The Poolie Bunker

As you should know (if you bothered to do your research) the historical average of local council voting turnout across the country is 35% then.... nothing to see here.

Straws and clutching springs to mind.

No, it means they don’t give a toss….or bone idle and a bit thick.
Logically if you don’t vote,you aren’t happy or angry…you just don’t care if you don’t vote.

Your unwavering loyalty to the Labour party is second to none,Jamie..i'll give you that!

its not against the law if they do not toe the party line but if they do not they might as well not be there. loss of the whip and a back bencher for life. thats the one big problem with a government. all MP,s should have a free vote on everything and stop being puppets.

It's hardly democratic to whip votes in Parliament though, more like Dictatorship.
Regardless of party these feckers need to realise they are elected first and foremost to represent their constituents not their party. They should change the rules too so that you need to have lived (not just had an office or address) in the constituency for at least 5 years before they can stand in that area, that way they might get an appreciation of the real world.

Jamie, even though the turn out was low Labour got less than 30% of the total votes cast in Hartlepool - that definitely suggests that the people of Hartlepool are not happy with either local or national government.

there is more to being an mp than just voting the way the leader wants. you never here much about what some but not all do to help individuals with problems. it does not make headline news if they help someone who has been scammed. cannot see how living in the constituency for 5 years is that much of a help especially if there is nobody really suitable to stand there who can tick that box. know where you are coming from as many have never been to the area before, but living in say 40 miles from the town might be a better line to travel on.

I repeat just over 30% bothered to vote in Hartlepool meaning the the other 70% are not bothered who runs the council.
Whilst Reform had a load of votes they only control 13 out of 317 councils in England.

If nobody was bothered Labour would still have control, but they actually do t even have any seats. So obviously enough people cared enough to oust them.

Only because Starmer was cancelling elections like he was on a bonus to…..carry on ignoring the obvious faults in your thought process……selective facts are not facts.

No elections were cancelled Snowy, facts are facts, I say it again you are a closeted Reform supporter.

Nearly 40 Labour MP's are calling for Starmer to resign..And now Ange 3 pads is sticking her boot in as well..Not a good week for him,Jamie?

and the same number would still be supporting him if they did not live in fear of losing there jobs. he is the same starmer as he was a week ago. never trust a politician.

I know of a bolt hole he could escape to in the far east if it all gets too much for him.He still has supporters out there.

It's all going to be OK though, Starmer's got another speech full of empty words and promises to deliver today including effectively trying to rejoin the EU through the back door. Well all be feeling a lot better after his reassurances that he'll get it right and he is actually listening.

That lizard of a man Macron,the mouthpiece of the EU will snub him soon...he'll be working on how to stitch us up for a few billion before he goes no doubt..

And Starmer now says changing PM would be catastrophic for the country, he was quick enough to call for resignations from Boris, Truss, Sunak? He also demanded a GE every time the PM changed, wonder if he'll be advocating that when Pickfords arrived at number 10 soon?

That speech this morning was the perfect opportunity for Starmer to address some of the concerns that the people who voted against his party in the local elections have and he basically ignored all of them, just same old trudge on with the same diabolical aims, the man is an utter buffoon, as if him moving aside would plunge the UK into chaos, his ego's bigger than his bank account.

If the Labour party and especially the labour MPs can't see his total inability to lead the Country and accept that he is totally out of his depth by now then they never will.
The whole bunch of them should have a real stare at the mirror and ask themselves are they really busting a gut to do what is right for the Country
The frightening thing that we are faced with, apart from Starmer staying in situ, is can anybody put their hand on their heart and be confident that any of them stand out as being worthy of the chance of being given the job.
Never in the history of this Democracy has such a bundle of incompetent amateurs been assembled on the Government benches of our Parliament as we have now.
I've heard wide and varied reasons over my lifetime for not replacing someone who is totally out of his depth but "we have no one else within our 400 plus ranks capable of doing any better" really takes the biscuit.
If the current bunch calling themselves a Government can't solve the problem then do the honourable thing and go back to the people for their decision.
We can't be made to suffer this bunch of amateurs much longer.

