TOON TUESDAY #50

Labour's austerity measures have come in for some attention from left-leaning cartoonists, with Reeves and Starmer being likened to the Cameron-Osborne partnership that delivered five years of cuts.  The influence of Elon Musk's DOGE is clear to see from the language on display: "We need to make government more efficient" declared Starmer on Monday.  Civil Service cuts may be one thing, but the Labour leader is whipping up a storm in his own party when it comes to benefit cuts.  A forthcoming rebellion is likely to extend beyond the usual suspects of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs.

Patrick Blower for The Daily Telegraph

Dave Brown for The Independent

Ben Jennings for The Guardian

Morten Morland for The Times

Nick Newman for The Sunday Times

Ben Jennings for The Guardian

Graeme Bandeira for The Northern Agenda

Morten Morland for The Times

Peter Brookes for The Times

The abolition of NHS England also drew some attention...

Nick Newman for The Sunday Times

Matt Pritchett for The Daily Telegraph

Andy Davey for The Daily Telegraph

MEME MONDAY EXTRA: RAYNER'S PORTRAIT

As promised, we had a little fun with the presentation that took place in Westminster last week.  One of the original images can be seen above.

All the following efforts were posted on Facebook and we asked followers to like and share their favourites.  They are presented below in ascending order of favourability, beginning with three website exclusives that did not make the cut.

binlabour.com exclusive.  We could not possibly risk using this as it contains
one of the images that resulted in a recent Facebook strike

binlabour.com exclusive

binlabour.com exclusive

17 reactions and 2 shares

19 reactions

21 reactions

21 reactions

21 reactions and 1 share

28 reactions and 1 share

30 reactions and 3 shares

33 reactions and 1 share

33 reactions and 2 shares

33 reactions and 3 shares

35 reactions and 3 shares

36 reactions and 3 shares

41 reactions

57 reactions and 8 shares

111 reactions and 40 shares - far and away the most popular.  This one also
found its way onto X in various posts.  Apologies to Tim Healy!

The Facebook album containing these memes can be found here.

MEME MONDAY #28

As regular visitors will know, we have been pushed back onto the backup page on Facebook - not for the first time.  We have a much smaller following on this page and as such, our distribution is much lower.  However, we have added a thousand new followers to this page in our first week back and if it continues to grow we will be able to more confidently mitigate the loss of the main page in future.

We will soon be taking a financial hit when the Facebook money dries up on account of their spiteful censorship, so any contributions to our cause are deeply appreciated at this time.  You can donate via PayPal here.  Anything, however small, is most welcome.

Mon 17 Mar - 77 shares on Facebook

Wed 19 Mar - 23 shares. This one upset members of the Zelenskyy fan
club, who still resort to their conditioned assumption that opposing
globalist warmongers is precisely the same as being 'pro-Putin'

*** STAR MEME ***

Thur 20 March - 832 shares.  Karl is a little disappointed that this
somewhat basic and frivolous effort was this week's star, but
memes are subjective and this one was clearly very popular.

Thur 20 Mar - 8 shares

Fri 21 Mar - 111 shares

Sat 22 Mar - 269 shares.  The chihuahua/bulldog characterisation comes from
none other than George Galloway in a recent X post.

Sat 22 Mar - 125 shares

Sun 23 Mar - 4 shares

Sun 23 Mar - 35 shares

You are welcome to download and share our memes on the understanding that you do not remove or obscure the binlabour.com watermark.  Many thanks!

FREEBIE REEVES FLAPS AGAIN

The freebie scandal has burst back into the news thanks to our hapless Chancellor.  Red Rachel desperately tried to justify her latest freebie in an interview with the Beeb's Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday.  The controversy surrounds free VIP tickets enjoyed by Reeves earlier this month, in which she enjoyed a concert by US country star Sabrina Carpenter at the O2 Arena.  The corporate box seats are reportedly worth £600 a pop, but Reeves bizarrely claimed that these were 'seats that you can't pay for'.

