UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[JimJamUK]

The Lib Dems are polling nationally at their 2019 general election, Labour are 8% up and the Conservatives are down 9%. In seats that are like T&H but haven’t had by-elections, we would expect Conservative wins with a plurality but perhaps not a majority of the vote, Labour a clear but distant 2nd, and the Lib Dem well behind in 3rd. The national tactical vote (people tactically voting Labour based on them being the main opposition nationally regardless of local conditions) means that places that do not feature a strong Lib Dem campaign will be basically UNS from 2019. The hope for the Lib Dems is that results like T&H show that the Labour/Green vote is very soft and where they are the clear and credible challengers to the Conservatives, it will very much not be UNS but instead a large amount of tactical voting for the Lib Dems. This happened in the past eg; 1997, but it looks like it will be even more concentrated this time.

[JimJamUK]

I don't know the numbers for Wakefield, but for T&H there were very few blank ballots--60 or so plus 50 overvotes.  There was some suggestion that angry Tories would vote blank, but they didn't.

If you’re pissed off enough to not be willing to vote for anybody else, then you almost certainly just stay home. This is especially true for by-elections.

[JimJamUK]

“The polls may suggest Boris Johnson is hideously unpopular, but here in a dinner 20 minutes out from Kyiv, he’s much more popular than he was even at the 2019 election. What are the polls missing?”

[JimJamUK]

The traditional thing after a big byelection upset is to project the results nationally as Peter Snow's "just a bit of fun" - Tiverton/Honiton would have an almost total Tory wipeout outside three areas:

1) a belt through Lincolnshire into Fenland;
2) a ring of seats immediately to the north of the W Midlands;
3) a clutch on both sides of the Thames Estuary (ie Essex and Kent)

This is maybe a pretty good guide to the seats they could reasonably expect to hold in a byelection right now - the last bastions of Johnsonism.

Seems telling that if the UK had a stronger far right populist party, these are presumably the kinds of seats they’d win. Goes to show what the Tories have increasingly become (hopefully to their ultimate detriment).

It’s certainly true that these would be among the best areas for a far right populist party, but I’m not sure it says too much about the current Conservative Party. They held many of these areas even in 1997 (or gained them back in 2001/2005), it’s more that Labour and the Lib Dems are just not an attractive option to these sorts of voters so they go Conservative by default even if not totally happily. Poorer agricultural areas and ‘White Van Man’ territory have had an almost uninterrupted trend to the Conservatives since the mid 20th century. Funnily enough, Dartford (35% Conservative majority) is the UK longest running bellweather since 1964. Would very likely vote Conservative in a by-election even now.

[JimJamUK]

But there has been a consistent refusal to accept this from senior people in the Conservative Party. It hasn't even entirely gone away post-Wakefield.

Just today, the Conservative supporting press are talking about Boris’ great (current) appeal and how this cannot he replicated by any potential leadership challengers. There seems to be a complete unwillingness among large sections of the commentariat to accept that not only was Boris never an electoral juggernaut during his leadership to begin with, but also that his popularity has crashed and he is now electoral poison to basically anybody who isn’t a dyed in the wool Conservative supporter. What’s the event that will make them realise he’s a liability, because they’re already well behind in the polls and losing by-elections on big swings, including now to Labour?

[JimJamUK]

At the 2019 election Labour won 52% to the Conservatives 36%. Even without the massive polling shift since then you would still expect an easy Labour hold.

Using the 2022 local election results as a guide, I would make the following observations:
Skelmersdale - Insanely Labour, the Conservatives did not breach 15% in any ward while Labour was mostly in the 80s. This is essentially working age working class Merseyside.
Mining villages - There are a couple of villages near Skelmersdale that had coal mining into the Interwar period. Up Holland is still fairly working class and votes comfortably Labour these days, while Bickerstaffe is more middle class and low density/agricultural with a very odd voting history (Lab gain in 2007, Con gain in 2011, Lab gain in 2015, and OWL gain in 2019).
Ormskirk - Labour battling it out with OWL (localists), this area used to have a substantial Conservative vote but that has melted away in recent local elections and it’s not all just went to OWL locally. Ormskirk has a university and is increasingly influenced by Merseyside which has helped it trend Labour.
Aughton - Neck and neck between Labour and the Conservatives. This area is part of the Ormskirk urban area and very close to Maghull in Merseyside. Largely middle class and with a big retired population, Labour weren’t even close under Miliband/Corbyn but did very well in May.
Burscough - Reasonably Labour leaning. Another commuter town, this one is a bit further out but still getting a bit better for Labour over the past decade.
Rural villages - Comfortably Conservative. There are a number of small villages to the north of Skelmersdale/Ormskirk in the constituency. The ones in the east are largely middle class commuters, while the ones in the west are more middling farming villages. Labour can produce freak surges in individual wards but I suspect in general elections these villages are all good for the Conservatives.

