UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Filuwaúrdjan]

One thing to note don't really know what the impact of the changes wrought by the pandemic will be on turnout patterns (and I mean partisan turnout patterns as much as overall), but it's certainly always been a possibility that the answer would be 'bad for Labour'.

Assuming a loss, I'll make another observation: there's an element of classic Labour Party path dependency here, a series of poor decisions compounding each other. Because while it is true that rushing the by-election was a mistake and while it is true that a single candidate shortlist was an error (not even because a 'better' candidate might have been found, but because road-testing is useful!), it is also true that Hill should never have been allowed to run again. Lessons need to be learned here, but question, of course, is whether the Labour Party is even capable of that.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

An interesting detail is that the 'Sam' in the name of the independent 'Sam Lee' who took nearly ten percent is short for Samantha: she's a local businesswoman. I will admit that when I heard there would be a by-election here I assumed, given the reasons, the Labour shortlist would be AWS.

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Ugh, that is probably the most depressing by-election result ever.

Its so bad its almost funny. Shades of Bradford West in 2012, even.

Funny you should say that as though there are many (many!) differences there are a few things in common.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And my my they've deliberately shaped some very odd categories in order to make sure that certain logical combinations are not made to better produce the headline-grabbing finding!

There isn't a quick fix or one weird trick that will make everything ok again, but I can't help thinking that a big part of it is that the tories are able to run against their own incompetence, that the media let them get away with projecting that they're a new government every time they change leader and not a party that's been in power since 2010.

The electorate does not pay much attention to politics outsides elections, and this is doubly true if you're the opposition and the other party have an 80 seat majority, so to have a hope of anything cutting through you have to a disciplined message which you repeat over and over, and not picking one thing (like statutory sick pay) has probably been the biggest failing of the leadership so far. The election is still 3 years off though, there's still time, and a good start would be making every member of the shadow cabinet crowbar the phrase '11 years of tory government' into every interview they do.

Yes this is very true. And this latter issue has been a weakness of all three recent Labour opposition leaders. A silver lining is that because Starmer is really not that well known as a public figure, if he tries he shouldn't find it hard to leave any vague impressions of vacillation behind him. As a more normal political atmosphere emerges with the winding down of the emergency the case for this as a priority is pretty overwhelming.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, that near ten per cent for a female Labour-ish independent is the tell isn't it? In the end it is hard not to suspect that the circumstances of the by-election ended up mattering more than anticipated.

Williams though is a perfect example - like Imran Hussain - of a candidate who is a sound and reasonable choice as a General Election candidate but turns out to be really, really bad as a by-election one. It is a surprisingly common phenomenon and there should be some quiet, careful research into it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In Oxfordshire at least there is also huge controversy over planning issues! These things matter in local politics.

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The were local elections for the new Buckinghamshire unitary on Thursday: the Conservatives led in every ward and won all but one seat. I imagine the government will want this one done fairly soon to capitalise on the present climate - there are local issues that could cause trouble and that's more likely to be a risk if things are sliding generally. Labour won't bother much here, the LibDems will but so will, I suspect, the Greens.

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I suspect that the Greens may fight quite hard for second here (at least in intent: I make no predictions as to how it would work out) given the salience of HS2 locally.

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And as we know from Tony Blair in Beaconsfield, remember how no-hope byelections can be treated as practice runs for future luminaries.

The present Shadow Chancellor lost her deposit as a Labour candidate in a by-election with a big LibDem surge.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There is also a big local issue of the sort that lends itself quite nicely to a one-off kick against the government from people who basically support it in broad terms. But, again, this is not a prediction.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I’m sure the result being due to a backlash over HS2 and the new planning laws won’t prevent parts of the media trying to crowbar in the old ‘Tories under threat in their heartland due to Brexit and socially liberal internationalist (lol) voters leaving the party’ narrative.

