentage points.’
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2019-marginality/
If the following is anything to go by, I wonder how much of the Greens gain is an anti Labour vote on Gaza
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-68970097
OK, I am a Green Party member and what I suggest would clearly benefit the party, but………
It would clearly be possible for the BBC to have some criteria that would allow it to allocate ‘coverage’ eg
How long has a party been around for
How many members does it have
How many Councillors/MP’s does it have – elected as members of that party
Then for ‘Balance’
Does the organisation have a membership? If so how many?
What do we know about its funding? If we cant get satisfactory answers then I suggest we dont give them coverage.
What evidence exists to support their position?
Not difficult & I am sure that it can be manipulated but better than the current free for all