BBC Lies and Statistics #SackKuenssberg 58


Here are the basic facts from Thursday’s plethora of UK elections, limited to those affecting the relative Labour and Conservative Vote

English Council Elections
Labour 1,291 councillors Conservative 828 Councillors

London Mayoral Election First Preferences
Labour 45.2% Conservative 35.0%

Labour also won the three other mayoral elections in Bristol, Liverpool and Salford

Scottish Parliament elections constituencies
Labour 22.6% Conservative 22.0%

Welsh Assembly Election Votes
Labour 34.7% Conservative 21.1%

And yet the BBC ran a claim all day that the “projected” national vote share was Labour 31%, Conservative 30%.

This simply cannot be true. Labour won the London mayoral election by over 200,000 votes. They were 130,000 ahead in Wales. Taking all the elections except the English local council seat elections, Labour were 360,000 votes and approximately 6% ahead of the Tories. To balance this plus the majorities of the 1,291 Labour English councillors elected, each of just 828 Conservative English councillors elected would have to have an average majority of approximately 1,000. Random sampling shows this is absolutely not the case.

My own calculations, based on knowing all the other results and extrapolations from samples of the English local council results, is that the national vote count was Labour 34% Conservative 29%. It might not be precisely correct, but is not far out.

But I can say for certain is that the BBC 31/30 figure is a despicable and quite deliberate lie. The BBC has become a caricature of a state propaganda machine.

UPDATE It has been pointed out that in the Scottish regional list vote the Tories beat Labour by 520,000 to 431,000, a huge disparity with the aggregate constituency vote which Labour narrowly won. But if you use the regional rather than the constituency total in the UK wide calculation, the extra 89,000 Tory lead only marginally affects the overall calculation.


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58 thoughts on “BBC Lies and Statistics #SackKuenssberg

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  • Tom

    I was particularly irritated to learn about Scottish Parliament elections
    Labour 22.6% Conservative 22.0%.

    I don’t know how the seats are allocated and appreciate there may be disproportional anomalies in the best of systems, but for the BBC to keep repeating “Labour pushed into third place in Scotland” was technically yet another calumny.

    • Hamish

      Correction, I think this was only for the constituency vote, Tories wee ahead in the regional/list vote, combined the Tories got an approx extra 70,000 votes

      • craig Post author

        Hamish

        Do you have a link for the regional list totals? If the Tories were ahead combined by 70,000, they would have to be almost 90,000 ahead on the regional lists. That would mean a very large difference between Labour/Tory relative constituency and regional list performances.

        • craig Post author

          Hamish

          You are right. Totals of regional lists Con 520,000 Lab 431,000. Very large disparity between constituency and regional list totals. Fascinating.
          But if you average the two totals, Tory lead of 35,000 not 70,000. 70,000 is just subtracting one from the other.

  • Bert.

    Craig, you should not be surprised that the bbc is little more than a State propaganda machine.

    Everywhere in the world it is the same. Licensing means that the government, wherever it may be, has the power to cripple a broadcaster. The bbc is also subject to regular reviews of the charter – which time after time the tories use as a Damoclean sword to dangle over the DG.

    In this country it is known that the bbc is loathed be the tories because it was for many years the platinum standards in broadcasting; the rest of the world tried to emulate the bbc and failed hopelessly. Thatcher put an end to that; the bbc is now just another bunch of commissioning editors like channel four or five or whatever.

    Recently, the psychopathic loathing for the bbc that characterises the tories has been well demonstrated: if the bbc has a successful programme – like ‘Strictly…’ – it should not be allowed to compete with the tory’s money grubbing friends. On the other hand, if the bbc does not produce competitive popular programming, we are told that the corporation is not up to the job ad should be privatised.

    They will not be happy until the beeb is privatised. They just want an excuse. But the bbc, like the nhs, has a somewhat special place in the hearts of the people and is not easily stepped on by the tories.

    Bert.

  • Phil the ex frog

    Calling for the head of an individual misunderstands the problem and directs energies into useless activity. The BBC is a state propagandist and it always has been. Sack Keunsberg and you will simply get another propagandist. These petitions and the promotion of them perpetuate the system and dull hope for real understanding and real opposition.

    • craig Post author

      Phil

      Nobody thinks that Keunssberg is any more than a symptom of the problem of systematic BBC bias. And nobody things she will be sacked, even if 2 million people signed the petitition.

