Andy Dowland

Author: Andy

  • Election Results in Southampton: A Comprehensive Overview

    PartyVotesVote shareSeats
    Reform UK15,36125.7%8
    Labour12,70921.3%2
    Green11,75019.7%4
    Conservative10,01316.7%0
    Liberal Democrats8,44714.1%3
    Trade Union and Socialist Coalition1,0701.8%0
    Independents4490.8%0

    Safest Seat – Coxford
    Philip Crook (Reform UK) majority of 743 over Paul Nolan (Conservative)

    Most Marginal Seat – Millbrook
    Ross Mould (Reform UK) majority of 24 over Jeremy Moulton (Conservative)

    Highest vote share – Thornhill
    Timothy Kiff-Munds (Reform UK) 41.6%

    Lowest winning vote-share – Bitterne Park
    Philip Webb (Labour) 27.1%

    Best Results for each party
    Reform UK – Sarah Powell-Vaughan (Sholing) 1,434
    Labour – Philip Webb (Bitterne Park) 1,290
    Green – Lorna-Marie Foster (Portswood) 1,432
    Conservative – Alexander Houghton (Peartree) 1,265
    Liberal Democrats – Sam Chapman (Bassett) 1,596
    TUSC – Nadia Ditta (Bevois) 739
    Independents – Andrew Pope (Redbridge) 365

    Party Efficiency
    Reform were the most efficient party. They won 8 seats, and in the wards they did not win they were mostly 3rd or 4th. Their vote was concentrated exactly where it needed to be.

    The Lib Dems were almost as efficient. They won 3 seats, had no second places, and only one third place, in Portswood. Everywhere else they were 4th, 5th or 6th. That is classic Lib Dem targeting: don’t waste votes everywhere, win where you’re organised.

    The Greens also targeted well. They won 4 seats and had one second place, in Swaythling. Everywhere else they were mostly 3rd or 4th. Their vote was less efficient than Reform’s or the Lib Dems’, but still converted well.

    Labour were spread all over the city: 2 wins, 8 runner-up spots, 5 thirds, one 4th in Swaythling and one 5th in Bassett. That is the profile of a party with residual support almost everywhere but not enough concentrated strength to win many places.

    The Conservatives had the worst conversion. They won no seats from 10,013 votes and 16.7% of the citywide vote, while the Lib Dems won 3 seats on 8,447 votes and 14.1%. The Tories had 7 runner-up spots, so they were often competitive, but not quite in the right places. That is a targeting failure as much as a vote-share failure.

    Finally
    Had the vote splits hurt either bloc, actually no, if you added up Labour, Lib Dem and Greens on one side and Reform, Conservatives on the other side, nothing would change, The Right Bloc would have 8 seats (all the ones Reform took) and the Left Bloc 9 (all the ones Lib Dems, Green and Labour held).

  • Why Keir Starmer Should Stay: Addressing Labour’s Deeper Issues

    Okay, May 7th 2026 was not the best day in Labour’s history.

    Losing 1,430 councillors1, 2 out of 19 seats in Plymouth, 2 out of 17 in Southampton2, 9 out of 57 in Hackney, 3rd in Birmingham3, 3rd in Manchester4, 5th in Newcastle5. I could be adding examples for days without mentioning Scotland or Wales. There were some glimmers of hope, only losing five seats in Oxford, only one in Barnet, gaining one in Merton but they are like candles in the abyss.

    Any Labour politician or activist will look at a 17% national equivalent vote and know that something has to change. Sir Keir Starmer is obviously under pressure and his tin-eared reaction so far makes it tempting to throw him overboard. But that doesn’t fix the problem.

    Starmer should stay not because he is good, but because Labour’s problem is deeper than him. Changing the salesman won’t fix a product nobody understands, trusts, or wants. Starmer is the correct leader for this Labour Government, managerial, cautious, negative, emotionally unavailable, obsessed with risk, unable to say what Labour is for except “delivery” and “stability”. Replacing him with someone warmer or cleverer might improve the packaging, but it could also let Labour dodge the harder question: what are we selling?