As somebody posted on another site....In a poll of either the current PM or a bucket of shit to run the country the bucket of shit would get more votes.

its called a death wish with the inability to read the room. more people paying more tax, the mistake with the winter fuel allowance, the grooming gang enquiry they do not want, scratching at figures saying the illegals have gone down even id 5,000 have arrived this year. milliband and his green policies that nobody i know are in favour with. must be more i have missed and they have not done 2 years yet. oh forgot kids can get a breakfast before they start school. something parents used to provide before the free food banks came about who were on benefits or poor.

Yes and we've now got woke leftist teachers arguing with students about gender ideology issues.

I tried to buy a cowboy outfit from Ebay but for some reason they sent me a Labour Party membership card.

Some serious accusations by Ben Habid, Farage has asked for him to withdraw his comments via his lawyers.

https://youtu.be/PbC9lfafoRM?si=nEgEdpoFunzOKNpJ

https://youtu.be/GISN3pGzyvg?si=bdteSao6CMjrD3Uk

Pathetic….the country’s falling apart under the burden of that glorified clerk and has turned a once respected Party into a circus…he leaves the work to his ministers and swans off around the world with little effect.
Yet you come on here with deflection tactics so bleedingly pathetic it’s beyond belief or credibility and would make Uriah Heep look like a social worker.

No mention of the damage the Government are doing to Jamie's beloved Stocks and Bonds Markets? Borrowing costs the highest in 28 years, easily outdoing the Truss budget fallout.
Starmer limps on as a dead man walking to serve nobody but himself but doing untold harm to the UK as he desperately seeks relevance anywhere.
Jess Philips hit the nail on the head, Starmer is all talk and zero action as evidenced in his speech on Monday, lots of words but but nothing of substance.
Ministerial resignations and the sharks circling.
It's like the end of Boris but in slow motion, we can all see the end coming but Starmer can't or won't.

Wrong my stocks and shares are doing very well thank you in fact the gains paid for my trip, accommodation and spends on my recent trip, the only person who has done any damage to the world economy is Trump. The U.K. stock markets are at their highest levels than they have been for months irrespective of the Iran conflict.

It’s a Farage thread Snowy, your the one using deflection tactics to deflect the criticism of your beloved Nigel, it’s not a Labour bashing one, if you want a Labour bashing one start a new thread.

Chuntering on with your smokescreen tactics is fooling no one, you’re talking to yourself.

on the opposite side you get many political commentators and self styled experts saying changing the leader would actually make things worse especially for the economy as it causes uncertainty on the markets when they are fragile anyway. therefore we all suffer because of the stock market.

But the slow lingering demise of Starmer will only prolong the harm. Better to get in with changing him for someone who may actually do stuff instead of setting up talking shops, coalition of the willing for example, GBE, nearly 100 quangos, etc
Jamie was squealing about the stock markets and bonds only a couple of months ago and how Trump was ruining the world economy now it's all good because his portfolio is ok. The UK Bond market has gone through the roof but the rest of the worlds markets haven't and that's down to the uncertainty around the UK government,. Strangely the cost of borrowing is at its highest since 1998 - a year into Blair and Browns Labour government. Coincidence or what?
The UK desperately needs an end to the Iran war and a change of PM to bring stability and try to get the cost of living down and businesses growing again.

Starmers patter and for that matter all of his cabinets is just waffle, it has no substance, "moving faster on our mandate of change"?, nobody knows what (and if they have one) it consists of, change for the worse?, as it has been so far, ignore the masses, U-turn on practically everything people did vote for, ignore the main issues and concentrate on minor things like breakfast clubs and the two child benefit cap. As for the Home Office and Civil Service well words fail me.

If I could introduce anything it would be a couple of thousand Work Study Engineers to see what some of these "idle suits" actually do.

do not forget the changes he made regarding private landlords and the eviction of tenants. His supporters make so much of that and the two you mention. Not bad going after nearly two years in office.

