What is the most left-wing European city?

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From what city size?

Leipzig? Bremen, and other German cities have a strong left tradition. Some cities in France are controlled by commies. Liverpool votes labour in Stalinist margins.

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There's possibly a case for arguing that Glasgow is even more left-wing than Liverpool - in a lot of places the SNP can't be treated as a straightforward left-of-centre vote, but it's hard to argue for anything else in Glasgow.

I mean, the presence alone of Rangers Football Club is a pretty good counter argument to Glasgow being more leftwing than Liverpool...

The hardcore come from around Glasgow and the coast. Everton had quite a nasty following back in the days so...

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There's possibly a case for arguing that Glasgow is even more left-wing than Liverpool - in a lot of places the SNP can't be treated as a straightforward left-of-centre vote, but it's hard to argue for anything else in Glasgow.

I mean, the presence alone of Rangers Football Club is a pretty good counter argument to Glasgow being more leftwing than Liverpool...

The hardcore come from around Glasgow and the coast. Everton had quite a nasty following back in the days so...

I know Rangers have big implantation in Ayshire but they also have a big local following in traditional Protestant districts of Glasgow, in the south  (trace a line from govan hill to the bottom of the city limits). That coincidentally have high Tory numbers...and also go into some rangers supporting pubs in Glasgow with some nice mural-like red hands with UVF stuff and RAF symbols...you'd never see anything like that in Liverpool

Not saying they are plurality in the city. But in general Glasgow has a right wing element you wouldn't see in a city like Liverpool. I have never heard of these right wing evertonians though and am intrigued.

Not sure which (Black) player it was, but in his autobiography he wrote about how Goodison was the nastiest ground he’s been to in the top flight. I believe him, the Gwladys end terrace was so white back then you would have thought it was the Shed End. Though tbf NF were all over back then, I remember small packs of them even at the lane.

I suppose a lot of them left Liverpool proper to what is now Liverpool city region.

I’m also not sure IRA flags makes you left wing rather than a bellend. Govan hill and the area has 20% Tory voting. Anyway I don’t think Glasgow is that left wing, simply poor and anti Tory (or the new English Tory), but it’s not Rangers that makes them less left wing.

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Funny thing about Liverpool is that it used to be (a long time ago) a Tory stronghold; they had the upper hand in the city from the mid 19th century pretty much all the way up until 1945 and even in that year they still held onto a few seats in the city, including constituencies that are now overwhelmingly Labour. Indeed, as far as I’m aware, they pretty much swept the board in the city in almost every election from 1885 to the 1920’s (with the exception of Liverpool Scotland, which amusingly enough was represented by an Irish Nationalist who had previously been elected in Galway).

Back to the question in hand, I’d certainly say that Liverpool is hands down the most Labour city in the UK, by a country mile. Whether or not it’s the most ‘left wing’ is, I guess, more of a subjective judgement. A lot of the towns with big student and ‘alternative’ populations, like Bristol, are pretty left wing these days and return Labour MP’s by big margins but that’s, generally speaking, a much more recent state of affairs than it is for Liverpool (whilst Liverpool was shifting to Labour in the 1980’s, Bristol went the other way and kicked Tony Benn out of the Commons in 1983). Of course, for towns like Bristol there’s a big image vs reality gap between the perception of them as left-wing hotspots and the reality on the ground.

It was a direct response to the Irish Nationalist being strong there and even having an MP. Changed with the population changing.

Funny enough Liverpool is one of the only places the old Liberal Party still operates

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The thing is, most football fan cultures in Britain are not remotely political. Originally, people supported their local club (and often that was a pretty broad definition of local - c.f. all those Liverpool, Everton and Manchester City fans in North Wales - and often that was local clubs plural: almost all bitter local rivalries date to no earlier than the 1970s), and as the twentieth century wore on and the nineteenth century social geography that this was based on began to fade away, this started shifting towards family tradition.* Political considerations were (and are) basically never a factor, with the famous Glaswegian exception, which had rather more to do with 1690 than 1917.

Ultras culture is a different thing, but a) it is tiny and not representative of anything other than itself and b) frankly they're all just a bunch of tiresome, middle class LARPers and I would take their so-called 'politics' about as seriously as their protestations to be in any sense 'working class' or their knowledge of football as, you know, an actual sport. It is a consumer identity that they've bought and paid for, no more, no less. Of course, the maliciously-minded could note that this is increasingly true of a lot of our inherited political labels.

_{*I was not born in Co. Durham, but nevertheless have been a Sunderland supporter since childhood. A statement that increasingly comes across as a plea for sympathy and understanding, I admit.}

Spurs\Woolwich aside dating to the 20's, local rivalries weren't common because traveling away support was nearly impossible before the 60's. Once it became possible and accessible things escalated quickly. I saw a piece about an Everton firm going into the Shelf with batons in 1967. Woolwich winning the league at Spurs in 1971 was already accompanied with mass brawls all over Tottenham High Road. But the rise of hooliganism came joined with the hard mod scene turning into the skinhead scene, a definite post-war phenomenon.