    Labour lost different places in different directions because different voters went looking for the missing bits of Labour elsewhere. Greens in Manchester, Hackney, Waltham Forest, Norwich, Hastings, Southwark: voters looking for moral urgency, housing, climate, civil liberties, Gaza, an actual progressive offer. Plaid in Wales: voters looking for rooted social democracy and national voice. Reform in Dudley, Hartlepool, Tameside, Newcastle, Essex/Suffolk: voters who feel abandoned. Lib Dems in Stockport, Portsmouth, Surrey and Sutton: voters looking for local competence and anti-chaos liberalism.

    Replacing Starmer now would let the party pretend this is a personality problem. It would create the illusion of renewal without forcing a reckoning. A new leader could produce a short polling bounce, a few warmer speeches or a different accent. But unless the product changes, Labour would still be selling austerity with regret, triangulation without purpose, and patience without hope.

    So what do we do about the product? It can’t be simply to spend more and tax less, it has to be realistic, but here’s three areas to work on:

    Patriotism:
    Labour should reclaim patriotism as seriousness about the national interest. Not flag-waving. Not culture-war nostalgia. Not mistaking obedience to Washington for strength. A patriotic government asks a simple question: what is in Britain’s best interest?

    On Iran, that meant not treating Donald Trump’s demand for support as an instruction. Badenoch’s Conservatives and Reform would have heard “jump” and asked “how high?” Polanski’s Greens would have said no almost by reflex, too suspicious of NATO to be trusted with hard choices. Labour did the right thing: looked at the facts, judged Britain’s interests, and refused to be bounced into someone else’s war. We did the right thing, supported by two-thirds of the public and then Starmer seemed apologetic for it. Don’t. Be proud.

    The same applies to Chagos. The only strategic reason Britain holds the islands is Diego Garcia. Securing the long-term future of that base while ending an indefensible colonial hangover is not anti-British. It is what a serious country does. Being America’s puppet is not patriotism. Making hard decisions in Britain’s interests is.

    Clean and Trustworthy Governance:
    Labour needs to rediscover clean government. That starts with an apology. Starmer should apologise for his freebies, and so should any minister who takes them. Not because a pair of spectacles is the same as Farage trousering millions, but because voters understand the spectacles in a way they do not understand the millions.

    Most people can imagine being given a free pair of glasses. They cannot imagine being handed £5m. And ordinary people do not spend £3,000 on spectacles. I paid £320 for mine and winced. So when Labour people say “but Farage is worse”, they may be right morally and legally, but they are missing why this lands. It looks like a governing class taking perks while telling everyone else to be patient.

    Mandelson is worse, because it is not just about gifts. It is about judgement. Starmer should refer the appointment to the Privileges Committee, publish what can be published, and accept the consequences. If Labour wants to be the party of clean government, it cannot investigate corruption only when it belongs to its enemies.

    The promise should be simple: no freebies, no favours, no jobs for mates, no donor class, no special rules for insiders. Public office is not a private club.

    Clean Governance is also about keeping promises. We were promised a conversion therapy ban in the manifesto6 the King’s Speech promised a draft bill by the end of the session7, it hasn’t happened. We were promised a Hillsborough Law but that’s been languishing at Report Stage since December8. We were promised a National Wealth Fund Bill to put the former UKIB on a statutory footing but apart from various comments from Reeves, Milliband and Reynolds, it’s missing in action. If you can’t or won’t do something you promised, say so and explain.

    Security:
    The third offer is security. Not the pseudo-security of blaming migrants, banning protests and pretending cruelty is competence. Real security: a home you can afford, work that pays and respects you, bills you can manage, a health service there when you need it, and a council that can do the basics. Labour should be the party that makes life less precarious. If it cannot say that, plainly and repeatedly, then it has forgotten one of the oldest reasons it exists.

    Beveridge named five giants: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Labour does not need to invent a new moral language from scratch. It needs to remember that its purpose is to fight the things that make ordinary life insecure.

