UK By-elections thread, 2021-

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Lib Dems are already claiming victory in their internal messaging.

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https://twitter.com/EdwardJDavey/status/1682150926847451137

They must be winning by miles to be confident enough to have started this already.

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Yorkshire Party figure David Herdson thinks Labour have won Selby & Ainsty:

https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1682158531129032705

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This was probably explained here, but I didn't find it, what is ULEZ?

Ultra Low Emissions Zone: basically charges for using the more polluting vehicles, especially older cars.  It already exists in inner London, but there are plans to extend it to the whole of Greater London, including this constituency.

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Recount in Uxbridge & South Ruislip.

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Hamilton "Anti Ulez" (Independent) 208
Baquiche (Lib Dem) 526
Beales (Lab) 13470
Bell (Independent) 91
Binface (Count Binface Party) 190
Corbyn (Let London Live) 101
Fox (Reclaim) 714
Gardner (SDP) 248
Gemmell (Climate Party) 49
Green (Green) 893
Hewison (Rejoin EU) 105
Hope (OMRLP) 32
Jane (UKIP) 61
Joseph (Independent) 8
Ntefon (Christian People's Alliance) 78
Phaure (Independent) 186
Tuckwell (Con) 13965

Con majority 495

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Lib Dem 54.6%
Con 26.2%
Green 10.2%
Reform UK 3.4%
Lab 2.6%
Mitchell 1.6%
UKIP 0.7%
CPA 0.7%

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That's a very good Green result.  Indeed it seems to be their best ever by-election result.

29% swing Con to Lib Dem.

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Candidates are about to be told the provisional result in Selby & Ainsty.  So it should be very soon, unless there is another recount.

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Gray (no description) 99
Holmes (Con) 12295
Jordan (Yorkshire Party) 1503
Kent (Reform UK) 1332
Mather (Lab) 16456
Palmer (Independent) 342
Phoenix (Heritage) 162
Stanton (OMRLP) 172
Walker (Lib Dem) 1188
Warneken (Green) 1838
Waterston (SDP) 314
Wellock (Climate Party) 39
Wilson-Kerr (Independent) 67

Lab majority 4161

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Lab 46.0% (+21.4)
Con 34.3% (-26.0)
Green 5.1% (+1.9)
Yorks 4.2% (+0.8)
Reform UK 3.7%
Lib Dem 3.3% (-5.3)
Palmer 1.0%
SDP 0.9%
Loony 0.5%
Heritage 0.5%
Gray 0.3%
Wilson-Kerr 0.2%
Climate 0.1%

23.7% swing

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Second biggest Con to Lab swing in a by-election since 1945.

I do wonder if there's some reason why that seat was ripe for such a big swing.

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Some thoughts this morning:

My biggest concern is that the Uxbridge & South Ruislip result will embolden the increasingly noticeable anti-environmental tendency in the Tories, and furthermore that it'll make Labour (and even the Lib Dems to some extent) warier of doing anything which takes the car lobby on.

Reform UK's actual election results -- two lost deposits -- continue to fail to match their polling figures.  This could be seen as good news for the Tories, though the sizes of the Tory falls in Somerton & Frome and Selby & Ainsty with Reform UK doing nothing suggest that there's not much to that.

Tactical voting between Labour and the Lib Dems continues to look strong; both were squeezed almost out of existence in the other's target seats.  This doesn't, however, apply to the Greens, who did quite well.  There's some reason to think, especially in Selby & Ainsty with Andrew Teale's reports of Green posters everywhere in Ouseburn, that quite a bit of this Green vote came from the Tories.  Time is running out now for this to happen before the General Election, but could the Greens combine that vote with a Labour and Lib Dem tactical vote to win should a by-election come up in one of the rural areas where they've done really well locally?

Finally, I'll repeat that in spite of the U & SR disappointment Selby & Ainsty really is an outstandingly good result for Labour, up there with their most impressive by-election wins ever.  Dudley West 1994 had a bigger swing, but was a considerably more marginal seat on paper and Labour must have been expected to win it right from the start.

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Uxbridge is actually a helpful outlier because the Tories will now obsess over a niche issue which never usually works well for them.

When unusual by-election results occur, it's usually a warning about a specific policy causing a lot of political pain.

George Galloway was a warning that Labour had specific trouble with foreign policy.

Conservatives lost in Richmond Park in 2016, and I saw it as a warning that Theresa May was going to have trouble with Brexit.

Labour losing Uxbridge is in my mind a similar warning that Labour will have trouble with green policies and would need to revise them.

At the very least Khan will have to ditch the ULEZ plans, because it clearly cost Labour the seat.

I think you're reading too much into a by election result. Yes ULEZ cost Labour a seat when the election was fought on ULEZ but the general election won't be fought on ULEZ.

A lot of by election gains are then lost at the following election because the niche circumstances that lead to the by election result no longer exist.

Also, turnout matters. 15-25pp extra turnout will make a huge difference in the general election.

It's completely plausible that Labour comfortably win Uxbridge next year even if the polls narrow.

So both winners in these elections are guaranteed to lose the next general election?

Not at all, especially as the boundary changes in Selby (no Ainsty any more) are helpful to Labour.  And by-election winners often get a bit of a boost: I doubt the Tories would have won Copeland in 2017 without the by-election, for example.

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Personally I think in the current environment even North Shropshire would be a hold for the Lib Dems. As people like Tim Farron, Norman Lamb proved 2015-19 the Lib Dems can overcome the Conservative bent of a seat with a good local profile even with strong Pro-Tory headwinds - and those don’t exist now. Christchurch ‘97 is the obvious counter to this, but it was a long time ago with an arguably more popular Tory party.

