All the experts - aka boofheads - were wrong again about the Hunter Valley by-election.

The ALP “workers party” received a mere 21% of the primary vote in a working class, coal-dependent seat.

A smack in the chops too for Green-backing Malcolm Turnbull

Labor calling themselves the "Workers Party" is like the Greens calling themselves "Local Enterprise" !

Labor and the greens are competing for the inner city liberals.

The working class are more more voting for the coalition.

Upper Hunter is a seat held by the Country/National Party for the past 90 years. A million dollar by-election brought on by the resignation of yet another reprobate from the Coalition, the accused rapist Nationals MP Michael Johnsen. Upper Hunter is a blue ribbon National Party seat, yet their primary vote was down to 31%. A $600 million pork barrel from Morrison in the form of an un-economic gas fired power station in the region didn't harm the Nationals chances. A power plant that is estimated to be operational 2% of the time, and employ a workforce of 10. No wonder private investment wont touch it with a forty foot poll!

The party that copped the biggest hiding was the Shooters and Hooters, who see themselves as the successors to the Nationals, at least in NSW, their vote almost halved. A party that has only one policy, the widespread use of guns will eventually come unstuck, and that's what has happened to the Shooters and Hooters in the Upper Hunter, no policies, no votes.

Paul.

Seems that the Greens weren’t too popular, wonder why ?

Issy,

Unlike the Shooters, Hooters and Fools Party, the Greens never had aspirations of winning in a cow cocky seat like Upper Hunter. Unlike your mob who were trumpeting victory before the vote took place. You claim to be the natural successors to the National Party, your vote halved, WHAT HAPPENED?

BTW, your party has had a change of name, yet again. 95% of the membership said they weren't represented in the name, so Fat Bob and Dumb Bob added Fools to the end, now you're all included Shooters, Hooters and Fools. I recommend , don't keep stretching the parties name, keep it simple, you sure have enough simpletons for members. The Fruitcake Party, that would cover the lot of you.

It seems there is something of a sea-change in politics in the Anglo-sphere and ancillary nations.
We saw in the recent British votes, the absolute massacre of Labor in previous strong Labor precincts with workers deserting them for the conservatives.
Likewise in the US large sections of the blue collar working class deserted the Democrats for Trump's Republicans.

Meanwhile, the middle and upper middle classes gravitate away from the more right-leaning parties and toward the so-called progressives.

Most of the old working class parties (Labor in the UK, ALP here, The Democrats in the US) have been taken over by the white collar urban elite whose aims and aspirations are very different and often in opposition to that of the old working class. This is best illustrated here with the issue of Adani, where the ALP struggled and still struggles to straddle the fence between the views of the inner city green elites who oppose any mining as against the views and aspirations of a blue collar class that needs the jobs that mining brings.

A similar thing seems to be happening in France where the workers appear to be abandoning Macron in favour of le Pen's conservative group.

It can't be yet said with certainty that the conservative parties are now the party of the blue collar working class, but the the weekend results are consistent with that outcome.

It was always going to be well near impossible for the ALP to have both the mining/agricultural workers and the inner city green white-collar classes in the same tent. It seems that the impossibility of that alliance is now becoming plain. This is what Joel Fitzgibbon has been trying to tell the party for a while now...."The Labor Party has to speak more about jobs and jobs security as it does about climate change,". But they can't because, for most of the current leadership, things like climate change matter more than jobs.

May you live in interesting times.

mhaze,

The Hunter Valley is a working man's constituency far from inner-city pedogreen territory.

SM,

Yes, that was my point.

Paul

Sour grapes

Issy,

Can you explain the halving of the Shooters, Hooters and Fools Party vote? People wont buy that "guns for all" single policy. They have no policies to cover things like health or education, transport, nothing at all.

Indy

The NSW Labor Party is still a basket case, so no sour grapes from me, I expected the Nationals to retain the seat, given ScumO' $600 million of pork barrelling just before the vote. You never commented on your parties total failure at the Tasmanian State election, didn't even come close. The Greens won two seats.