    Today those giants look familiar. Want is children going hungry and workers relying on food banks. Disease is waiting months for treatment or being unable to see a GP or a dentist. Ignorance is schools under strain and people left behind by a changing economy. Squalor is unaffordable rent, damp flats, homelessness and polluted rivers. Idleness is not laziness; it is the waste of people’s talents in insecure, low-paid work or communities where decent jobs have disappeared.

    And running through all of them is fear. Fear of eviction. Fear of debt. Fear of illness. Fear of being treated as disposable. Fear of being made into a target because you are a migrant, Muslim, Jewish, disabled, gay or trans. Labour should be the party that takes fear out of people’s lives. Not by feeding panic, but by building security.

    The voters that left Labour to vote Reform, Green or Plaid on Thursday listened to Labour once, but they don’t think Labour is listening to them. The Tories spent years changing the salesman while refusing to admit the product was broken, and the country paid for it. Labour should not repeat that mistake in bold.

    Keir Starmer may not be the person to lead Labour into the next election. He may not even be the person best able to rebuild the party now. But replacing him before Labour has worked out what it stands for would be an evasion, not a renewal. A new leader could give warmer speeches, tell better stories, look less pained in interviews and maybe even enjoy a short polling bounce. But if the offer remains the same, the voters still won’t vote for it.

    The question Labour must answer is not “who can sell this better?” It is “what are we selling?” If Labour is to recover, it needs a product worthy of the name, patriotic without being servile, clean without excuses, and committed to making people secure in their homes, work, health, communities and identities. It needs to fight fear without feeding it.

    Until Labour can say clearly what it is for, changing leader is just changing the person standing beside the empty shelf. Keir Starmer should stay, for now, not because he has earned the right to carry on regardless, but because Labour has not yet earned the right to pretend he is the whole problem.

  • Opinion: Why I’m Not (Yet) Joining Your Party

    Labour Manifesto Launch 2019, creative commons licence

    As someone firmly on the left side of politics, who voted for Jeremy Corbyn in both Labour leadership election, I should be exactly the kind of person Your Party is targeting. With reports of over 750,000 people signing up to the mailing list, clearly something’s resonating. And I’m still hesitant. Here’s why.

    First, who will Your Party actually be for?
    When the vote on decriminalising abortion came up, both Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana supported it. But three of the independent MPs linked to the Gaza coalition—Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan, and Iqbal Mohammad did not1. I cannot support any party that allows religious fundamentalism to shape its manifesto. And yes, I consider Islamic fundamentalism every bit as dangerous as the Christian variety. Will Your Party support human rights? If not then that’s a deal breaker for me.

    Second, will it be serious or amateur hour?
    Labour, for all its flaws, has a structure. It has people who know what they’re doing. Reform UK, for contrast, has struggled to build any meaningful branch network. Some of its candidates have turned out to have unpleasant pasts; others are barely known at all.2. They’ve only made the impact they have through ruthless centralisation.

    But Your Party is supposed to be grassroots. That’s great, but it also takes time, money, and a committed team of experienced organisers. My worry is that Your Party may be short of all three.

    And third, what if it actually works?
    If Your Party succeeds electorally, it could mark the end of the Labour Party as we know it. And while Labour has clearly drifted from its moorings under Starmer, I believe the party will long outlast his leadership. I’ve drifted in and out of Labour membership over the years, but I’ve always voted Labour at general elections. I remember the old guard at Yeovil CLP proudly boasting of voting Liberal in 1983; I had nothing but contempt for that attitude then, and I still do now. I’m not about to flounce off just because I don’t like the current direction. I still believe it’s possible to turn the ship.

    But if the serious soft left decides it’s time to abandon it3 then I’ll follow. That’s the heart of Labour for me.

    So I’m not saying never.

    But I am saying: not yet.

