UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[YL]

Uh oh. Galloway says he's standing in Rochdale.

By my count this will be the eighth essentially different constituency he's been a candidate in.

How has his vehicle performed in local elections or has it been dormant since Batley and Spen?

They stood a few candidates in 2022; the best results I'm aware of are in Batley & Spen (Batley East and Heckmondwike wards). They only seem to have had one in 2023, in Torbay of all places.

[YL]

The writ for Rochdale has been moved today. Polling day will presumably be Thursday 29 February, giving opportunities for candidates to use the word “leap” in their election slogans.

[YL]

The Rochdale campaign is already featuring some profoundly unpleasant behaviour from certain right-wing online personalities and their Twitter sheep.

[YL]

It would appear that Rochdale's divine punishment for its electoral past is to have not one but two extremely obnoxious former Labour MPs running in the by-election there, as Simon Danczuk has been announced as the Reform candidate...

Given the reason why he is a former Labour MP, is this a wise choice?

[YL]

11 candidates for Rochdale:

Azhar Ali (Lab)
Mark Coleman (no description) [1]
Simon Christopher Danczuk (Reform UK)
Iain Donaldson (Lib Dem)
Paul Simon Ellison (Con)
George Galloway (Workers Party of Britain)
Michael Howarth (no description) [2]
William Leckie Howarth (Independent) [3]
Guy Nicholas Otten (Green)
Ravin Rodent Subortna (OMRLP)
David Anthony Tully (Independent) [4]

[1] Anglican priest who supports Just Stop Oil. Twitter account
[2] Someone of this name is involved in running some bars in Rochdale. Maybe that's who this is?
[3] Founder of Parents Against Grooming UK. Twitter account
[4] Well there's a car repair place in Rochdale called David Tully & Co; whether this candidate has anything to do with it I don't know this candidate seems to be the owner.

[YL]

If you believe this Guardian report from Wellingborough the Tories have "all but given up" and are in danger of being overtaken by Reform UK.

[YL]

‘Abandoned by the Conservatives’ - insiders say Wellingborough Tory by-election campaign is struggling to attract top-level support: the Northamptonshire Telegraph on Wellingborough

[YL]

I agree, but there are multiple reports the Tories are fighting a remarkably desultory campaign.

Still, they got 62% in Wellingborough in 2019. Even a North Shropshire level campaign adjusted for the current environment shouldn’t be at risk of coming third behind Reform UK.

[YL]

Another Guardian article on Wellingborough: Labour are "not complacent", though if you were hoping for a Tory hold you'd struggle to find cause for optimism in the article.

[YL]

The Green candidate in Rochdale has "decided to leave the stage" following a fuss about some old Twitter posts. (It's not hard to see why they were controversial, but they were 10 years or so old.)  He will of course still be on the ballot.

[YL]

It’s telling that Tamworth and Mid Beds were genuinely close in the week before whereas everyone will be shocked (rather than surprised)if both seats don’t fall to Labour.

Am curious what the Kingswood majority will be.

You shouldn't take bookies' odds very seriously, but they are somewhat indicative of the vibes, and at the moment you can get slightly longer odds on Labour in Kingswood than you can in Wellingborough, and in the latter you can actually get longer odds on the Tories than you can on Reform UK. (No, I don't think this actually means that the Tories are going to come third.)

Here are the changes in Tory vote share (in percentage points) in their by-election defences this Parliament, excluding the effectively uncontested Southend West:

Uxbridge & South Ruislip -7.4
Old Bexley & Sidcup -13.0
Wakefield -17.0
Chesham & Amersham -19.9
Tiverton & Honiton -21.7
Tamworth -25.6
Selby & Ainsty -26.0
Mid Bedfordshire -28.7
Somerton & Frome -29.6
North Shropshire -31.1

A loss of 25 percentage points would put them on 37.2% in Wellingborough, which would probably translate to a Labour win by a little more than in Tamworth, and 31.2% in Kingswood, which would make for a rather bigger Labour win. However I suspect the Tories will fall by more in Wellingborough than in Kingswood.

[YL]

Not that the Greens were ever likely to be a big factor in that one.