Doubtless we will have claims of rEalIGnMenT... as if British politics were about to become a contest between the Tories and the LibDems, lmao. People always read too much into by-elections. They are honestly rather stupid things.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

lmao

I suppose we've been overdue this sort of classic Liberal by-election upset and, as noted above, there were some excellent local issues to work with. Presumably there will be some frothing and indignation on the government backbenches which may or may not have consequences.

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It would be nice it brainless and unfunny sh!tposting could be kept out of what has traditionally been a high-quality board.

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Did it really boil down to "NIMBYism" or is there subtler stuff going on locally in Buckinghamshire as well? I wasn't really following this one until seeing the (hilarious) result.

Opposition to 'Big Train Go Choo Choo' and to some proposed (actually quite minor and generally oversold) changes to planning laws were clearly foundational to what just happened, but the thing about a classic Liberal by-election upset is that a remarkable range of other grumbles will doubtless have been uncovered and exploited, whether exactly relevant or not. They are good at that.*

It is also clear that the Conservatives were complacent and didn't really expect to be put under any pressure - which is often disastrous because there comes a point when you do notice and then you start to panic and then people locally notice and this actually only encourages things.

It may also be the case that the strategy the Conservative Party has adopted since May took over - to move away from the narrow but tight electoral 'coalition' that Cameron developed towards a broad but loose one better able to win large parliamentary majorities - increased the risk factors. Broadly speaking this government looks to the interests of the median voter in this constituency, yes, but they don't feel as if they're being pandered to. There are, it turns out, risks to the broad-but-loose approach. If it the by-election does turn out to mean anything it will be because of internal Conservative Party ructions as a result of this.

People suggesting that this represents gLobAL tRenDs or vAluEs and so on are being rather silly, of course. This is a very, very right-wing part of the world, deeply conservative in a true sense, absolutely not 'progressive', and the LibDems (very sensibly!) ran what was an objectively right-wing campaign, even if the tone was (it always is) wrapped up with a yellow smiley face.

_{*And it is the main reason why activists from other parties hate them.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is of course entirely possible that the fallout from this result makes a Labour loss in B&S less likely. At the very least, had they remotely foreseen this possibility the Tories might well have tried to ensure both contests were held on the same day.

Labour's basic problem in that constituency is (and was back in the 80s and 90s as you don't need to be told but others won't be aware) that it is nastily polarised in a really weird and unhealthy way, and so just as any trouble in the eastern half of it makes winning it all the trickier, any drop in enthusiasm at the western end would turn the other way.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Two other points for the moment. The first is that one thing this amusing result does remind us of is that the salient fact of politics in our age is that the concept of a 'safe seat' is redundant. Such things no longer exist. Most of the electorate is loyal to no one one and support is conditional and always open to review at very short notice.

The second is that by-elections are fundamentally meaningless events - note when they go the way the observer wants they portend major things, but when they do not then, well, here is a list of excuses to read out in a dull tone of voice. They pretty much never signposts or portents. However, they can matter when they cause politicians to react, to do things that they would otherwise not have done. The most consequential by-election since something approaching universal suffrage was Newport 1922 - not because it pointed to any sort of future (it most certainly did not), but because it gave Conservative backbenchers an excuse to end the Coalition and bring down Lloyd George. Similarly, Orpington mattered because it caused panic in the Conservative Party not because it portended a great wave of orange across middle class suburbia. The latter, after all, did not happen.

In other words, if this by-election turns out to matter it would be as another step on the ladder that marks the Resistible Rise of Rishi Sunak or some other ambitious member of the cabinet who knows how to work the Parliamentary Tea Rooms.

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That's in general territory of what GE '19 would have looked like there without the right-wing independent standing of course.* Whether that is a sign for or against accuracy is a debatable point. And the usual comments about constituency polling and by-election polling apply (with the extra point that when they're off you don't generally even know in what direction). But if at all accurate this would indicate a competitive election.