      However sometimes a moment of revelation opens people’s eyes to the rot of the system. You may not have seen Keunssberg’s jaw-dropping display of Corbyn hatred right through Thursday night and Friday morning, but many of those who did were astounded by it. The truth is made up of the sum of its parts, and where there is such a moment of revelation we must use it to spread perception. There are a great many people who still trust the BBC. Merely telling them it is biased without giving specific examples will not work.

      • K Crosby

        Someone told me that she didn’t know who Kuenssberg (KuenSSberg?) was, not being given to watching COMbbc bottom-gravy and kept wondering why this Tory (Official) stooge was being given so much air time.

      • Phil the ex frog

        I am very happy you recognise you can be a gateway blog for those who are just beginning to see they are being cheated and lied to.

        However, why send them down a path of certain failure? Futile action leads to despair and surrender. And by blaming an individual you breed misunderstanding of the problems that ail us. This type of call to action actually perpetuates the problem.

        • Phil the ex frog

          “However, why send them down a path of certain failure?”

          I mean the petition if that’s not clear.

    • Donald Scott

      Waiting with anticipation for Keunsberg to interview the FM again. On her first attempt, Sturgeon was clearly irritated by the interviewer’s persistent questioning. How dare this newby in the job keep asking her for an answer when she had defected so may others already?

      Perhaps Laura has watched Sally Magnusson’s technique last week, when she just kept right on going through the brick wall that her diminutive subject had built.

      Like all good ex-Westbourne School for Girls (Glasgow’s West End, purple uniforms, sadly defunct) she keeps her powder dry until she’s ready.

  • Dave

    The BBC’s partisan reporting on behalf of a foreign government puts the licence fee in danger, but the actual message that Labour can’t win under Corbyn, is true, but not for the reason intended, because Labour can’t win an overall UK majority under any leader. This is because those describing themselves as working class is much reduced and because the political system is becoming more fractured.

    Thus instead of chasing an overall majority under first past the post, it time for Labour to recognise that winning means promoting labour values within coalition politics. For a long time first past the post delivered coalition politics within Labour and Conservative, but its broken down and now coalitions politics needs to be delivered in a more transparent way between parties in a proportional voting system.

    In the past the disenfranchised labour voters in Southern England were outvoted by Scottish Labour who wanted to keep first past the post, but now Scottish Labour need voting reform if they want representation at Westminster. So the time is ripe for Corbyn to lead a ‘progressive realignment’ by promoting voting reform. And this delivers an overall majority under first past the post, because all groups except the conservatives, will vote Labour to achieve a change in the system that will deliver them representation next time.

    In short, a change in the voting system is the way to defeat the Conservatives and make partisan BBC utterances irrelevant!

    • bevin

      The crucial question is not whether people see themselves as middle or working class but what policies the party is proposing to implement. Identity politics is what happens when there isn’t any real difference between the parties’ policies.
      Of Labour puts forward a platform to change things for the better and mobilises thousands of enthusiastic supporters to argue the case on the doorsteps it can win a majority easily.
      If it presents itself as another Tory party with candidates who look and talk like ordinary people it will disappear and nobody will lament its passing.

  • DiamondFish

    It’s not just the BBC, though, is it? If we had a broader range of positions in the media then the BBC bias would be obvious to everyone, but since they are all singing from the same hymn sheet, the fact that Kuenssberg adds another voice to the choir is hardly noticeable.

    It’s amazing to me that the results of these elections are swept under the carpet. I remember John Curtice’s predictions of huge losses for Labour being widely reported before the elections. But instead Labour largely held on to the substantial gains they made in 2012. So now all we hear about is how failure to add yet more councilors is the new benchmark of electoral failure. Only by reading below the line in comment sections of online newspapers, or coming to sites like this one, do I see a different view.

  • Dave

    Also did the “anti-Semitism” attacks damage or improve the Labour vote? I presume they were intended to damage, but the London Mayoral vote points to a different outcome entirely. For me this was to be expected because London has become so diverse that voters want a ‘healer rather than a hater’ even if they agree with the ‘haters’ message. I mean even if you agree there are too many immigrants in London, you know its happened and practically speaking can’t be reversed, so you don’t want to elect a troublemaker who will make things worse.

    Hence the conservative campaign was so misconceived I wonder if it was deliberately conceived to sink Goldsmith because of his opposition to Heathrow expansion.