But now it is Labour who have issues with their Rochdale candidate.

[YL]

The Guardian's Helen Pidd on Rochdale

[YL]

One is starting to suspect that the stars (or the asteroids) are aligning for another Galloway upset.

I thought the issue for him in Rochdale was, as in Batley & Spen, that the kind of demographic that propelled him to victory in Bradford a decade ago (with the obvious caveat that not every Galloway voter is a Muslim and not every Muslim is a Galloway voter) simply isn’t big enough for him to pull off a win?

It probably isn't in normal circumstances but if some of the Labour vote drifts to other candidates or stays at home because of this affair then he might have a chance. In both Bradford West and Batley & Spen his vote share has got quite close to the Muslim proportion of the population. As you say the actual votes aren't going to be exactly what that suggests (and he has been endorsed by Nick Griffin of all people) but it gives a rule of thumb and if you apply it here it gets him close to 30%. A little bit of differential turnout in his favour could get him a little above that, and if he's in the low 30s and the other non-Labour candidates get respectable votes -- e.g. the Tory 15%, Danczuk maybe high single digits, the Lib Dems saving their deposit, scatterings elsewhere -- it's starting to look close.

[YL]

My instant reaction to that is that Galloway probably wins now.

[YL]

It has been pointed out that Neale Hanvey, the current MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, won narrowly in the last General Election in spite of having been suspended by SNP; as with Azhar Ali now, he remained on the ballot paper as their candidate.

(And then they let him back in, but then he defected to Alba.)

[YL]

From Labour's POV what is the least bad outcome? Ali still winning under the Labour label but having to sit as an independent? Danczuk winning and giving Reform UK a seat? Galloway winning? A Tory coming up the middle? Could the Lib Dems fill the vacuum, they held this seat many years ago

This is still almost certainly the least worst outcome from a Labour POV. One thing that is now beyond doubt is that there will be a new Labour candidate for Rochdale in a GE that is less than a year away.

I think that an OMRLP win would be preferable to Ali winning. Most of the other possibilities have their downsides too but basically there is no great outcome for Labour at this point and the best thing is to confine the damage to Rochdale as much as possible.

One might see a LibDem win as less terrible than some plausible outcomes, but - in keeping with this seemingly cursed byelection - their candidate has now been revealed as having a bit of a fondness for Nazi salutes

I've read the Manchester Evening News story on that and it's one of the flimsiest political allegations I've ever seen.

[YL]

Does the Rochdale seat change much in redistribution? Presumably no matter who wins the byelection its almost certain Labour wins the seat in the general election and this byelection will tell us absolutely nothing about national trends.

It loses one ward, Spotland & Falinge, to what will now be called Heywood & Middleton North. That ward used to be a Lib Dem (and previously Liberal) stronghold but the Lib Dems fell away dramatically in Rochdale in the early Coalition years, perhaps as much to do with the revelations about Cyril Smith (whose powerbase was in that part of the town) as the national issues at the time. It's a fairly working class ward but it's far from the most deprived in the constituency; it's also about average for the constituency in its religious demographics. Its removal won't make much difference in Rochdale but its addition to the other seat is estimated to have been decisive on 2019 figures.

[YL]

Andrew Teale's previews of Wellingborough and Kingswood

[YL]

There's a fair amount of scepticism about this poll of Wellingborough but it's worth posting:

https://twitter.com/kevcunningham/status/1757895878897992172

[YL]

There's also a Lib Dem source claiming a "huge win" for Labour.

EDIT: Wellingborough.

[YL]

Turnouts 37.1% in Kingswood and 38.1% in Wellingborough.

[YL]

Given the circumstances, the polling and the demographics, Reform ought to be doing better than "touching double figures" IMO.

https://twitter.com/danbloom1/status/1758289842851783136

[YL]

Lab 44.9% (+11.5)
Con 34.9% (-21.3)
Reform UK 10.4% (new)
Green 5.8% (+3.4%)
Lib Dem 3.5% (-3.5)
UKIP 0.5% (new)

Swing 16.4%

[YL]

Actually a decent result for Reform there. Greens will be quite happy too.