A rough election night for the Conservatives (UK)

[EarlG]

Local election results continue to come in. For U.S. readers, these are not elections which involve control of the national government, but they are often seen as a harbinger of things to come for the general election (which is likely to be later this year). Conservatives have controlled the UK for the last 14 years (and had five different Prime Ministers during that time).

The Conservatives are having a very, very rough time. They have lost around half of the seats they are defending.

If this rate of loss continues across all the seats being fought, it would be in line with their worst performance in a set of local elections when looked at as a proportion of their seats lost - which was back in 1995.

And we know what happened two years later in 1997 - they lost the general election by a landslide.

These are the kind of numbers that will well and truly give Conservative MPs the heebie-jeebies.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68948038

It can't be denied that this is a total disaster for the Tories. Just one thing stuck out to me as a possible canary in the coalmine situation in regard to upcoming U.S. elections:

Labour are taking a hit in places with a significant proportion of Muslim voters, where there appears to be evidence of a negative reaction to Labour's approach to the Israel-Gaza conflict.

[Lonestarblue]

1. Good. The Tories have done nothing but harm the UK.

[Emrys]

2. I don't know how much of a harbinger Labour's Muslim vote challenge may be for US politics

Labour's leadership has been seriously influenced by Labour Friends of Israel for a number of years, including in financial terms. This is well supported by evidence.

It and its acolytes were behind the undemocratic unseating and eventual expulsion of Jeremy Corbyn, who certainly had issues to deal with which he tackled in a particularly clumsy and leaden way, but in my opinion - as a Labour activist a long time ago and now squarely in the SNP camp, so something of an outsider with no axe to grind on this subject - was unfairly pillioried for his stance on Israel-Palestine, as were a number of other Labour Party members who were also harried and expelled. I know some American DU members (quite possibly some UK DU members too) think of him and his ilk as pariahs, but I've found the filter of US media coverage of events in Palestine is very different to those in other parts of the world, not least in the UK. The reality is that Labour under Corbyn was no more anti-Semitic than the general population, as a number of studies have shown, and certainly not worse than the Tories.

Meanwhile, a hideous blight of Islamophobia has been allowed to fester all but ignored in both Labour and the Tory Party, as pointed out exhaustively by the likes of Baronness Warsi, and this has come to a head in various communities because of the media coverage of the current phase of the long-term conflict. It's little wonder if substantial portions of the Muslim community wish a pox on both the Labour and Tory houses because the hypocrisy and craven twisting and turning in the face of events has been totally blatant and indefensible.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, our soon-to-be ex-First Minister Humza Yousaf is an observant Muslim who has gained respect across communities in recent months by embracing the Scottish Jewish community in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October atrocities and highlighting the plight of the Palestinian population by sharing the threats to and terror of his own Muslim in-laws who were visiting Palestine at the time and were stranded in fear of their lives until they ultimately managed to escape to safety.

So we have a different political landscape here, but there may well be warnings for the Democrats if they continue to support the Israeli government's wanton devastation of Palestine and its population.

I'm on record as having a general rule not to discuss Israel-Palestine issues on US social media as long and bitter experience has shown me it's a futile exercise that just excites pointless ill feeling and reactive accusations of anti-Semitism etc. without swaying opinion one way or another, let alone improving matters on the ground. I'm making a rare exception here as EarlG raised the question, and this is my honest response.