    • Andy

      Labour were predicted to loose 150 to 200 council seats, do very badly in the Welsh assembly. The Blairites needed something to lay into Corbyn with after the terrible results were in and that was going to be antisemitism in the Labour party , all Corbyn’ s fault because he supports the terrorist Palestinians. I’m sure the Blairites knew the scandal wouldn’t have much effect on how people would vote as most people don’t know what Zionism is and don’t care about Isreal. The concocted scandal was something to beat Corbyn with after the elections and to have him removed.

      But the predictions were obviously Blairite anti-Corbyn propaganda .

      The reason I think the plot failed so spectacularly is because the Blairites actually believe their own propaganda. They really believed Labour would loose 150 seats and the Welsh assembly.

      That’s my take on the antisemitism scandal.

  • Stuart Graham

    The BBC are part of a coup attempt to unseat Corbyn. The press coverage and so-called ‘informed’ comment has backed up the ridiculous claims that Corbyn did badly. The 8 day run up to the election was as bad as I have ever seen, with orchestrated bile and hate from MSM pouring all over Corbyn. It began with John Mann’s rant on TV at Ken Livingstone. It continued every day with a succession of Blairite Labour MPs stirring the pot with their media mates. The day before the vote, John Pienar came up with his “two senior Labour MPs were prepared to stand against Corbyn – and Margaret Hodge had been approached to act as the stalking horse.”
    That claim has died away but the plotters remain.
    What is remarkable that in the face of such unremitting hostility Labour were not wiped off the face of England.
    Scottish Labour still has some way to go to remove the accurate observation left over from the referendum of being ‘red tories’ or ‘tories with red ties.’ The same claim can be directed at the Blairites. There is a real concern too that many Labour MPs and much of MSM are in collusion with a pro-Israel plot to remove Corbyn, who, as an outspoken critic of Israel and its policies, is a prime target. For evidence read
    ‘Inside the pro-Israel campaign to crush Labour’s left-wing insurgency.’ Max Blumenthal AlterNet

    • John Spencer-Davis

      I have just read Blumenthal’s piece. Interestingly it includes a link to Elie Wiesel’s thoughts on the matter Ken Livingstone was talking about.

      Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is not exactly known for anti-Semitic views. Here’s what he has to say:

      “Let us examine the strange episode of the haavar or “transfer.”
      In the mid-1930s, after H’s rise to power, while American Jewry fought to organize an economic boycott of N z Germany, the leaders of the Palestinian Yishuv entered into active, though unofficial, negotiations with Berlin regarding the transfer of German Jews and their wealth–some 30 million pound sterling–to the Holy Land.
      Surely, Jewish Palestine–at the time the two words were not contradictory–needed money to finance its development, but this brazen pragmatism went against the political philosophy of a majority of world Jewry. There developed a growing perception that instead of supporting and strengthening the boycott, Palestine was, in fact, sabotaging it.
      There were justifications. Yes, the country was poor and needed financial input and yes, this course of action provided a chance to save German Jews who might otherwise have decided to “wait and see” and let the last possible opportunity of salvation go by.
      But Segev goes on to show, supported by devastating evidence, that later, even as Germany carried out its Final Solution–liquidating one ghetto after another, one community after another–the Jewish leaders of Palestine never made the rescue of European Jews into an overwhelming national priority. We know that Zionist leader Itzhak Gruenbaum, a future Minister of the Interior in David ben Gurion’s first cabinet, considered creating new settlements more urgent than saving Jews from being sent to Treblinka and Birkenau.”

      Wiesel’s comments support Livingstone. I suppose that makes him an anti-Semite too.

      http://articles.latimes.com/1993-05-23/books/bk-38582_1_tom-segev

      • Andy

        Khan is reported in the Observer,

        “I heard Ken Livingstone’s comments, I spoke up about them. There should be no place in our party for people with those disgusting views.”

        The truth is disgusting?

        Khan doesn’t have to appease the Israelis anymore, he won the election.

        I don’t trust the guy one bit. He’s already indirectly attacking Corbyn.

  • TonyF12

    http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/a-londoner-has-sent-a-brilliant-letter-of-commiseration-to-zac-goldsmith–WJxR_VHpVzZ is my favourite of the day.

