A tale of two queues
From food banks at polling stations to a record night for the Greens via a win for Scotland's first refugee councillor, Thursday’s election felt like a Karmic kicking for Boris Johnson's Tories...
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Do you remember the first time you voted? I do.
It was 2001 and I was 18. I’d just moved to London to study, and I remember I was near giddy with optimism, hope and perceived power. Glenda Jackson, who’d held Hampstead before the arrival of Tony Blair’s Things Can Only Get Better brigade and would continue to hold it for years to come, got my support. I felt good about it.
As I left the polling station, I called my Grandpa, a former-miner and lifelong Labour supporter who I still remember softly explaining the ‘Fuck the Poll Tax’ graffiti that appeared at the end of his street when I was a little kid. As a newly-minted adult in a pre-Iraq world, it felt like a momentous moment to be shared.
Elections have never been such a thrill since, but recently, amid the bitter referendums, Brexit buses and unsavoury leadership contests, they’ve felt more like an invite to an existential crisis than electoral progress. So, when I woke on Friday to the news Labour had ousted the Tories to win its first ever council seat in Hampstead, I felt like I’d come full circle.
The gulf between Britain’s rich and poor is wider than it’s ever been. We’re now a nation of have-nots and have-yachts
Back in the early noughties, while a day at the polling booth would often separate the haves and have-nots, wealth didn’t feel like the most crucial issue at play - from my perspective, at least. Increasingly, over the last few years, that’s changed. The gulf between Britain’s rich and poor is wider than it’s ever been. We’re now a nation of have-nots and have-yachts. So, to watch Westminster, Wandsworth and Mayfair turn their backs on the Tories this week felt seismic.
Those three results alone were enough to call into question the government’s entire strategy of shouting at poor people from atop a pile of money. But they were only the opening salvo of a results day chock full of middle-finger-up moments to those who seek to divide us.
With so many of the nation’s church halls and community centres now doubling up as food banks, it was inevitable some would find themselves sharing space with voting booths. But as images of polling station signs sharing food bank directions went viral, Twitter’s angry eggs cried foul.
‘These signs are politically motivated,’ they shouted. ‘Someone call the Electoral Commission!’ Which was funny, because in the end all the critics succeeded in doing was driving publicity enquiries and extra donations to the charities in question throughout the day. Good work, gang.
On a national scale, the Tory drubbing wasn’t quite as dramatic as most right-minded people might have hoped – that the Conservatives won as many seats as they did despite actual law-breaking is a worry. Yet there was something quite delicious about watching Boris Johnson defend his record from a Downing Street now situated within a Labour-controlled authority. Petty? Perhaps. Delicious nonetheless.
London aside, Labour wasn’t really celebrating either. At a time when trouncing the Prime Minister should feel as easy as sliding a hot knife through a monogrammed pat of butter in the Commons’ subsidised dining room, Keir Starmer is clearly failing to cut through. With the Tories’ record to work with, Starmer’s rise over recent months should have been meteoric. It remains a damp squib.
But where there are losses, there are gains, and many of the Tories’ prized seats went instead to the Lib Dems and, even more unexpectedly, the Greens. In a largely two-party England, a map studded with yellow and green suggests a public no longer willing to be taken for granted by the big guns. It suggests an appetite for change – and who wouldn’t take some joy from that right now?
Change was afoot in Scotland too – not at the top of the tree where the SNP’s win was somewhat inevitable, but further down the table, where the Conservatives were relegated from second place into distant third.
Also worth celebrating was the absolute failure to launch of the grimly misogynistic ‘Family Party’, which seemingly borrowed its pro-life, pro-traditional gender roles, anti-LGBTQ Scottish manifesto from 1951. The party’s horrifying rhetoric was given short shrift wherever it stood, but its loss was particularly joyful in Banffshire where it gained exactly 69 votes, the call of “Family Party, 69!” prompting gleefuly childish giggles from those present at the count.
Amid all this shadenfreude though, one Scottish story stood out for its pure, giddy joy, and it arrived in the grin of one Roza Salih, Glasgow’s newest SNP councillor.
When Salih, 33, arrived in the city more than two decades ago, it was as a Kurdish refugee fleeing conflict in Iraq.
As a teenager, she was one of a small group of school pupils who formed the famed activist group the Glasgow Girls, winning national attention for their youthful protests against immigration dawn raids in the city’s Drumchapel area in 2005.
On Friday, Salih’s victory in the company of her parents brought joyful tears from first minister Nicola Sturgeon, from many of the activists and campaigners fighting the recent resurgence of dawn raids in the city and, understandably, from herself.
“It’s an amazing feeling, but I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” an ecstatic Salih told reporters at Friday’s count. “I’m just so proud of Glasgow and the people. I think for me to be here today is an amazing achievement for our country.” If you can watch the clips without crying, you’re made of stronger stuff than me.
Cast against such scenes of hope and optimism then, Boris Johnson’s garbled post-election justifications sound like the death rattle of an out-of-date and critically-wounded leader. Insiders say that as polls closed on Thursday, he sent a message to the Tory MP WhatsApp group (oh, to be a fly on the wall in there) to thank everyone for their campaigning and solidarity. He received just one solitary reply, more than two hours later.
It’s hard to say which speaks louder – the cheering people of Glasgow or the silent MPs of WhatsApp. But even with Johnson’s notoriously elastic attitude to the truth, it’s hard to see either as a vote of confidence.
Death by a thousand cuts might just come after all…
Did you enjoy watching the election results come through? Or did the scale of the shift leave you feeling underwhelmed? What happened in your area? I’d love to hear how you’re feeling…
I don't think I've ever been so invested in a local election before - I was cheering when the page refreshed and the tories lost more seats. They gave me hope, in a time when it's so easy to feel isolated, that others feel the same way I do.
I love your writing Jennifer! The "have-yachts." :) I was highly invested in the Worthing election which was won convincingly by Labour. So much so that I was at the count!
4 years ago, Labour had 0 Councillors; now it has 23. Worthing is a proud coastal town with a vibrant arts and music scene. It also has areas of high deprivation with a shocking 25% of its children living in poverty.
Some of the reasons Labour was able to win here so convincingly include:
- Demographic changes as a high proportion of the elderly population have died and young families moved in.
- A dynamic and energetic Labour Party which has worked tirelessly in the community, most recently working with Covid support groups and food providers. Locally it is seen as listening and understanding people's concerns. This community approach was a major factor in Labour's success here.
- Superb local organisation, high visibility, hard work and an excellent strategy.
- Good humour and a collegiate approach. Political differences are not allowed to get in the way of the mission.
- A high priority given to environmental issues. The plan is to turn the seaside town green.