    1. The other member of the Independent Alliance, Shockat Adam abstained. ↩︎
    2. I will not go with the fanciful idea of Reform having AI candidates. Acting Returning Officers will have sniffed that out. But there were some that acted purely as paper candidates. ↩︎
    3. Thinking about Manchester that’s Burnham, Rayner, Long-Bailey and Powell. ↩︎

  • Canada’s Blank Ballot Experiment: A By-Election, 214 Candidates, and One Very Long Problem

    The ballot paper for Monday’s by-election. Image from Elections Canada

    Tomorrow, a federal by-election will be held in the Alberta riding1 of Battle River–Crowfoot. This should be a political non-event. The area is rock solid Conservative. The Liberals have surpassed 10% of the vote only once since 1980, and the New Democrats have never even got that much support.

    But what makes this by-election remarkable, possibly unprecedented in Canadian electoral history, and perhaps without precedent in British elections either, is that the ballot paper will be completely blank.

    The story begins with Kieran Szuchewycz, an Albertan citizen who sought to stand in Calgary Heritage against then Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 federal election. Elections Canada, however, required a $1,000 deposit—something Szuchewycz refused to pay. Instead, he sued the government.

    His argument hinged on Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states: “Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.” A financial barrier, he claimed, infringed that right. In 2017, Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench agreed. Though the ruling applied only in Alberta, Elections Canada preemptively removed the deposit requirement nationwide, leaving only the need to gather 100 nominations.

    Enter the Longest Ballot Committee: an organisation that appears to exist solely to torment election officials though I could easily believe the printing industry may be quietly cheering them on2. The Committee exploited the new nomination rules, relying on the fact that electors may nominate as many candidates as they wish. All they needed were willing volunteers to stand.

    They began modestly enough in the 2022 Mississauga–Lakeshore by-election, fielding 34 candidates who collectively earned just 2% of the vote. That number rose to 42 in Winnipeg South Centre in 2023 (1.9%), and then to 73 in the 2024 Toronto–St. Paul’s by-election (2.4%). That last contest caused particular problems; the ballot paper was so long it delayed the declaration of results to eight hours after the polls closed.

    The Committee’s pièce de résistance3 came in the 2025 federal election, when they targeted Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s Carleton riding. With 74 candidates, their names spanning nearly a metre long, double columned ballot. The efforts didn’t affect the result, they won just 0.9% of the vote. But at the serious end of the counting Poilievre lost his seat.

    An actual ballot paper from the Carleton riding in the 2025 federal election. Photo Harry Kusumah Hidajat (CC-SA)

    That brings us to Battle River-Crowfoot. The Conservative MP Damien Kurek graciously resigned his seat to let Poilievre to return to the House of Commons. This time, the Longest Ballot Committee responded with 204 candidates. With the other mainstream and fringe parties, that’s 214 candidates. Even double columned, the ballot paper would be close to three metres long.

    In response, Elections Canada made an extraordinary decision: for the first time in Canadian history, every ballot paper will be blank. Voters must handwrite their chosen candidate’s name, aided by a 32-page booklet listing all 214 options.

    In one sense, this by-election is a safe testing ground. The seat is practically unlosable for the Conservatives, and Elections Canada has confirmed that voters won’t need perfect spelling, good news for Anglophone Albertans who might struggle with “Poilievre.”

    But beyond this peculiar episode lies a deeper question: how do we balance open democratic participation with the practicalities of electoral administration? The Longest Ballot Committee may be trolling for chaos—but they’ve also highlighted the fragility of systems designed for a more restrained age.

    Whether the blank ballot experiment becomes a one-off curiosity or a permanent solution remains to be seen. Either way, Canada will learn something tomorrow. Maybe Britain should be paying attention too?

    1. Riding is Canadian for constituency. ↩︎
    2. The LBC’s spokesperson is a Tomas Szuchewycz, I don’t know if he’s related. ↩︎
    3. See, French, because Canada. ↩︎

  • Where I’ve been: Canterbury Gaming Convention 2025

    The Indoor Tennis Centre at the University all full of gamers. Photo credit Phil Lucas.

