Left of Labour general election results 2024
JVL Introduction
Just how punishing the electoral system is of attempts to run as independents is shown historically by the paltry results achieved by left-wing candidates of various hues.
This time was rather different as the data comprehensively assembled here by Phil Burton-Cartledge shows.
Such candidates rarely achieve votes running into four figures. This time the number was unusually high, and we have marked those that did so in bold in the listing below.
Quite often they were former MPs, not allowed to run as Labour candidates or people running with passion particularly focused on the war on Gaza and Labour’s miserable failure to oppose it as one of their main platform positions.
Of those who ran as organised groupings with more than five candidates nationally, the results were variable.
The top vote for any of the 39 Trade Union and Socialist Coalition candidates was 797 (for Dave Nellist); for the 12 candidates of the Socialist Labour Party, 496 votes; and for the 14 candidates for the Communist Party of Britain, 309 votes.
The Workers Party GB (George Galloway’s Party) did much better with 45 of its 152 candidates getting over 1,000 votes and five of these over 5,000. None was elected.
Left Independents fared substantially better, with 39 out of 61 getting over 1,000 votes. Almost by definition the vast majority of these had prior bases in the constituencies in which they were running.
They ran as Independents because they were blocked from running as Labour (Jeremy Corbyn and Faiza Shaheen stand out in this category) or representing currents of opinion that Labour had grievously offended with the issue of Gaza being pre-eminent.
Four were elected: Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North), Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr), Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) and Shockat Adam (Leicester South).
A number failed to be elected but nonetheless achieved staggering results, in particular Leanne Mohamad who came within a whisker of unseating Wes Streeting in Ilford North, and Faiza Shaheen in Chingford and Woodford Green who got just 79 votes less than the Labour candidate imposed in her place (a vindictive act by the Labour Party machine that knew it was handing a winnable seat to the Tories in the shape of Iain Duncan Smith in the process).
And Andrew Feinstein got 7,312 votes in Holborn and St Pancras, where Keir Starmer saw his vote come crashing down to 18,884, his majority down significantly from 22,766 in 2019 to 11,572.
Food for thought…
RK
This article was originally published by All That Is Solid ... on Fri 5 Jul 2024. Read the original here.
Left of Labour general election results 2024
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Why would anyone be “fulminating” over the inclusion of the Workers’ Party, for heaven’s sake?
Im devastated in my area of Liverpool. Reform got more votes than Sam Gorst. What are people thinking in my beautiful city. MARIA EAGLE!!!!! I nust cant believe it. Im disabled. Starmers plans for us are despicable.
I was just checking out the actual result for Rochdale (I read somewhere that it was close) and clicked on a LabourList article that came up near the top of the results, and this is how it begins:
Labour’s Paul Waugh has won back Rochdale from independent former Labour MP George Galloway, who had snatched it from the party at a recent by-election.
https://labourlist.org/2024/07/george-galloway-rochdale-general-election-results-2024/
Yep, George ‘snatched’ it you see, as opposed to winning it. Needless to say, it’s the sort of terminology one comes across in the right-wing propaganda rags. Talking of which, Caitlin Johnstone posted this excellent – as per usual – article three days ago:
This Civilization Is Deeply Unnatural
There is nothing natural about this. The way things are. The way we are living. If this was the natural and healthy way for human society to exist, it wouldn’t require mountains of propaganda spin to keep it going.
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/this-civilization-is-deeply-unnatural-f2cc13f6d95f
I posted this on the original site so I’ll do it here!
One independent candidate is missing. This is in Bromsgrove where Sam Ammar gained 1,561 votes, over 10 times that of the WP Aheesha Zahir who has been recorded.
Sam was the Chair of the local LP and had applied to stand but Starmer parachuted in Neena Gill at the last minute , even though it is an ultra safe Tory seat. Sam resigned from the LP and stood independently.
Sam is a British Palestinian and a support of Unite 4 Palestine so I can vouch for her!
When will the “left” stop making an arse of itself?
Right-wing political assumptions have so long dominated the UK any left-winger wanting to present an alternative has an uphill struggle to get heard. However, Gaza’s a moral issue. Left-wingers known for trying to stop the ghastly slaughter in Gaza are now listened to when they also talk about the many other wrongs they’re trying to right.
The world does seem to be organising itself now to protect the Palestinians as happened in the equally slow but eventually global attacks on Apartheid in South Africa. I came across this bit in the “New Arab” site (7 July):-
“Gulf BDS groups launch boycott campaign against British universities over war on Gaza – Boycott groups from Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait announced a campaign to boycott British universities that are complicit in Israel’s war on Gaza.