I think it was more to do with it being Christchurch.

Without the boundary changes, I think the Lib Dems would have a decent chance in all four.  But all four undergo changes and two of them are carved in two.  Major boundary changes are rarely helpful for the Lib Dems as they are dependent on persistent hard work and getting people to get to know their MPs.

In North Shropshire the changes do them no harm, as they merely remove a couple of wards, and there’s no reason to think those wards are better for them than the constituency as a whole; indeed I suspect the reverse.  Chesham & Amersham gains Gerrards Cross (a very rich commuter town) and Hazlemere (a generally Tory suburb of High Wycombe, though one of its councillors is the Climate Party candidate from Uxbridge) and loses Great Missenden and some rural territory west of Chesham; as I said in the boundaries thread I’m really not sure what effect this has, and the trends in the SE mean that obvious assumptions about places like Gerrards Cross being very Tory may not be as valid as they once were, which takes some getting used to.

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Rutherglen & Hamilton West recall petition succeeds:

https://twitter.com/SouthLanCouncil/status/1686407866024882176

The by-election is likely to be in early October.

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The number of signatures is a bit lower than I'd thought it might be, and the percentage considerably lower than in the other two successful petitions.  I don't know whether that should be taken as a sign that it might not be quite such an easy Labour gain or not; we don't exactly have a lot of data on recall petitions.

I agree though that Labour really need to win the by-election.

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It is finally confirmed that there will be a by-election in Mid Bedfordshire.

The first by election since Eastleigh where three different parties have a good chance…

Yes, it's an interesting one and feels quite hard to predict.

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 the declared Independent candidate who scored quite well in that strange poll a few weeks back does turn out to be competitive, then suddenly it's a four horse race and the winning share could be very low.  I'm not sure how much that scenario helps the Tories, though: I suspect he takes votes from people who aren't very satisfied with the Tory party but don't want to vote Labour or Lib Dem.

Current best odds for each party, BTW, are Lib Dems 7/4 on, Lab 4/1 against, Con 9/2 against.  (But remember Chesham & Amersham, Batley & Spen and Uxbridge & South Ruislip.)  If I were a betting man I think that I might take those odds on Labour.

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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.

That's my feeling too, which would suggest that they're not very likely to win unless there's a very close three-way result.

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Mid Bedfordshire is finally vacant:

https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1696449373775749299

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed Nadine Vanessa Dorries to be Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern."

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Well, its maybe interesting if it is maintained - and the coming GE could tell us a bit about that.

("SNP wins most Catholics when it is winning almost everywhere" maybe isn't that earth shattering - sorry if this appears a little cynical)

the interesting aspect is that they reversed the historical pattern and became a party that did better with gene pool (Irish) Catholics than Protestants, that's fairly unique for a nationalist party. It's basically the equivalent of if Catalan nationalists hypothetically did better among descendants of Andalusian migrants than among Catalan speakers.

Agree with Halifax that this is an important trend to note.

But can it not be explained fairly simply? The SNP moved away from their traditional tartan Tory approach, wearing kilts and being exclusively “Scottish” (which put off many Irish Catholics historically- Monklands being an obvious example) and moved to Scottish Nationalism being about rejecting England/Westminster - and adopted a less exclusive concept of what being “Scottish” was, which therefore appealed more to Irish catholics - but also other ethnic minorities who’d historically voted Labour.

I mean, i’m as an anti-SNP as they come, but no one can accuse them of being blood & soil nationalists - or even particularly Scottish chauvinists - so it’s not that surprising that they attract a more diverse pool of voters than other nationalist parties.

Also CL has a point - the SNP won everywhere & every group pretty much in 2015 - so whilst there’s individual explanations for why they improved across the board, we won’t know until the next GE how solid their support is.

I'm sure I remember seeing fairly clear evidence that Catholics had voted more strongly for independence than Scotland did as a whole.

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I had to look twice to confirm that this was a Labour leaflet.

https://twitter.com/ju_owens/status/1696501754018287649

(In case the image is invisible or disappears, it features a bar chart based on the Opinium poll with some of the classic features: a distorted scale, and the good old "can't win here", but the last of those is on an arrow pointing at the Lib Dem bar.)

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I assume both by elections will be on the same day now

Probably, though as the writs are being moved by different parties there's no reason to think that they'll co-ordinate.

I think the SNP have already indicated that they will move the writ for R&HW as soon as Parliament returns from recess, which means next Monday; if they do, then the by-election will be on Thursday 5 October.  My guess is that the Tories will move the writ for Mid Beds then as well and so they'll be on the same day -- unnecessary delays of by-elections seem to be out of fashion -- but if the Tories prefer 12 October for some reason they can delay moving the writ by a few days.

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There have been some suggestions that they might sacrifice Walsall North to try to save Tamworth, by letting Eddie Hughes stand in the latter anyway, forcing another by-election. It sounds like a ridiculous thing to do, but Walsall North is effectively being abolished (which is why Hughes moved in the first place) so its loss might be regarded as acceptable if Hughes being candidate rather than some stopgap gives them a significantly better chance of holding Tamworth. I’m not convinced…

(Or they could just abandon Hughes and say that if they win the Tamworth by-election their new MP will be allowed to defend it, avoiding the stopgap problem but presumably making Hughes less than happy.)

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BTW writs have been issued today for both Mid Bedfordshire and Rutherglen & Hamilton West. This means both should be on 5 October.

Edit: I think the Mid Beds motion may have delayed the actual issue of the writ until Tuesday next week. That would put it on either 12 or 19 October.

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.