    The BBC is an instrument of State. The Top Brass at the BBC sees no other way to maintain future funding. To me the 6o/c BBC News is as warped as Radio Moscow used to sound when I was a child with my AM radio. Only you could listen through what Radio Moscow said and unspin the story without being a genius. Not so easy with the BBC spin. They are just as dishonest in reporting the junior doctors’ and teachers’ reactions to this high-handed arrogant government.

  • Gerry Mulvenna

    For what it’s worth ITV News at Ten opened with doom and gloom predictions for Corbyn as their main story on Thursday night, so they are peddling the same agenda at the BBC.

  • Tom

    A question for Craig if I may be so impertinent! For some time now I have been wondering how the BBC can justify the huge number of foreign correspondence and the associated baggage? How is this sustainable in an era where even A well resourced ITN can get by without permanent offices scattered throughout the Empire. See link below for the answer, which is no for the tl;drs!

    While I think the World Service is actually less biased than the domestic news reporting, when it comes to reports from own correspondent for home consumption, it really feels like they believe there is still a cold war style information battle to be fought. My theory is that the extremes of domestic reporting would make the world service a laughing stock to a better informed of less brain washed audience.

    So my question is, given the overlap of locations of interest to both correspondents and diplomatic outposts, is there not a degree of cooperation between the foreign office and the World Service? After all I believe the World Service was directly paid for by the foreign office at one point.

    No wonder these correspondents consider themselves to be quasi-official representatives of our state, and it’s not they would be perfect undercover MI6 agents as they “innocently” harvest Intel. And if not, what else are they doing? Some of them you don’t hear from for months at a time.

    https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Are%20Foreign%20Correspondents%20Redundant%20The%20changing%20face%20of%20international%20news_0.pdf

    • John

      My understanding is that US agencies now part-fund the BBC and participate in selection procedures or reporters.

      • Tom

        Well that IS news! Or it would be if there was any evidence. Without proof it’s just a plausible conspiracy theory 🙁

  • Stuart Graham

    One further observation about bias at the beeb. Channel 4 have been running their ‘Election Expense Fraud’ story for 3 months. The Daily Mail ran a couple of articles about it. It was finally mentioned (briefly) on the main BBC news channels last Friday – the day after polling day. On Friday Channel 4 identified Anna Soubry, the Business Minister, as being one of the alleged beneficiaries. Quite a story. No mention on the beeb.
    The Head of News at the BBC is James Harding who went to school with Osborne and played tennis with Cameron.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    The key thing is, the Britain, it does not need to be so overt. I’m sure no-one in the editorial depts actually tells anyone to slant coverage. That is why is so difficult to change. If there were overt censorship – not that I am arguing for that, of course – it could be stopped, or at least exposed. But when it’s simply an understanding derived from what one might term, common class interests, how does one deal with it? We see this type of dynamic right across the board. I certainly encountered it in the Arts/Literature, where it is normative (and unspoken). As I suggested in a previous post on this thread, intelligent, highly-educated people often tend to the ones with least insight. They really often do think that they are totally impartial and fair. Most of the Imperial Residents, and other functionaries, of the British Empire thought the same.

    • Ba'al Zevul

      That’s a good and IMO valid point, Suhayl. Any specialist group tends to have its own mindset, reinforcing mutual approval, and you can add the selection process for the group by its own senior members as a factor. We’ve evolved to the point where individuals prominent in the media 1/ Went to a good university, preferably Oxford, 2/ Have family connections in the media, 3/ Accept unreservedly the supremacy of the market and 4/ Are capable of rebranding any sow’s ear as a silk purse.

      That said, though, in asserting its impartiality, the BBC seems to be remarkably poor at monitoring itself.

  • Noel mackenzie

    Not a caricature but a absolute bona fide state controlled media organization. The good news is the public are on to them and ultimately it will bite then in the bum!
    The public are very angry that what they pay for is being unscrupulously hijacked in this way… Not just by the Tories but by all controlling powers. Hands off the BBC and thank goodness for channel 4 news… Imo the only one without an agenda!!

  • Pete Andrews

    Why am I not surprised. BBC bias in favour of the conservative party has been apparent for quite some time – with major news items such a large anti government peaceful protests going unreported whilst any opportunity is taken to portray Jeremy Corbyn as a figure of fun. Complete lack of reporting of the Cameron’s vicious and bullying approach in the house etc etc.