    Last weekend I attended the Canterbury Gaming Convention at the University of Kent. I found Canterbury a delightful city and the gaming was wonderful. I played the following Pathfinder Society scenarios:

    • 5-17 Stranded on Yesterday’s Tide
    • 6-01 Year of Immortal Influence
    • 6-02 Rain Falls on the Mountain of Sea and Sky
    • and GMed Quest 25 The Greengold Dilemma
    Playing 6-02 Rain Falls on the Mountain of Sea and Sky, GM Steve, playing with Kenton and Nicola. Photo credit Phil Lucas.

    Many thanks to Phil Lucas for organising the Pathfinder Society events and to Steve, Martin and Jay for running the games I was in. I hope to be at Canterbury 2026.

    Me looking uncharacteristically thoughtful in 6-01 Year of Immortal Influence, GM Martin, playing with Andrew B, Matt, David M and Nicola. Photo credit Phil Lucas.

  • EHRC Approval Ratings: Analyzing the Data

    Photo of Baroness Falkner before the Women and Equalities Committee
    Baroness Falkner at the Womens and Equalities Committee – 11th June 2025. Photo: parliamentlive.tv

    In her latest appearance before the Women and Equalities Committee, the EHRC Chair, Baroness Falkner of Margravine surprised many by this statement.

    We do surveys of opinion into our standing, and I will share one simple figure with you. I do not like words like approval or disapproval, but in the first year of my service, the so called approval rating—people who thought positively about us—was in the region of 35%, and it is currently 81%.1

    81% public approval seemed unlikely to me and indeed it wasn’t true as Falkner later acknowledged.

    During the Committee session on 11 June, I cited data in response to Q2 related to our approval rating. I would like to clarify that these figures refer to our media sentiment analysis which measures the tone and favourability of media coverage about EHRC, not public opinion polling. The latest figures from our media monitoring are:

    a. Positive media sentiment has improved from 35.2% in 2021-22 to 80.6% in 2024-25
    b. Negative media sentiment has decreased from 5.3% in 2022-23 to 1.2% in 2024-252

    Impressive numbers but positive media coverage is not the same as positive public opinion. The likes of the Telegraph, Mail, Express and Sun do not want human rights to get in the way of capitalism. The Telegraph have a particular anti trans rampage at the moment.

    It’s as if the Police patted themselves on the back if criminals thought they were wonderful.

    1. Sourced from the transcript at https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/16043/pdf/ ↩︎
    2. The letter from Falkner is at https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/48625/documents/254825/default/ ↩︎

  • The Rapture

    Tangopaso, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    Every year, scaremongering posts about the Christian Rapture pop up—especially leading up to September 23rd. So here’s my 2025 version of a post I come back to often, because (spoiler alert) this happens every year.

    The basis is Revelation 12:1–2:

    “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.”

    Sounds dramatic. But what it describes, astronomically, is a regular, predictable pattern.

    The Sun appears to move through 13 constellations over the course of a year (not just the 12 zodiac signs), due to Earth’s orbit. The Sun enters the constellation Virgo on September 17th this year and stays there until October 30th, because Virgo is one of the widest constellations in the sky.

    Meanwhile, the Moon moves faster through the sky from our perspective, completing a cycle roughly every 29 days. A New Moon occurs when it catches up with the Sun, and a Full Moon when it’s on the opposite side of the Earth. That Sun–Moon alignment (a “conjunction”) happens monthly.

    In 2025, there’s a partial solar eclipse on September 21st, viewable from New Zealand, parts of Antarctica, and Pacific islands. That’s just the Moon and Sun lining up in Virgo—again, not a rare event. The Moon will then swing around again to meet the Sun in Virgo on October 20th/21st.

    So, yes: the Sun is in Virgo for over six weeks every year. And the Moon meets the Sun once a month. Put those together, and this “great sign” occurs at least once a year, often twice.

    Where did the obsession with September 23rd come from?

    Back in the mid-2010s, someone noticed that an asteroid called 4580 Child (named after amateur astronomer Jack B. Child1) would be near the Sun and Moon in Virgo on September 23rd, 2017. Cue predictions that this was the Rapture. I think I overslept that day, because I didn’t notice anything unusual.

    Since then, lazy TikTokers have recycled that date without recalculating anything.

