General Election, 4 July 2024 - MP changes

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

No great surprise from the exit poll. Sadly we can expect a lot of noise from the party that is predicted to win 13 seats.

And maybe 25% of the national vote.....

They actually won 5 seats, and 14% of the national vote. 

[JayMac]

Sir Keir Starmer has announced his new Secretary of State for Transport.

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Louise Haigh has been named as transport secretary.

Recognisable for her brightly dyed hair, Haigh was named the hardest-working new MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) in 2016 due to the number of her Commons speeches and questions, and praised by then-Speaker John Bercow for her "terrier-like intensity".

Keir Starmer made her shadow Northern Ireland secretary in 2020 before she took on the shadow transport brief in 2021.

The former special constable was also a shadow policing minister under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

Haigh, the MP for Sheffield Heeley, is a former Unite union shop steward and ran the leadership campaign of Lisa Nandy, who she had worked for before entering parliament, in the contest to replace Corbyn in 2019.

[ChrisB]

Impressed by speech from Jeremy Corbyn; there are a number who I may disagree with but for whom I have huge respect and admiration.

Seeing him sitting on the Opposition benches with the Tories, Ulster Unionists and Reform will be a treat indeed!

Along with half the Government as they won't all fit on the Government benches, especially at PMQs 

Also,

The prime minister’s chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith has been proposed for a peerage along with former transport secretary Chris Grayling

The dissolution honours list appears to have been released by Sunak prior to the polls closing, according to the Independent, via MSN

Theresa May given peerage and Therese Coffey gets damehood in surprise dissolution honours list

The former prime minister Theresa May has been given a peerage while the former environment secretary Therese Coffey has been handed a damehood in the dissolution honours list.

Ms May, the former MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for Maidenhead, was nominated for a peerage by Rishi Sunak as No 10 made the surprise decision to announce the list on Thursday evening, less than an hour before the election polls closed.

....continued at link

[grahame]

In order to help me remember what's been promised and who's who, I have grabbed the Labour Party manifesto summary and new cabinet mug shots and posted them at http://grahamellis.uk/blog1282.html

Here for those with a transport interest is the transport panel:

[grahame]

GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) to be in the King's Speech on 17th July.  So important and I have split that off to a separate thread
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=28882.0

[chuffed]

The Times reported that turnout in North Somerset was 76.3 %...the highest in the country !

Was the driving force behind that, a desire to see Sir Liam Fox turfed out ?

[TaplowGreen]

The Times reported that turnout in North Somerset was 76.3 %...the highest in the country !

Was the driving force behind that, a desire to see Sir Liam Fox turfed out ?

North Somerset has had an increasingly elderly demographic for some time, much more likely to vote.

[Chris from Nailsea]

North Somerset has had an increasingly elderly demographic for some time, much more likely to vote.

Excuse me!  I'm only 65!   

[chuffed]

TG has obviously not seen the huge influx of under 50s into Portishead Marina, more than doubling the population of the town in the last 10 years. ......

[grahame]

A few days after, and we held a hustings "wash up" meeting here in Melksham and Devizes on Friday evening.

We are not setting up a formal constituency-wide environment and climate group.  In the region, we have the Wiltshire Climate Alliance, and the Melksham Area we have the Melksham Environment Group - we don't need another level of group.    But we are leaving our team email address open so that we can keep in touch and co-ordinate where appropriate.t

Come the next few days, for the first time in one hundred years, the town of Devizes in Wiltshire will be represented in parliament by a member who is not a member of the Conservative party.    Until our hustings, I was a floating voter; I had misgivings concerning all options I was being offered.   But some of the candidates rose in my estimation as people as well as with the policies, and rather sadly others fell and made my decision much easier - no secret that I ended up supporting the eventual winner - Brian Mathew for the Lib Dems.  Had Claire Perry or Andrew Murrison been on my ballot, the choice would have probably been much less easy - both are people I have worked with in the past and I have found them having qualities that set them apart. Andrew remains MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for South West Wiltshire, and I look forward to working transport stuff with him and with WWRUG^» (West Wiltshire Rail Users Group - about).