A pro-Palestine coalition group based in the Gulf states has launched a campaign to boycott universities in Britain that are allegedly contributing to what they call the genocide in Gaza.
The Gulf Coalition Against Normalization (Gulf CAN) is calling on students not to enrol in the targeted universities, contracted agents to terminate relationships and ministries of education to remove the universities from scholarships and end their relations with arms companies that supply weapons to Israel and withdraw their investments.
Gulf CAN is calling on local education stakeholders to boycott the following list of UK universities: Newcastle University, University of Liverpool, University of Nottingham, University of Leeds, Northumbria University, Queen Mary University of London, University of Portsmouth, University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and Coventry University.
The institutions on Gulf CAN’s list have invested over £34 million in Israel-linked companies, according to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.”
In his introduction, RK writes:
“And Andrew Feinstein got 7,312 votes in Holborn and St Pancras, where Keir Starmer saw his vote come crashing down to 18,884, his majority down significantly from 22,766 in 2019 to 11,572.”
According to my understanding, Starmer’s crash in his constituency was much bigger than RK writes! In 2019 Starmer had 36,641 votes, in 2024 he crashed down to half that is, as RK mentions, to 18.884.
It’s worth pointing out that at least two of the Communist Future candidates fully support Israel in its genocidal actions, although they sem to have ben a bit coy about it in their pronouncements in the election. Below is a link to a recent article in the paper that they supports and which supports them:
https://themilitant.com/2024/06/01/despite-pressure-from-us-rulers-israel-fights-on-to-defeat-hamas/
Perhaps he doesn’t count as ‘left of Labour’, but in the new Dewsbury and Batley constituency pro-Gaza independent candidate Iqbal Mohammed easily won the seat with more votes than the second and third place candidates (Labour and Reform) combined.
One Left Independent candidate has been left out, Ralph James stood in Sefton Central in Merseyside as the ‘Welfare Not Warfare’ candidate. He got 496 votes.
Corbyns job is to capture oppositional energy in a movement that will go nowhere. That was his job as a backbencher and its a job he has again now. No one should fall for the hype here. Corbyn will lead you nowhere because that’s his job.
Andrew Feinstein’s result was stupendous and deserves to be congratulated as the moral winner in that constituency.The Public and David Evans et al should be constantly reminded of this and others such as Jeremy Corbyns successesful campaign.
Yet the “experts” told us it was impossible for independents to get elected..
It was thrilling to be part of Andrew Feinstein’s campaign and I’m very proud of the result – the biggest swing against an incoming PM in UK history, apparently! And those votes were won in the face of UK media consistently refusing to mention AF, let alone interview him. This was a big story but too many journos are lazy and scared.
However. The Labour party machine was not operating in Holborn and St Pancras, all the apparatchiks were off campaigning in marginal seats. And some of the Independents had worrying views, eg Ladywood and indeed Rochdale.
I sincerely believe we need a united left front like the French, but some of those views give me pause. We can’t agree about every single thing always, of course, but my personal feeling was slight relief about those two particular losses — alongside tremendous elation about the wins of other Independents, Jeremy and the Greens. PS It was a particular pleasure working with the Muslim Vote organisers in Camden.
Unfortunately in transcribing the results from the original blog, you have left off one result. That maybe because I pointed out that they had omitted on Independent and the blog was then amended.
Samar Ammar, who stood in Bromsgrove was not a high profile candidate but her position was virtually identical to that of Faiza Khan. I met her through Unite4Palestine, hence why I am aware of her position.
She was Chair of her CLP, Bromsgrove and was backed by her Labour Party and local trade unions, inc. Unite of which she was a member, but Starmer parachuted in his own candidate Neena Gill, even though it was an ultra safe Tory seat which remained Tory.
Sam Ammar was only one of 3 British Palestinian candidates but she slipped below the radar.
Sam gained 1564 votes compared to the Worker’s Party Aheesha Zahir who gained 144 votes, which is included in the table above.
I would therefore like to set the record straight and hopefully the table above could be amended!
You can see the Bromsgrove results here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/constituencies/E14001138
It is just possible that if Starmer hadn’t tried to impose a candidate that Labour could have won the seat as the combined Labour plus Sam vote was over 15K whereas the winning vote was 16.5K. Undoubtedly many Labour supporters simply abstained as a result of Starmer’s stalinist purge.