    For the record, the last time 4580 Child was near the Sun was February 25th, 2025—and it was in Aquarius. The next time will be May 23rd, 2026, in Taurus.

    Want a genuinely interesting date? Try September 29th, 2027: Sun, Moon, and 4580 Child will all be in Virgo plus Mercury and Venus. You can even draw a line between the Moon and Child with the Sun almost exactly in the middle. The Moon will be higher in the sky than the Sun, but you can’t have everything.

    Other future dates with Sun, Moon, and 4580 Child in Virgo:

    • October 14th to 16th, 2031
    • October 4th to 7th, 2040
    • October 10th to 12th, 2053

    But I’m sure, no matter how far we go into the future, someone on whatever replaces TikTok will still be sprouting about September 23rd.

    1. Oddly Child discovered 13 asteroids but 4580 Child wasn’t one of them. ↩︎

  • Misleading Headline of the Day

    It’s a good job that the TERF nurse Sandie Peggie wasn’t being forced to change in front of any male isn’t it.

  • Britannia – the dog that didn’t bark

    So the new set of UK coinage has been announced by the Royal Mint. This flora and fauna themed set look a bit toytown to me but then all new coins have that lack of familiarity, overall they are a nice set. What interests me is the reaction – or rather lack of reaction.

    You see when the move to decimal currency happened, there was an outcry as the old penny disappeared and there was no Britannia depicted in the new range. Quickly the original 50p design of the full Royal coat of arms was ditched (eventually being released as a commemorative in 2013) and a new design with Britannia seated released to replace the 10-shilling note in 1969.

    40 years is a long time for a set of coins so in 2008 the shield definitives again, again there was no place for Britannia, the new 50p formed the point of the shield with segments of the Irish harp and English leopards. Cue outcry from the usual subjects, the Daily Mail calling it an embarrassment to Gordon Brown. William Hague was even stronger, proclaiming “It is all too typical of a Government with an inadequate sense of British pride and an ignorance of history to want to do away with such a symbol.”1

    The Mail’s petition did not result in another change of mind and Britannia disappeared until George Osborne to some fanfare brought the image back to the little seen definitive £2 coin in 20152

    Now, as you will have noticed, there’s no Britannia to be seen in the new set, the £2 has been replaced by a four-nation selection of rose, thistle, daffodil and shamrock. So any shock from the Mail or the Conservative Party? Absolutely not a squeak. The Mail’s story is basically just a copy/paste from the Royal Mint’s press releases, gushing about King Charles’ love of nature.3

    So, was the furore back in 1968 and 2008 just a concocted story to attack Labour governments? You might think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

    1. As reported by the Daily Mail on 2nd February 2008. ↩︎
    2. Somewhat tempered when the Mail discovered the model for the new Britannia was slightly based on a Polish immigrant. ↩︎
    3. It would be easy to attribute the capercaillie’s plight to the fact the King’s father shot so many of them, but they were only reintroduced to Scotland after their first extinction from these Isles so that people could carry on shooting them. ↩︎

  • Kinnock myths

    There’s a meme going around that Jeremy Corbyn is somehow being obstructive by staying on as Labour Party leader while we get on with electing a new leader and deputy. So we get uninformed people like this pop up on Twitter.

    Lloyd’s entitled to his opinion, but not his own facts. I’m older than him and remember the 1992 election painfully well. The election was Thursday 9th April; Kinnock didn’t even announce his resignation until Tuesday 13th April so Jeremy’s already quicker off the marks. Kinnock then remained leader until John Smith won on Saturday 18th July, exactly 100 days later.

    It made sense for Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband to step down immediately because they both had a deputy who was willing and able to hold the fort during the leadership election. Now, the deputy post is vacant so if Jeremy did want to walk away now the NEC would have to meet to put one of the Shadow Cabinet in as acting leader. That could not be one of the leadership contenders as that would be unfair and who else would want that thankless job?

    Facing a triumphal Boris Johnson at the dispatch box for Queen’s Speech and weekly PMQs will be awful for Corbyn to deal with, we should be thankful to him for performing this last service to the Labour Party.