Last year Chairman Starmer allayed the Lord Alli scandal by declaring that he and his Cabinet would no longer be accepting free clothes.  This prompted Kuenssberg to ask Reeves: "Why are free clothes a no-no, but free concert tickets is a yes please?"

While Kuenssberg didn't press Reeves too hard, she did enough to make the Chancellor squirm and stutter, with the use of 'er' and 'erm' deployed 15 times during her very uncomfortable answer.  Watch the excruciating clip below.

BOATWATCH #2

The curious lull in crossings continued into last week, but from Wednesday they resumed again with 20 crossings in four days.  On Friday an unnamed Home Office spokesperson said: "We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.  The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay.  We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice."

You can say you what you like, but we won't hold our breath.

Total = 1,117 (up 619 from previous seven day period).

RAYNER THE RECEIVER

Angela Rayner meets her Vietnamese counterpart

The first instinct when one sees the above image is to assume that the portrait has been edited in to poke fun at the rampant narcissism of our ruling elite.  But no, this really happened.  Problem is, that it did not happen quite the way it has been claimed online by many social media users.

Contrary to such claims, Ange did not give a portrait of herself to the deputy PM of Vietnam.  She was actually the recipient of the portrait from Nguyễn Hoà Bình, who represents the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam.  A gallery of images from the meeting can be found on the Vietnam News Agency here where it is clearly stated that the portrait was a gift to Rayner, not the other way around.

It's a shame, because the thought of Rayner having presented a portrait of herself would have been a gift... to us.  There's still plenty of scope for fun, so watch this space and look out for Meme Monday.

And what is it with the colour green, Ange?  Surely a colour matching your hair colour would have been more appropriate for a meeting with fellow socialists!

COUNCIL BY-ELECTIONS 20.03.25

This week there were four by-elections - two in England and two in Glasgow - plus the curious case of the City of London (see below).

Labour fought three of the by-elections, with their vote share down in all of them.  They lost two seats to the SNP in Glasgow, which will be a blow to them given the SNP's overall struggles recently.  In the Lincolnshire district of South Kesteven both Labour and the Tories suffered a large swing to Reform UK, who were just 23 votes shy of victory.  Reform's electoral prowess appears to be rising above the ongoing Lowe-Farage row.

City of London Corporation elections

The City of London Corporation held its all out elections on Thursday.  As the name suggests, this is a somewhat unique organisation as local councils go.  For starters they don't hold their elections in May along with everyone else!  The Corporation runs 25 wards in central London, with a total population of less than 10,000.  Despite this tiny sum of residents, there are a whopping 100 councillors returned across the 25 wards, with as many as six candidates elected in some.  It's a fairly uninteresting affair with regards to party politics as the ballot papers are overwhelmingly dominated by independents and some wards do not even get a vote because there is only one candidate.

The only major political party that puts forward candidates in the City of London is Labour, although they only contest a small number of wards.  They won five seats in the 2022 elections and seven this time around.  However, that net gain of two should not be seen as any particular electoral success.  Two of those seats were in Cripplegate ward, which returns five councillors and there were only five candidates to choose from, so the Labour pair could not lose.  They also won three seats in Aldersgate ward, which returns six councillors with only seven candidates to choose from, so Labour were guaranteed at least two seats there also.

The full results of these elections can be found on the council website here.