Protection for tenants who don't pay their landlords more like..
.

I might not have much knowledge of the world markets but you have even less PTID, of course I was squealing about the effects of the Iran war not knowing what way things were going to go. it intially affected the whole world economy.
Stock markets have staged a rapid and, according to many, "curious" recovery from the initial Iran conflict shock, with the S&P 500 and other global indices hitting record highs by mid-April 2026 despite the ongoing conflict. While the market initially sold off in March due to oil-supply shocks in the Strait of Hormuz, optimism for a resolution and strong corporate earnings have propelled stocks above pre-war levels.
Global equities recouped their initial losses, with indices in Europe and Asia showing resilience despite being closer to the regional disruption.

Your the one putting the smokescreen up Snowy diversifying the topic to Labour/Starmer, take 20 minutes out of your life to watch the 2 videos then I might respect your opinions.

I do understand the markets though, and if you look at the trends they're all trending down since highs in March of this year. The pound is weakening. The forecast for the UK is to be the worst performing economy in the G7 and much of the reason for this is the turmoil in British government.
The rest of the world is managing it's way through the present global issues far better than the UK.
And you'll find it very hard to find any You Tube clips to dispute any of the above.

PTID, this is a topic about Farage who is very fortunate Starmer is taking all the headlines or he would be in the headlines then again the MSM just tickle Farage belly and at the same time Farage never appears on a one to one chat show not unless it’s GB News or Nick Ferrari on LBC. Why is he taking money from some one who has lived in Thailand for over 20 years changed his name, is no one asking what his motive is ?

I try to keep my views to myself, but people voted for Reform because they think that 'they will get their country back' but all it actually means is that nothing will change and the shyster Farage will get no where near Downing Street. His party have no ideas of their own ' Yeah we gonna stop the boats"!....... they are a party of scaremongers.

On a local note how could people vote for someone who posted on their election poster 'Hartlepool born and bread"..... Jesus!

The initial post is about Reform thrashing Labour and the outlook for Labour going forward so basically politics. Besides which topics evolve, most evolve into Jamie rants about Trump, Truss, Farage, or Reform if not all 4.
I reckon Jamie doesn't live in Thailand anyway, more likely next door to Starmer in Egypt as they're both in De Nile!

People voted for Reform because non of the other parties represent them, if you're politics are right of centre you couldn't vote for Labour, Greens or the Lib Dems, the Tories have had a go and been found wanting, so who else would they vote for?, are you left leaning in your political views?, who would you vote for?

Locally not someone to act as a local representative who is obviously thick as mince!

Hopefully this is the kick in the a@se that Labour need to reset and go back to the left, to allow two main parties with clear separation not the blurred mess we have now, that has been brought about by the invention of career MP's, who will do whatever it take to keep their noses in the trough. How long before Brash joins Reform!

Are you inferring that everyone who represents Reform locally is "thick as mince"?

No just the one who cannot spell...................... and didn't check his election poster!
But hey each to their own!

I wasn't aware of that issue, if they work hard for the people they represent that's more important I suppose, I just find it astonishing that Labour would look at the results last week and think the solution would be to turn further to the left, most of those voters last week were saying Labour are already too far to the left, a party does not always have to be the total opposite in its views of opposing parties, they can have common ground on some issues.

Labour too far to the left, they are a centralist party, far left parties won’t get elected nowadays, when was the last far left Labour Party, the 70s ?

Labour are left of centre I would say, it's you mentioning far left, just like you'd say anyone who is right of centre is "far right", that was the death knell quote from Starmer months ago.

On yer bike…that’s the most pathetic reply I‘ve heard in a long time on here….yer a stool pigeon for Starmer.

Centrist my arse…….they come under the category of student Union fantasists who live in a fantasy land….Yogi Bear Marxists fits the bill.


Apologies to Yogi, but you’ll understand.

Well the topic is titled Farage but you don’t like anyone slagging off your beloved Nigel, admit it Snowy your a stool pigeon for Farage on The Bunker.