  • Resident Dissident

    Labour got 43.7% of the London vote and 30.4% of the UK vote at the 2015 General Election.

    Sadiq Khan got 45.2% of the London Vote – so projecting Labour’s share at 31% doesn’t appear to be too far off the mark – unless you want to argue that Labour did better on Thursday outside London. Certainly seems a more likely figure than the 34% that Craig is claiming – where did Labour increase its share of its vote by 4% on the General Election?????????????

  • Roger Mexico

    I’m sorry Craig, but you’ve got this one wrong. The Projected National Share (PNS) figures aren’t calculated by the BBC but by independent academics and have been for many years. John Curtice and Stephen Fisher explained the methodology they were using on a recent blog post, which also lists the PNS figures going back to 1982.

    So you can’t blame the BBC for the figures just for whatever spin they put on them. It also should be noted that the calculation seem to be based only on English local elections, not on the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections, London Mayor and Assembly, other Mayors or indeed the universally ignored PPCs.

    So one reason for the apparent discrepancy between the results and the PNS is that a lot of them aren’t included. Presumably this is because they don’t happen every year, use different voting systems and people may vote differently in them. So a year to year comparison wouldn’t be useful. In addition the English local elections that did take place this year were mostly in strong Labour areas, so they should do well.

    That said there may also be some trouble with the model. When these seats were mostly last fought in 2012, it came up with a PNS of Lab 38%, Con 31%, Lib Dem 16% (Others inc UKIP 15%). This year’s PNS was calculated as Lab 31%, Con 30%, Lib Dem 15%, UKIP 12%, Others 12%. Why there was such a drop but little change in the seats won is a mystery. It is probably due to the way they use 2015 as a base, but it does need explaining.

    Incidentally Stephen Fisher also made some estimates of expected changes in local government seats as did those other long-term experts Rallings and Thrasher

    FISHER:

    2016 FORECAST RANGE
    Con +19 -73 to +112
    Lab -151 -276 to -26
    LD +93 +54 to +132

    RALLINGS & THRASHER:

    2016 FORECAST
    Con +50
    Lab -150
    LD +40

    So there was agreement that Labour would lose around 150 Council seats, the Tories would make some modest gains and the Lib Dems bigger ones. This was based on polling, what the situation was when the seats were fought last time and recent by-elections.

    So in practice Labour did much better and Tories and Lib Dems rather worse than expected. Current figures are -23, -46, +44 repectively, those these exclude Bristol which is counting today.

    • craig Post author

      Yes, but they should not be publishing a forecast after the actual results. And if what it is, is an extrapolation from the actual results to a national picture via a swing calculation, they should plainly state that. It is a perfectly legitimate psephological forecast, but should be distinguished from the actual results. They did not do so. You would also expect them to state the actual voting figures from which they projected, but they did not do so.

      If they had John Curtice stating “The result on the day was Labour 34%, Conservative 29%. But the voting was in disproportionately Labour voting areas, so I have calculated a swing projection that would give Labour 31%, Conservative 30% if this were a General Election” then I would have no objection. But that is absolutely not what happened.

      • Roger Mexico

        It’s something that has always been done and it’s perfectly valid in the terms stated and with all the provisos. As you say the real problem is how the BBC seem to have presented it. One it was put forward as Peter Snow’s famous “Just a bit of fun” mentioned in passing as one piece of data out of many.

        If they have been promoting it as anything more, then they are not just misunderstanding how it works, they are show their lack of knowledge of their own history (and the whole point of PNS is that it has been done for a long time). There’s not the excuse that it is a new invention that no one is sure about yet – though as I said I suspect it does have some form of technical trouble this year.

    • rwendland

      Just FYI the Rallings & Thrasher numbers are published by the Electoral Commission. eg in the 2012 comparative election Labour had 43.1% of the vote share just in the English local elections, compared to 27.5% for the Tories. As the seat result for 2016 is roughly the same, you’d expect the vote share not to be that much different for 2016. MSM does not seem to be mentioning this:

      http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/150903/England-local-elections-data-report.pdf

      Table 2: Vote and Seat share local elections 2012

      Party / Vote (%) / Seats (%)

      Labour / 43.1 / 49.4
      Conservative / 27.5 / 32.5
      Lib Dem / 14.0 / 11.9
      Green / 4.2 / 1.1
      Independent / 3.2 / 2.8
      Other / 8.0 / 2.3

      Also the HOC Library publishes interesting projections to the UK national vote from local elections for years since 1979: “Estimated national equivalent share of vote at local elections, 1979-2014” on page 7 of:

      http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/RP14-44.pdf

      2012 is the best projected year for Labour (Lab:39% Con33%) since 1996. So as 2016 is nearly matching it (excluding Scotland), then the 2016 result is very good indeed for Corbyn’s Labour. Again analysis along these lines absent in the MSM.