[JimJamUK]

Why would Burnham not just run for Leigh?

His successor Jo Platt who served as MP for 2 years is making a comeback and is already the candidate.

[JimJamUK]

Labour's shortlist for West Lancashire has been announced.

No explicit locals, though one was recently a councillor in Kirkby which borders the constituency.

Elected deputy leader in 2021, then lost her seat to an independent in May.

[JimJamUK]

I can understand why Sunak and co would want to avoid any byelections, but its not as if losing a few seats is going to rob the Tories of their majority and if the next election is as much as two years away its inevitable that there will be more byelections - not to mention local elections in May 2023 that will be a massive Tory shellacking - so why go to any extraordinary lengths to avoid a few more byelectuons?

I suppose it’s a mix of wanting to avoid any bad news that can be avoided and potentially concern that a few very bad by-elections would bring about an early challenge to Sunak’s leadership. It may be the view of the government that this winter is going to be awful politically but that things might be getting better by May 2023 (and it’s harder to chuck a leader the closer you get to an election).

[JimJamUK]

Think Chester might be the least covered Labour by election in recent years… no beef over the selection, no handwringing about a certain demographic, no worries about a protest vote and all just very calm.

Are you suggesting Rejoin EU might not pull off a shock gain?

[JimJamUK]

So, let's say Reform UK are really on 9% as in the most recent YouGov poll.  How would we expect them to do in Chester?

It's not an obviously favourable constituency for them: fairly educated and professional and clearly Remain voting.  Even so, if they're doing that well nationally oughtn't they to be saving their deposit?

Probably. They’re taking pretty much exclusively from the Conservatives rather than Labour. Given the Conservatives got 38% last time with the Brexit Party standing, you’d expect 7-8%, accounting for the estimated 54% remain vote perhaps 6-7%. Another way of looking at it is that the Brexit Party got 2.5% against a 2% national vote, which assuming they had stood in every seat would have got them 4-5% nationally, suggesting they’ll get 4-6%. Of course, it’s all a big hypothetical given they’re probably not actually on 9% and a lost deposit looks the most likely outcome.

[JimJamUK]

Chester is a fairly young and remain voting constituency with Labour already on almost 50%. If commentators are going to jump to conclusions about how it was an underwhelming result then that is probably an important bit of context (the other option is to not obsess over the exact swing given it’s a by-election).

[JimJamUK]

I don't know much about what sort of a place Chester and who lives there. How is it that it seems to have been a pretty solidly Tory seat up until 1997 and then only went back to the Tories in 2010 and then back to Labour in 2015 and has been trending Labour compared to the rest of the country ever since.

How do we explain this?

Take your pick from:
The area becoming part of the Liverpool commuter zone and voting more like it.
The growth of the University of Chester.
The short and long term movement of professional urban middle class voters to Labour.
The consolidation of students/young people as core voters of the Labour Party.
The estimated 54% remain vote in 2016.

[JimJamUK]

Seems to me the best explanation is that Labour was seen as an industrial party, and Chester was not so transformed by the industrial revolution even as it depended on the downstream effects of industry (similar to Blackpool, also Tory till 1997).

As with similar seaside towns, the hospitality industry was traditionally also monolithically pro-Tory.

Also, places like Blackpool used to be quite middle class, it’s only in the 2nd half of the 20th century that they began trending Labour because of the collapse of the British holiday industry leading to a great deal of deprivation, and even then places like Blackpool have been reasonably good for the Conservatives more recently thanks to Brexit and their growing (and increasingly Conservative) elderly population. It’s not a very good comparison to Chester imo.

[JimJamUK]

Will be interesting to see the minor party results. How much the SDP and Reform eat into the tory vote.

The former will do very little, the latter should be getting a few % if you believe the polls, I’m sceptical.

[JimJamUK]

There also seems to have been a change not just in demographics, but in the voting habits of longer term residents. Most notably, the 4 Urmston wards zoomed left in 2018. Local issues and potentially local elections previously lagging behind general election support may have played a part, but it’s clearly the sort of place that has a lot of people who voted Conservative under Cameron but not since.

[JimJamUK]

Labour and Greens will be moderately pleased.

Probably their best by-election result this Parliament, which given their vote went up 1.6% to 4.3%, is pretty faint praise. So far both the Greens and Reform look like paper tigers judging by the by-elections this Parliament, which will not be good news for them when we get the ‘national tactical vote’ squeeze on minor parties come the general election. The Greens can still hope for a by-election in a safe Labour seat where they have a local presence, I’m not sure where Reform would be able to position themselves as a serious challengers to the Tories?

