UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[JimJamUK]

LOL Boris Johnson.

BUT… Bring Back Boris?!?!

[JimJamUK]

At the moment there is some (probably baseless) speculation that he will contest Mid Beds. In his statement he does say that he's leaving Parliament "at least for now".

I feel like there’s a non-negligible possibility he contests the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election to ‘prove’ his popularity.

[JimJamUK]

Can someone smarter than me do an idiots guide re the political geography of each seat?

Selby and Ainsty - Rural North Yorkshire, to the east of Leeds. The Conservatives will have won everything in 2019, but in the forthcoming by-election Labour will do best in Selby itself along with a few other forming mining villages nearby and on the western border of the constituency. Against that, the Tories will still do well in the wealthy rural parts of the constituency, especially in the Ainsty area which is very North Yorkshire.

Mid Bedfordshire - Rural Bedfordshire, in-between Bedford and Luton. Hard to say really, the Lib Dems are competitive in the wards near Bedford, but it’s otherwise really quite a homogenous constituency consisting of mostly well off villages and the Tories will have been far ahead at the last general election everywhere.

Uxbridge and South Ruislip - Outer west London. Labour are strongest in Yiewsley and Uxbridge itself (more working class and a modest number of students), Hillingdon is comfortably Conservative (but pretty representative so will probably be Labour at the by-election), while southern Ruislip is the most Conservative part (more middle class and noticeably whiter).

[JimJamUK]

Lib Dems gonna Lib Dem.

https://twitter.com/feedthedrummer/status/1667988259278815233?s=61&t=I1DE8_c...

[JimJamUK]

Nigel Adams is now Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, and Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, so Selby & Ainsty and Uxbridge & South Ruislip are officially vacant.  For now, Nadine Dorries is officially still an MP.

Candidate announcements are beginning to trickle in.  Reclaim and Reform UK have announced a pact regarding Mid Beds and Uxbridge & SR, with Laurence Fox being the Reclaim candidate in the latter.

What a game changer.

[JimJamUK]

Have the Yorkshire Party clarified what happened in Selby?

As far as I can tell, no. They had a piece about their candidate published yesterday before the statement of persons nominated was published, but nothings been said about why he is now listed as an independent.

[JimJamUK]

Labour commissioned poll showing them with a narrow lead in Mid Bedfordshire. The figures don’t look preposterous, but it was obviously released to create a narrative of Labour leading but narrowly enough that anti-Tory voters need to get behind them. The independent vote is interesting.

LAB: 28% (+6)
CON: 24% (-39)
Mackey: 19%
LDM: 15% (+2)
REF: 10%

[JimJamUK]

The other genre of safe (?) tory seats in this election may be Scotland: assuming the SNP has not recovered they may be too wounded to regain the borders seats/moray.

The fact both the SNP and Tories have taken a big hit makes it difficult to tell what will happen in their Scottish marginals. In both cases they’re largely losing to Labour but it will presumably be weaker in these seats (‘vote Labour, get the Tories’ or ‘we are the clear unionist choice here’). It really depends whose lost votes are more salvageable and whether there’s much direct switching between the Tories and SNP in places where there has obviously been a lot in the past.

[JimJamUK]

If the conversation unironically becomes "The problem with Labour is although they appeal in the northern heartlands they're clearly struggling in metro London" that would be pretty hilarious denouement to Red Wall discours.

The funny thing is, that WAS the narrative quite a lot of the time from the 1980s onwards. Under Thatcher Labour was too focused on deindustrialisation and not enough on the aspirational working class in outer London and surrounds. In 2015 especially there was talk about Labour retreating to its core working class vote while the gentrifying parts of London were trending Conservative.

In relative terms, it is currently undoubtably true that Labour IS ‘struggling’ in metropolitan London. They’re getting relatively low swings among remainers, young people, ethnic minorities etc, in part because of their chosen strategy, in part because they’re losing a few to the Greens, but also because there’s simply not that many Conservative voters in these demographics left to switch.

