UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[CumbrianLefty]

The Greens have withdrawn their candidate due to homophobic and sexist tweets he posted ten years ago, they probably don't have time to find a replacement before the deadline tomorrow. If so, good for Labour, might be worth an extra percentage point or two.
www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2021/06/06/green-party-to-replace-batley-and-spen-candidate/

I’d still expect they will find someone. In the seat I was working in in 2019 the Green candidate withdrew and endorsed us two days before any they still managed to find a replacement. The Green Party nationally is almost as hardline as the Lib Dem’s about standing everywhere irrespective of chance of keeping their deposit.

Though they have majorly upped GE candidate numbers in recent years, they left a significant number of seats uncontested last time even after the "remain alliance" deals with the LibDems/Nats.

[CumbrianLefty]

Attention recently has majored on B&S, but before that we have C&A this week - and the increasingly voluble whispers from there is that the Tories fear it could be too close for comfort. If not worse.

[CumbrianLefty]

I agree with all the above, but the signs were there even in their 2019 GE triumph that certain areas long safe for the Tories were less enamoured with Johnson than most.

One is reminded somewhat of the Witney byelection in 2016 - also held at a time when the Tories had high poll ratings and Labour not - and the swing there would be enough to turn this one yellow.

I will still believe a LibDem win if and when I see it, but how such a result will be covered by a media that may be becoming restless with seemingly unending Tory dominance is another interesting factor.

(dominance that they of course had a major part in creating, but lets not go into that now)

[CumbrianLefty]

MEME BE GONE

Is that the same "LibDem London Mayoral Candidate" who was in reality not merely removed from that position but actually expelled from the party, when her AS remarks were (re)discovered?

Sorry to spoil such a carefully crafted meme with facts etc etc

[CumbrianLefty]

To put this result in some further perspective - Chesham and Amersham is one of a select group of seats (maybe just half a dozen or so, though of course boundary changes muddy the picture in some cases) which has been over 50% Tory in every GE going back to at least 1979.

(indeed in C & A's case it started in Feb 1974, when the newly created seat first voted)

[CumbrianLefty]

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.

[CumbrianLefty]

It doesn't mean much but it's funny nonetheless:
Labour got fewer votes than they have members in this seat.

Very possible a majority of their members voted LibDem.

(as may also have happened in 2016 at Richmond Park)

[CumbrianLefty]

That poll apparently has Labour ahead before "likelihood to vote" is taken into account. Might not just the result in Chesham but the news from nearby Wakefield dampen Tory enthusiasm, I wonder.

[CumbrianLefty]

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.

Yes and we could soon have by elections in Delyn and Wakefield, both marginal seats that the Tories gained in 2019.

Could be a nice present for whoever Labour's new leader is

[CumbrianLefty]

Nothing is risk free, but given where the party will be if B&S is indeed lost many (including in the PLP) are going to see it as a risk worth taking. Its not about the polls, its not about any "vaccine boost" for the Tories, its about Starmer haplessly alienating almost every part of Labour's existing electoral coalition in the "fools gold" pursuit of "red wall" pensioners at literally any cost.

(who then - surprise! - turn out to be more fanatically pro-Tory than ever)

SKS's not being a "natural politician" was always a potential strength *and* weakness. To make it the former he needed to select a good team around him, it is surely indisputable that he totally has not.

[CumbrianLefty]

Starmer was in a strong position only six months ago, his only consistent internal opposition coming from the Very Online Left. Its the almost breathtaking succession of unforced errors since then that have left even many that were previously fully supportive in despair.

Almost nobody still thinks (to the extent that they ever did) that just changing the leader again will resolve Labour's long standing and intractable issues - not least the seemingly endemic factionalism -  but getting somebody in who basically understands not just the party but simply politics itself might at least stem the haemorrhaging of support even from groups that remained loyal under Corbyn.

[CumbrianLefty]

Why should Sir Keir Starmer have to resign because of two by-election losses? Labour leaders, back to Harold Wilson in the 1966-70 Parliament, have suffered numerous large by-election defeats without having to resign. The talent pool in the Parliamentary Labour Party seems very shallow at the moment, so I do not see how any possible replacement would be certain to be an improvement.

Between 1945 and 2016, there were just three Westminster byelection gains by the governing party - one of them was, ironically, the predecessor seat of Batley and Spen. Should that one go the way the latest poll predicts, that will be three in just four years - and two in a matter of months, with the same man in charge of the losing party on both occasions. That would be *totally* unprecedented.