  • John Spencer-Davis

    A particularly apposite piece examining the mainstream media and political debate from Another Angry Voice (Thomas Clark).

    “The first step is for people to realise that the majority of the UK media is owned by a bunch of radically right-wing sociopaths who are intent on presenting the kind of fanatical right-wing economic dogma that suits their own interests as “moderate” and any opposition as “extreme”. The next step is for the younger generations and other victims of harsh ideological austerity to actually bother standing up for their own interests, either by voting against parties that push austerity, or better still, involving themselves in direct action.”

    http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/mainstream-media-frames-debate.html

  • fred

    The Scottish figures would not have come into it because there were no council elections in Scotland.

    What the Projected National Share does is to calculate what share of the vote a party would get in a general election based on the difference between council and parliamentary elections in previous years.

    It wasn’t the BBC that got it wrong.

  • nevermind

    Add to that list Norwich Labour recouped 4 cllrs. from the Green Party to strenghten its overall control.
    There isn’t a single Tory councillor on Norwich city council now, the last one was squeezed out long ago. Now what does that say fro Chloe Smith future?

  • Aim Here

    Could it be that the BBC’s statisticians are correlating the previous elections with these ones to come up with these numbers? The polling methodology could be that they decide that the outcome of the last council elections correspond to the last Wesminister election and that it’s the shift that matters. If there’s no change in the councils, then it’ll be more or less no change at Wesminister. Maybe the BBC decided that voters are 50% more likely to vote for a Labour councillor as a Labour MP and have weighted their numbers accordingly.

    Weighting raw poll figures to compensate for known biases and discrepancies is something that pollsters routinely do. If they poll a group of people, they weight the results so that the weight of people who say they voted for the Monster Raving Tory Party last election matches the actual vote share that the party got.

    Whether my guess is true, and whether it constitutes deliberately lying with statistics, I’ll leave up to someone else to judge.

    • Spaull

      One big problem with all of this is that we are now in an era when there are six parties other than the Tories winning seats and noteworthy numbers of votes – SNP, Plaid, Greens, UKIP and Lib Dems as well as Labour. I would argue, particularly given the prevelance of tactical voting because of first past the post, that that invalidates any previous models for extrapolating national vote shares in a general election from local election results.

      • fred

        I don’t know.

        All I know is that claims that this is a deliberate conspiracy by the BBC to distort the facts, that they deliberately lied, is a deliberate lie.

        • Spaull

          The problem for the BBC is that, after Laura Kuenssberg conspired with a Blairite MP to engineer his resignation in such a way as to hand a party political advantage to the Conservatives, the BBC lost all right to the benefit of the doubt in such matters.

          These projections are speculation based on models that have zero relevant hard data underpinning them, but they were presented as fact. Given Kuenssberg’s history of deliberately trying to damage Labour, when trying to decide whether that was incompetence on her part or a further attempt to damage Labour, the starting assumption now has to be the latter.

  • giyane

    Can we sack Eliza Manningham-Buller for occupying the shittiest job in the UK spying on us for 5 years, then learning how to sound like the Queen and lecturing us on Ragio 4. As if. As if . As if. We would believe the former head of MI5 about anything.

  • Solly Jacquesson

    Please also look at Paul Mason’s analysis of the Scottish elections and what action should be taken against the BBC the Scottish Labour Party should be separated from Labour and be a member with a Federal structure etc ……,

  • Nick Wilson

    And what happens when everyone who has different stats or opinions or ideas, to you, has been sacked. Just interested, not expecting or desiring a reply.

    • John Spencer-Davis

      No-one’s advocating sacking someone because they have different stats or opinions or ideas. They are advocating sacking Kuenssberg because she isn’t being impartial, so she isn’t doing her job properly.

  • John

    My nephew sent me this yesterday:-

    I have crunched some numbers; perhaps you could spread them around – they make different reading to what the BBC is reading. What annoys me is firstly they call these elections midterm when they are not and Laura whatsherface said Labour at this stage of the electoral cycle should be winning hundreds of seats. Well the figures from previous local elections do not support that assertion.