[JimJamUK]

The Sun are claiming that the Tories are on only 11% in Mid Bedfordshire. Digging into the article it’s actually 11% of people “definitely plan to vote Tory”, but that’s presumably still pretty abysmal.

[JimJamUK]

Somerton and Frome is probably the by-election with the greatest uncertainly around the margin (not the actual winner of course). It seems to have gone under the radar compared to the previous 3 Tory-Lib Dem by elections and there’s a few indications that the Lib Dem might not do as well as you might expect given the national situation. Although now that I’ve said this they’ll probably blow the Tories out the water.

[JimJamUK]

What stands out to me is how volatile and unattached voters are. The Uxbridge result saw the minors parties squeezed into complete irrelevance while the Conservatives were able to narrowly hold on despite the national environment because of disciplined campaigning against an unpopular mayor/policy. In Selby by contrast there was an even better swing than the national polls would suggest. The minor party vote was weak (except for the Greens, who had a geographic base that presumably was less targeted by Labour). In Somerton and Frome the Lib Dems did their usual by-election thing and won the protest/anti-Conservative vote. The Labour vote went to pot despite national opinion polls, but the Greens actually put in a very strong performance which is very unusual for them in the circumstances (this will have been helped by their popularity in Frome, but localised strength didn’t help in North Shropshire).

Looking at party performances overall:
Conservatives - Mostly poor of course but Uxbridge shows that voters are still willing to stick with them if attack Labour and make their policies unpopular enough.
Labour - Selby suggested the national polls are real, but Uxbridge suggests their vote is soft and Somerton and Frome that it is incredibly soft if the Lib Dem’s are seen as the tactical choice (how this works out in somewhere less clearly cut, we’ll see).
Lib Dems - Very good night in Somerton and Frome, otherwise pretty poor in the other 2 where they weren’t in contention. As mentioned in Labour, there’s still a big question of what happens in places where both major parties are competitive/people look to the national picture, as the tactical squeeze could damage both (and see the Conservatives win through the middle).
Greens - Good night I think. Somerton and Frome their best ever by-election I believe, Selby also decent. Uxbridge more standard.
Reform - Another weak performance, they have some supporters but it’s hard to reconcile the results with the national opinion polls.
Everyone else - Mostly poor, Yorkshire Party did good given they forgot to include a description in Selby.

[JimJamUK]

The biggest losers are the labor environmentalist groups. ULEZs are a clear liability in outer London and Starmer will throw them under the bus if their policies are perceived as a electoral liability countrywide.

The environmental justification for ULEZ is exaggerated, schemes like it are being implemented because local government is broke (especially London) and they want to justify raising tax (or the Conservative government is forcing them to implement one). Neither side wants to admit this of course.

[JimJamUK]

The issue with ULEZ is that most local governments are running on shoestring budgets. I personally foresee many problems with this type of policy,  and know there are many better solutions for environmental urban transformation policy, most using the carrot rather than the stick. However,  for there to be expansions of public transport resources for example,  there needs to be a lot of money which there supposedly isn't. It's hopefully something Starmer recognizes and changes, especially with Nandy on board.

But until that point, local government has to realize that doing a transformational policy without providing any way to facilitateit, aka telling the voters to figure it out with the situation as is, is always going to make people very angry. Projects similar to ULEZ caused a Tory councilor to be elected in a by-election in Cambridge city of all places, and saw the Greens get entirely wiped out in Yorks 2023 elections. If you can't use the carrot,  maybe you shouldn't use so obvious of a stick.

The problem is that local governments think they can/should attempt to solve a wide array of problems despite only the national government presently having the ability to do so. Unless/until local government is much better funded and has greater freedom, they need to learn their place and understand that implementing half solutions that mainly involve the sticks is not going to end well or achieve the improvements they desire.

[JimJamUK]

https://twitter.com/BruneElections/status/1682197530153558019

Please can ElectionTwitter please stop pretending they understand British politics?

[JimJamUK]

I would go further than others. Labour shouldn’t just be winning this, they should be doing so comfortably if the polls are remotely accurate.