_{*While 'add the Brexit Party vote to the Tory vote' is, in most constituencies, pretty questionable, the sort of local grouping who are very clearly pulling from one side of things would be a different story.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

As an aside it is an odd thing that all three English by-elections so far have/are happened/happening in constituencies right at the top of the defending party's theoretical 'actually this would not be ideal' lists - and for different reasons in all cases.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Fun fact: the Labour Party has only made one gain in a by-election in the 21st century (Corby in 2012).

In general, the party has had bad luck in what seats have come up; but it's been a very poor record - even in the Miliband era you had herculean efforts to win seats like Heywood and Middleton etc. The rot has been settling in, and sadly it's bigger than Corbyn and Starmer.

Maybe this matters, maybe this doesn't: after all the Lib Dems have a history of patting themselves on their back and then flopping in the real election (before Chesham we have Eastleigh and Richmond Park, both of which were washed away in the very next election). But the fact is we have a repeated event of Labour desperately trying to stop losses from opposition, even in times of unpopular governments. Peterborough. Hartlepool. Stoke Central. Copeland.

Yes, I think we've reached the stage where we can say with confidence that Labour struggles with by-elections pretty much full stop. There are exceptions here, there are exceptions there, but the general picture is what it is. And if this fact can be acknowledged we can maybe try to ponder why this might be: beyond train-wreck campaigns and poor candidates (which have only applied in some cases), the big issue seems to be a basic inability to turn existing voters out or to drum up enthusiasm amongst new ones. Labour's by-election campaigns tend to have the same basic tone and tenor (one that has not shifted through successive leaderships) and the electorate mostly seems to find it boring.

It is, incidentally, an open secret that Labour's default strategy when defending seats in by-elections for a long time has been to set a particular 'target' in terms of raw votes (exactly what this is depends on the size of the constituency, but it is usually around about 12,000 or so) and to hope that a) they manage to do this and that b) the challenging party - if there is one - is unable to breach the dike. It is a very conservative strategy and I would suggest probably not successful enough in general to be the only option considered, as for years it often has been.

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The Labour Party has always been basically hostile to private developers - even if ahem individual Labour administrations at various lower levels of government have not always been - for ideological reasons and tends to be protective of any vestigial legacies of the Attlee government, such as the national planning apparatus and the Green Belts.

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'The Muslim Community' is far from monolithic if it even really exists as a coherent social entity at all. There are major divisions (and they're growing) in terms of levels of integration, in terms of observance, in terms of the nature of observance and so on, and there are ethnic/linguistic divisions. In this constituency, for instance, there are two distinct populations, one from the Mirpur district in Pakistani Kashmir, and one mostly from Gujarat - I believe mostly from the countryside around Surat. Social attitudes and political preferences/priorities are far from uniform and in generally are only getting less so - the striking electoral consolidation at the last GE was very unusual and was triggered by some very specific factors, most of which are either not relevant already or appear to be dormant.

Anyway, there have been strong and credible rumours of... this sort of thing... for some time, so this extremely grim event does not come as a great surprise, as sickening as it is.

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For those new to such things, this is what Galloway does. He is a demagogue in an extremely classic sense and his principle electoral weapon is his shameless love of slurs, smears, lies and vicious innuendo against his political opponents, quite often spread in ways that are hard to trace. He wakes up dormant unpleasantness, ugly sentiment and festering divisions and he feeds off them. He knows exactly what he is doing and he isn't half bad at it. It could be said that it is a mercy that his target audience is so limited, but it could also be observed that maybe he is a mirror for broader campaigns waged by others at certain times to a larger audience.

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I never trust sources.

Often sensible. Particularly when - as in this case - the place in question is so demographically and geographically polarised that in practice it would be very hard to get a sure sense of anything, even with lots of information...

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If it's very, very tight then while you might be able to tell if you were there in person, it would be next to impossible from television footage.

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A bundle check is when they make sure that none of the bundles of ballots (you will note that they are all neatly tied together like legal documents) are in the wrong place. It is not the same as a recount, which when all of the individual ballots are counted again. There can be full recounts (the whole constituency) or partial ones (a particular group of ballots).