And sandwiched between them a result that illustrates that Starmer can't even use "the Tories are currently a totally unstoppable electoral juggernaut" as an excuse - well it doesn't look good, does it?

[CumbrianLefty]

Peterborough is hardly the same as the others you mentioned tbf, that was a decent hold in any book.

And there could be two highly winnable (at least on paper) targets for Labour up soon......

[CumbrianLefty]

A factor in recent years, given the age polarisation that has occurred in the last decade, is likely that it is disproportionately older voters who turn out for them (more than at GEs, I mean) And of course this will benefit the right if so (I do wonder if the LibDems managed to buck this trend somewhat in C&A?)

[CumbrianLefty]

A rather serious claim was made yesterday - that an unnamed "senior Labour official" had basically smeared the entirety of Muslim voters in Batley and Spen as anti-Semitic, and claimed their main reason for being receptive to Galloway's blandishments was Starmer having a Jewish wife.

Now given the original source for this (one DPJ Hodges) its veracity should certainly be treated with some caution (the "senior Labour" bit perhaps especially so) but it fits in with a pattern with certain galaxy brains near the top of the party treating those groups who *actually* vote for it with all but undisguised loathing. A message of "we are rubbish and so are all our voters" tends not to be hugely electorally successful - still, they are VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE who totally know what they are doing

[CumbrianLefty]

No, its ridiculous to frame the "choice" in such binary terms. These activists are extremists with little strong support in the wider Muslim community (their ringleader is actually from Birmingham too) We can maybe also hope this leads to something of an anti-Galloway backlash.

[CumbrianLefty]

Though it is worth noting that his last few previous electoral campaigns have been failures.

If this one isn't, then questions will still have to be asked.

[CumbrianLefty]

It is very likely that Galloway took a sizeable slice of the 2019 HWI/BxP vote this time around.

He had significant non-Muslim support in both his 2005 and 2012 wins as well.

[CumbrianLefty]

Oof.  Cheers Hancock.

Oh well - I think I'm the only one who predicted Gorgeous George above 20%.  The rest of my prediction was off of course.

Tory campaign seemed a bit complacent to me tbh, and certainly seemed to think that replicating the Hartlepool formula almost to the letter - low-profile "outsider" candidate who does little but repeat "build back better" and "change", nakedly trying to bribe voters by saying you will only get local goodies if you vote in a Tory, and just hope to profit from Labour misfortune - would work in just the same way again. But it was a different seat, with a better Labour candidate and campaign (especially if you give credence to the reports locals effectively took it over mid-way when it was somewhat floundering)

Though not as dramatically as in Chesham and Amersham, its the second time in a fortnight that the Tories have been over-optimistic about their chances.

[CumbrianLefty]

Hopefully he will be about as successful as Trump, then.

[CumbrianLefty]

Comparisons have been made with nearby Bromley and Chislehurst, where the LibDems nearly won a byelection in 2006 with a big swing away from the (still in opposition)Tories.

But even B&C has more favourable demographics for the yellows than this one. Labour have finished second here in every GE since 1992 too (coming reasonably close in 1997 and 2001) and will surely be making more of an effort than they did in C&A recently.

This is one of the best seat defences that could have come up for the Tories at the present time, in short. A loss would be a genuine and major shock, and might even put "unassailable" BoJo in peril.

[CumbrianLefty]

Though as it happens B&C is still significantly less pro-Brexit than OB&S.

Plus more graduates and similar stuff.

[CumbrianLefty]

It will very likely be a Tory hold yes, but the likelihood of their still being a significant swing against them shouldn't be dismissed - especially if they are more unpopular generally by the time it is held.

[CumbrianLefty]

Which tbf likely means it had under 100 members pre-"surge" - not at all implausible IMO.

Membership increased everywhere post-2015, a few Scottish seats maybe excluded. And it would be surprising if either Leicester or Coventry didn't see a significant bump.

[CumbrianLefty]

Um, we are taking about party membership basically doubling in less than a year.

In that case membership increasing pretty much everywhere would be EXACTLY what you would fully expect to see. Why this complete mythology that people only joined in Bristol and Brighton?

My own (iconic, even if for the wrong reasons to a Labour POV) "red wall" seat saw a big jump in membership in 2015 and after - and a smaller, but still real, rise in meeting attendance and activism. That has (especially the latter) reversed somewhat post-Corbyn, but membership is still some way above what it was in the Ed Miliband years, still more previously. And the same is true nationally.

I mean this is all checkable and on the record, so why persist in denying it??