North East, Glasgow City Council

(first preference votes)

SNP: 689 (34.5%) +2.3%

Lab: 573 (28.7%) -5.6%

Ref: 472 (23.6%) +5.3%

Con: 81 (4.1%) -1.3%

Grn: 70 (3.5%) -0.7%

TUS: 52 (2.6%) -1.1%

LDm: 37 (1.9%) -0.1%

UKIP: 24 (1.2%) New

SNP GAIN from Lab

Southside Central, Glasgow City Council

(first preference votes)

SNP: 1,126 (30.0%) -4.2%

Lab: 1,027 (27.4%) -4.1%

Grn: 805 (21.5%) +3.4%

SSP: 271 (7.2%) +5.2%

Ref: 222 (5.9%) New

LDm: 155 (4.1%) +2.7%

Con: 102 (2.7%) -1.4%

UKIP: 41 (1.1%) New

SNP GAIN from Lab

Holmwoods & Beare Green, Mole Valley District Council

LDm: 748 (46.5%) +1.1%

Con: 437 (27.2%) -2.8%

Ref: 348 (21.6%) +11.5%

Grn: 76 (4.7%) -3.6%

LDm HOLD

Bracebridge Heath, North Kesteven District Council

Con: 308 (33.3%) -24.6%

Ref: 286 (30.9%) New

Ind: 153 (16.5%) New

Lab: 99 (10.7%) -31.4%

Grn: 43 (4.6%) New

LDm: 36 (3.9%) New

Con HOLD

Abbreviations

SNP = Scottish National Party

Lab = Labour

Ref = Reform UK

Con = Conservative

Grn = Green

TUS = Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition

LDm = Liberal Democrat

UKIP = United Kingdom Independence Party

SSP = Scottish Socialist Party

Ind = Independent

WOKE WEDNESDAYS #22

When it comes to live action depictions of Superman, the names Christopher Reeve and Henry Cavill generally spring to mind first.  However, the DC Comics legend has been portrayed by many others over the years - on big and small screen.  The 1990s was a decade that passed by without a Superman film, but on TV screens the Man of Steel was very much still going strong in the form of Dean Cain's portrayal in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

The show ran for four series and despite Cain's popularity in the role, his career did not take the same upward trajectory as that of his Lois Lane co-star Teri Hatcher.  Cain remained largely stuck to the small screen, with a career tailing off into TV films and low budget affairs, albeit he was never short of work.  This diminishing return appears largely due to the fact that in 2016 he made the bold move of publicly endorsing Donald Trump for US president.

Republicans are frowned upon in acting circles, and very few actors have gone on to have successful careers once they have espoused conservative views.  In a profession dominated by left-wingers and Democrats, known Republicans are marginalised and quite often mocked and smeared by the similarly leftist-dominated mass media.  Dean Cain was cast just once in 2017 and has only appeared twice on TV in the last nine years.  However, he opted to double and then triple down on his support for the Donald, endorsing both his 2020 re-election campaign and his successful 2024 run.  Cain is also unashamedly Christian, making him doubly ostracised in acting circles.

Despite all the rampant discrimination, Cain remains a popular dude and has more than 850,000 followers on X, where he regularly shares conservative content.  It was also on X - then Twitter - that he delivered an epic burn to a user that took exception to his declaration that trans figurehead Dylan Mulvaney and his male pal were not genuine females.  "You were never Superman either", the user remarked, to which Cain replied: "Correct, I pretended".

Perfection.

Last week's trans Doctor Who meme generated 16 comments and 12 shares on Facebook, despite our collapse in distribution last week.

TOON TUESDAY #49

The left continue to melt down over the Trump administration continuing to do what it was elected to.  The lunatic fringe have turned their sights on Elon Musk's motor company Tesla, with forecourts and cars being torched.  Conservative artists on X were among those pointing out the hypocrisies of the mob...

Jimbob on X

Tom Stiglich on X

Tom Stiglich on X

SKS Cartoons on X

British newspaper cartoonists have very much been focused on Keir Starmer's own Elon Musk-inspired antics, with proposals to slash the benefits wage bill top of the agenda.  That's a story that will rumble on and we'll likely cover it next week.  Meanwhile, here are a handful of Labour-oriented efforts, including a subtle reference to the Speaker of the Commons aka 'Long-Haul Lindsay'...

Patrick Blower for The Daily Telegraph

Patrick Blower for The Daily Telegraph

Nick Newman for The Sunday Times