[JimJamUK]

Somewhere safe enough that Labour are unlikely to seriously challenge and so Brexity that that is still a problem for the Lib Dems?  Gavin Williamson's seat might be a candidate, if he were to stand down for some reason.

Of course, we've already had a by-election this Parliament somewhere a bit like that (Old Bexley & Sidcup) and they only got 6.6%.

South Staffordshire is a good one, probably a few others in the West Midlands along with Essex and the rural East/East Midlands, but on current polling you’d imagine Labour would fancy their chances in a lot of pretty safe Leave voting seats, and if not the Lib Dems would be happy to rev up the by-election machine and milk local issues as was the case in North Shropshire. And if Reform were able to make a decent stab at a seat, then Labour or the Lib Dem’s would probably put in some effort to win it on a split right wing vote.

[JimJamUK]

FWIW the projected national share was 22% for UKIP in the 2013 local elections, but only 17% in 2014 despite the concurrent European elections. Their by-election performances were usually very good (Heywood and Middleton standing out as an almost ‘shock’ gain) but just weren’t in the right seats for a party with a fairly broad voter base on ~20% of the national vote.

[JimJamUK]

The UKIP surge was actually well under way in 2012, with them getting into double digits on a regular basis by the end of the year and scoring well at by-elections (12% in Middlesbrough, 15% in Corby and 22% in Rotherham). Personally I’m a believer in the theory (which I think George Osborne has also advanced) that one of the major triggers for the rise of UKIP wasn’t, in fact, Europe, but instead same-sex marriage, which was regularly in the headlines throughout 2012 and pissed off a lot of traditional Tory supporters. Obviously it wasn’t the only factor (2012 was probably the Coalition’s worst year, with it spinning its wheels in the mud amidst a stagnant economy and legislative failures), but I think it was a key factor that divided Cameron (and Miliband for that matter, although for him it was less of a problem) from a lot of ‘conservative with a small c’ older and middle aged voters for whom UKIP provided a convenient receptacle of protest (which of course was a role that the Lib Dem’s could no longer fulfil).

I’m sceptical. Gay marriage was never an issue that a large number of people cared out, and once you narrow it down to people both strongly against and who had voted Conservative in 2010 (less correlation than you might expect), you’re talking about a pretty small group. I can believe for that small group it might have worked as a signal that the Conservative Party was no longer conservative, but for the vast majority of switchers there were much more important issues at play (the EU, immigration, the economy, no Lib Dem/BNP protest option etc).

[JimJamUK]

Didn’t even see the Green result!

I assume it’s a case or wanting to punish the antics of the Conservatives locally and tbh nationally too.

Given how localised their support is to that ward and how it appeared completely out of nowhere in 2021, it looks more likely a case of the Greens getting their act together and properly targeting a ‘safe’ Conservative ward that Labour will leave alone. It’s actually a worse result for the Greens than they got in 2022 (perhaps the other councillor had a good personal vote, but they’d have hoped his work as an incumbent would get votes for the newly elected councillor as well).

[JimJamUK]

All true enough, but polls consistently have Greens and Reform doing decently... the latter aren't exactly lacking in hacked off Tories as a pool to fish in right now. And tbh the demographics of this one are arguably a bit more exploitable by a populist right outfit than the previous two NW byelections in recent months were.

The Brexit Party got 4.3% here last time, if they really were making an impact nationally you’d expect a bit more than a 0.1% increase in their vote. UKIP 2.0 the Reform Party do not seem to be.

[JimJamUK]

I hadn't realised quite how favourable to Labour those villages still are, given how full they are with the newbuilds that have proven poisonous to us in so many similar places.

I’m sceptical they do anywhere near as well in national elections as they do locally. Even assuming the 2 northern wards in Elmet and Rothwell constituency are completely dire for Labour, the 3 southern ones can only them give so many votes for the numbers to all add up, and I doubt Kippax and Methley is radically more Labour than its 2 neighbours (as you say, the new builds won’t be great for Labour). Obviously still better for Labour than nearly all of Selby and Ainsty of course.

Edit - Just had a look at at the 2004 boundary changes in the area, and golly, there must have been some housebuilding given how much the Kippax/Garforth wards shrank.

[JimJamUK]

Whats the calculus on who should challenge in Bedfordshire?

It seems to flip back and forth between Labour and the Lib Dems - presumably Starmer would leave it to Davey, and focus on the other two, especially given what an uphill fight it would be?

If the Lib Dems want to fight it, I imagine Labour will leave them be. The only way Labour are winning that is if the Lib Dems take a chunk out of the Tory vote, in which case they’re almost certainly taking a chunk out of Labour’s vote as well. Better to focus resources and expectations management on Reading West/Selby and Ainsty.

[JimJamUK]

Recall petition in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will see 7 signing sites, which is quite a large number for such an urban constituency. Will help it reach the 10% threshold needed to trigger a by-election.