NF tried to infiltrate most firms in the late 70's, but they were some that were more prone. Chelsea was a hotbed, and right wing extremism in West London and Surrey is going back to the interwar period. 

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If you mean right-wing in the economic sense then no, Rangers fans are not right-wing. Even in polling before the 2014 referendum IIRC, both Celtic and Rangers fans had more Yes than No supporters in correlation with their working class and generally Scottish base (No support was higher amongst those who were fans of other clubs or didn't really care for football that much)

There' a great degree of 'performance' amongst fans related to symbolism (Union Jack v Tricolour, Israel v Palestine) that often makes little sense to all but vocal and often unpopular fans in their fan base, but I don't think that translates into anything meaningful politically in Glasgow.

I get knots in my stomach 'defending' Huns but I have to in this instance

My dad's side of the family are all working class Glasgow/Ayrshire Labour-to-now rabid SNP voters, and mostly Rangers fans. When the Old Firm rolls around I see the most ridiculous nonsense on Facebook from them with the Queen and union flag everywhere. A flag they want indy from! It's honestly bizarre, like football causes sectarian brain worms in people up there.

As for Everton fans, my sister's partner is one and a full on Corbynite, as is the rest of his Liverpudlian family. Nothing winds him up more than people assuming that Everton is the "Tory club" in Liverpool because they play in blue.

NF tried to infiltrate most firms in the late 70's, but they were some that were more prone. Chelsea was a hotbed, and right wing extremism in West London and Surrey is going back to the interwar period.

When my dad moved to London in the early 80s he would go to Arsenal and Tottenham games on alternating weekends, but stuck with Spurs because the National Front had the least presence there of any London club (for obvious reasons).

NF never caught on with spurs and woolwich. Both had big Jewish following and black following as well (the latter more than the former). There was also bad blood as Spurs gave some of the NF big ones a battering in an away fixture at the old den. Chelsea had it worst. The only white team in London, and Blair Peach is lying in a grave were common chants by both their firm and old supporters

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If you mean right-wing in the economic sense then no, Rangers fans are not right-wing. Even in polling before the 2014 referendum IIRC, both Celtic and Rangers fans had more Yes than No supporters in correlation with their working class and generally Scottish base (No support was higher amongst those who were fans of other clubs or didn't really care for football that much)

There' a great degree of 'performance' amongst fans related to symbolism (Union Jack v Tricolour, Israel v Palestine) that often makes little sense to all but vocal and often unpopular fans in their fan base, but I don't think that translates into anything meaningful politically in Glasgow.

I get knots in my stomach 'defending' Huns but I have to in this instance

My dad's side of the family are all working class Glasgow/Ayrshire Labour-to-now rabid SNP voters, and mostly Rangers fans. When the Old Firm rolls around I see the most ridiculous nonsense on Facebook from them with the Queen and union flag everywhere. A flag they want indy from! It's honestly bizarre, like football causes sectarian brain worms in people up there.

As for Everton fans, my sister's partner is one and a full on Corbynite, as is the rest of his Liverpudlian family. Nothing winds him up more than people assuming that Everton is the "Tory club" in Liverpool because they play in blue.

NF tried to infiltrate most firms in the late 70's, but they were some that were more prone. Chelsea was a hotbed, and right wing extremism in West London and Surrey is going back to the interwar period.

When my dad moved to London in the early 80s he would go to Arsenal and Tottenham games on alternating weekends, but stuck with Spurs because the National Front had the least presence there of any London club (for obvious reasons).

This is all genuinely interesting.

I've followed Liverpool in the EPL for a while, but I've never heard of Everton being accused of being a "Tory" club. My impression was that they're both equally working-class in their fan bases, more or less. And more working-class than Chelsea or Arsenal fanbases.

And I do get the impression that a lot of the Old Firm shenanigans is mainly performative, at least from what I gathered from Scots I know. 

Celtic FC fandom in the US especially is really hilarious to me since it manages to attract truly odd collections of people. Lots of right-wing Irish Americans will wear their jerseys and respect them out of "ancestral pride," while some edgy leftists really like them for the pro-Palestine slant.

I've heard from scousers before that Everton was actually considered the catholic club of the city once while Liverpool were the protestant, and then it changed. odd indeed.

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Though the Orange parades in Liverpool may have been the last ones extant in England.

Would they have thrived so long without a proud Irish community to stick it to? Sometimes this conflict spiral on from pure inertia. I doubt 90% of Rangers and Celtic supporters still really care about Ulster, but inertia keeps it going. Rangers singing Rule Britannia years after English supporters stopped and a lot are SNP voters. add to the mix the Tartan army which is mostly highlanders are not Celtic\Rangers supporters and Scotland is one weird place to live in.

Football makes you act strangely.