United Kingdom

6563 readers

292 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

tom@feddit.uk

GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

frankPodmore@slrpnk.net

153

Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform (www.bbc.com)

submitted 1 day ago by danielquinn@lemmy.ca to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'd say that it's for a few reasons:

In this country's broken electoral system, "tactical" voting is quite common. Until now, Labour has been heavily relying on the idea that they'll be elected by default: the not-Conservative choice. When Reform ate the Tories' lunch, they continued to push that they were "the only party that can beat Reform". This result suggests that this reasoning no longer applies and indicates that Labour's dominance as an alternative to the right-wing forces in the UK is ending.
By pushing the traditional parties into 3rd, 4th, and 5th place, this election may mark the end of these guys in favour of the new challenger parties that're both advocating for more direct action to combat the problems we have.
Reform took 2nd, consuming the Tory vote almost entirely indicating that they're the force to beat. This makes the revelations of #1 all the more relevant for those of us who think that Reform are dangerous fanatics.
The Greens are unabashedly socialists and this result indicates that their position is resonating with voters far more than Labour's "Tory light" platform. When the "labour" party gets spanked by a party that's advocating for wealth taxes, that's a Big Deal™.