[JimJamUK]

Within more urbanized regions, there were also sectarian patterns to the votes of both parties, though this has faded quite rapidly in recent years.

ironically with the cultural Catholics/gene pool Catholics of Irish descent voting for the Scottish nationalists

Yeah, although Scottish Labour’s vote tends to be pretty flat across the sectarian divide these days*, it’s the Scottish Tories who vote looks a lot more Protestant.

*Which is not to say there aren’t stark patterns in specific councils and wards, there absolutely are.

[JimJamUK]

Southend is one of the southern towns and cities where Labour is surging

I was not aware that this was a thing -- what's the deal?

There are quite a few places in urban southern England with fairly average demographics where Labour have really underperformed since the 80s onwards. Just as the Conservatives have benefitted from depolarisation in the #RedWall, Labour can do so in these places as well. There’s also some that would be trending Labour in absence of other political change, as they become more popular with younger commuters and similar things.

[JimJamUK]

If it remains a three horse race then the Tories need to be on at least 30% or thereabouts, which is about where they've been in several recent by-elections in seats they've been defending, but unless they get a bit more than that they would need a very even split of the opposition vote between Labour and the Lib Dems.  If they got 38%, which is what they got in Tiverton & Honiton, then they'd have a decent chance.

If things remain as they are, I’d expect them to be on the lower end of that range. The cause of the by-election (and that it took so long) will hurt the Tories, as will the fact both opposition parties will be campaigning hard rather than just 1.

[JimJamUK]

Edit 2: indeed it did, so R&HW will be on 5 Oct and Mid Beds a week or too later. Apparently there are rumours that Pincher is going to resign rather than go through recall, so Tamworth and Mid Beds could be on the same day.

Not good news for Labour if so.

[JimJamUK]

In 1997 some more areas close to Lichfield were removed and the constituency was renamed Tamworth.  The by-election winner Brian Jenkins held it for Labour until he was beaten by Chris Pincher in 2010, since when it has swung heavily to the Tories, with their margins in 2015 and 2017 being bigger, and their margin in 2019 much bigger, than the ones they got in South East Staffordshire in 1983 and 1987.  That suggests that this is really a considerably harder gain than it was in 1996.

It’s very much emblematic of the traditional Midlands marginal that has zoomed rightwards post-Blair. There was a noticeably above average swing in 2010, the Conservative majority went up 11% in 2015 despite no swing nationally, and there was a further small swing to the Conservatives in 2017 despite them losing their Parliamentary majority.

That said, these sort of seats saw a gradual but by 2023 massive improvement for Labour compared to 2019, and Tamworth was a terrible Conservative performance even by 2023 standards.

[JimJamUK]

Eddie Hughes has said he will not seek the Tory nomination for Tamworth at the GE if their candidate wins the by-election. I can't imagine he is best pleased with this, nor are some others possibly.

He’s said he will do a chicken run to another seat if Tamworth becomes unavailable. Will there be an association left which can offer a seat seat and that actually wants him?

[JimJamUK]

What's the lowest winning vote share in any seat, including general elections, since universal suffrage?

Belfast South in 2015 was won by the SDLP with only 24.5%. I’m sure someone else knows a lower figure somewhere.

[JimJamUK]

The reform vote looks too high and I really doubt G*** M***er tiny party is going to get 4%.

Wait, what!?

Truly one of the most random ‘credible’ poll results I’ve ever seen.

[JimJamUK]

And Labour votes often actually split quite evenly between the Tories and SNP, sometimes even favouring the latter.  So I think the Tory floor will be higher than, say, the Labour floor in Con/LD contests in England, and I'm sceptical that Labour supporters will help the Tories much at all in SNP/Con contests.

And how and when you define ‘Tory voters’ can make a big difference as well. There were a few constituencies that turned out to be SNP/Tory marginals where the Labour vote was static or fell in 2017, but that likely reflected an unwind of Tory voters tactically going Labour in 2015. 2019 looks much clearer, with Labour voters going SNP and not too many to the Tories