    The first local elections for incumbent governments are usually pretty good and the opposition makes no or little progress.
    Also 2012 locals WERE midterm and so Labour did pretty well. Labour are bucking this trend but not the way the media is reporting it.
    See below.

    1980 – after winning the 1979 election the Tories gained 40% of the vote only 2% behind Labour.
    1984 – after winning the 1983 election the Tories won the local elections
    1988 – after winning the 1987 election the Tories won the local elections.
    1992 – after winning the GE the Tories won the local elections with 46% of the vote.
    1998 – after winning the 1997 election Labour won the local elections.
    2002 – After winning the 2001 GE Labour polled a mere 1% behind the Tories in share of national vote.
    2006 – After winning the 2005 GE the government does indeed take a pasting which has been put down to the anger over the Iraq War.
    2011 – After winning the largest share of the vote in the 2010 GE and set up the Tory led coalition support for the Tories drops only 1.1% from the GE.
    2016 – After winning the 2015 GE the Tories votes drops 6.9% from GE support but this is not widely reported.

    In this stage of the electoral cycle the incumbent government has tended to do well in the following local elections and so the idea that the opposition should be making progress or grabbing hundreds of seats does not bear scrutiny and is completely wrong.

    In fact this is the worst Tory performance in the local elections since 1996 when John Major only got 29% which was an improvement from 1995 when they only got 25% of the vote. But again this is not being reported.

    • WHS

      This ignores the fact that local council elections work on a 4-year cycle. So the comparable for 2016 is 2012, not 2011 just because it’s the first year of the Parliament. In 2011 most of the areas up for election were rural shire districts. In 2016, most rural districts have no elections and it is mainly metropolitan boroughs (Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle etc) and urban authorities.

  • Min Clifford

    I have written to the BBC complaints and siggest that all members do the same.. I don’t think it will have an effect but they might realise that we are on to them. I have also contacted Jon Snow (very fair man) and suggested he has a word with Khris who seems to delight in actacking any labour person when a Tory spokesperson is too frightened to come onto Channel 4 news.

  • Duessa Silvertape

    Labour got 46% of the actual votes in the English council elections, compared to 33% for the Tories.

  • WHS

    “Taking all the elections except the English local council seat elections”

    Why would you do this if you are trying to project a national share of the vote? You can hardly do it based on Scotland, Wales and London alone, none of which are exactly Tory strongholds.

    Your argument about Tory councillors needing 1000 majorities makes no sense either. Most of the 1291 Labour English councillors elected were elected in metropolitan boroughs where the ward size is much bigger (up to 20000 voters in Birmingham).

    Also, so many English districts, particularly rural districts where Tories have stonking majorities, had no elections this year. Look at the rural areas, coloured in white, not up for election on this map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_local_elections,_2016#/media/File:2016_local_election_results_map.png

    What one has to ask is why you would peddle this and why you would seek to delude yourself and others that, supposedly, Labour might be much further ahead than the 31-30 projection? Wishful thinking? You will be disappointed come the General Election.

  • Malcolm Sawyer

    Very interesting comments. I am puzzled over the difference in the movement in seats between 2012 and 2016 and the reported movement in votes. In terms of seats Labour was very slight down, whereas the Tories were down somewhat more; hence a swing to Labour in terms of seat. In terms of votes Wikipaedia gives the 2012 share as 38 per cent, Tories 31 per cent; hence on BBC figures a 3 per cent swing from Labour to Tories. It is possible to think of scenarios which explain this, e.g. UKIP’s vote rose at expense of Labour but in general not sufficient for Labour to lose seats to UKIP. .

  • Mark

    Every vote in every ward in the English local elections are available here; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English_local_elections,_2016

    Maybe you could actually figure out the real number rather than trying to guesstimate it.

    You could also quote the real share of the popular vote in Scotland as that seems to be part of the measure you are suggest the BBC made up. That was 22.9% to the Cons and 19.1% to Lab. I think that qualifies to say the Cons came second.

    And for Wales it was 31.5% for Lab and 18.8% for the Cons, putting them 3rd behind Plaid.

    I guess it is easier to accuse someone of being a despicable liar rather than doing the hard work to work out the real number of voters who voted for each party.

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