UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1379207704112156677?s=20

Obvious warning about constituency polls accuracy is obvious. The takeaway should be that the race is competitive, not who exactly is leading.

[Oryxslayer]

if we are doing predictions, then I guess here's mine as an observer who has been off-and-on watching the UK and Scotland since 2017:

London: Lab Hold
Cambridgeshire & Peterborough: Con Hold
Greater Manchester: Lab Hold
Liverpool Region: Lab Hold
Tees Valley: Con Hold
West Midlands: Con Hold
West of England: Lab Gain
West Yorkshire: New Lab Gain

Scotland: SNP in First (Duh), lack a majority. SNP+Green majority. Labour does better than expected and wins more than the 3 constituency seats from 2016. Alba wins 1 seat max.

Wales: Labour in first. Conservatives gain a number of their 2019 flips in the north, Con+PC will have a mathematical but politically incompatible Majority. Lab+PC government in some form. Abolish wins a seat.

Hartlepool: Con marginal Gain.

Councilors: Good number of Lab gains and Tory losses, but not to an overwhelming degree. Continued Green improvement similar to 2019, but not on the same level. Generally reflects the mixed political situation presently: the Tory party has benefited from the vaccine program, but Boris Johnson is a sleazy PM. Some proportion of voters will separate the local party from the leader, some will not, and this division prevents a clear Labour surge or a clear Conservative rebuff.

[Oryxslayer]

Confirmed turnout in Sunderland is >50%.

Also reported via Sky that the talk in the room is the Conservatives have won, its just a question of margins. Also Houchen is dominating.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/e_casalicchio/status/1390483189567787009?s=20

+1 Conservative. Its gonna be big if their conceding before a final count.

[Oryxslayer]

Returning officer corrects rumors and says turnout was 47% for the local elections. 42.5% for By-Election. Lower at 41.7% for P&C and mayor. Hartlepool about to begin declarations, but looks to start with councilors.

[Oryxslayer]

Is there a live stream of the election coverage?

BBC doesn't start their coverage until tomorrow morning London-time, but Sky started theirs at midnight. Its live on the site for easy viewing, at least in the US.

[Oryxslayer]

You can physically see the Labour loss in progress, sourced from Sky news. Conservative votes in blue, Labour in red. The conservative pile is bigger. Other tables are for others, and they have near nothing.

[Oryxslayer]

This can't be blamed all on Starmer.

Sure maybe he isn't that inspiring but what it really comes down to is that the Tory brand is much more popular than the Labour Party's brand.

Vacuous idiot MPs like Russell-Moyle are blaming it on Starmer because they have ulterior motives.  They should instead think about why Labour's brand is damaged and why traditional Labour voters think they can still put their trust in Boris despite all that has happened over the last 18 months.

Throw in a bit of the trends across the west with the Left doing worse in post-industrial areas and better in globalized ones and you got the general picture.

[Oryxslayer]

Con 15529
Lab 8589
Reform 368
Green 358
Lib-Dem 349

A shellacking. 6940 majority.

[Oryxslayer]

Complete Results:

Jill Mortimer - Conservative Party: 15,529
Paul Daniel Williams - Labour Party: 8,589
Sam Lee - Independent: 2,904
Claire Martin - Heritage Party: 468
John Prescott - Reform UK: 368
Rachel Sara Featherstone -  Green Party: 358
Andrew Michael Hagon - Liberal Democrat: 349
Thelma Doris Walker - Independent: 250
Chris Killick - Independent: 248
Hilton Dawson - North East Party: 163
W. Ralph Ward-Jackson - Independent: 157
Gemma Evans - Women's Equality Party: 140
Adam Gaines - Independent: 126
The Incredible Flying Brick - The Official Monster Raving Loony Party: 108
David Bettney - Social Democratic Party: 104
Steve Jack - Freedom Alliance, No Lockdowns, No Curfews: 72

Total Votes: 29,933
Margin: 6,940 Conservative Majority

The result is basically what someone with only superficial knowledge of British politics and the region would have guessed by looking at the 2019 numbers.

Probably because at the end of the day that is exactly what happened, albeit turnout in the two contests is not the same. This is not unique, its a similar pattern in other councilor seats that have reported. Those places with a good Brexit/UKIP vote have seen that vote percentage go near 100% to the Tories in almost all circumstances.

[Oryxslayer]

Just to provide some numbers here, though this is better suited for the UK main thread, the Liberal-Democrats look like they will have close to a net zero councilor change after Thursday. This is of course not because the party has done exceptionally well defending their seats, but rather the party has churned through results and "realigned" to reflect the fact it now does best with posh generally southern Remainers.

Excluding some areas where the Lib-Dems gained cause they were simply one party of many gaining at the expense of a scandal tarred local govt, a clear trend emerges. he Lib-Dems lost their constituency seat in Wales, lost a list seat in Scotland, and lost 16 seats in Cornwall. There is no more Celtic fringe. The Lib-Dems are additionally down in places like Sefton, Norfolk, and Portsmouth where the party once had relevance nationally. They have gained in places Hertfordshire, Surrey, Cambridgeshire, Gloustershire, and Buckinghamshire. These places the Lib-Dems always were the opposition to the Conservatives, but the micro-realignment has allowed the party to flip Tory councilor seats, despite the Conservatives large lead nationally.

Of course, if a realignment is the be immediately beneficial, the gains should outweigh the losses...

[Oryxslayer]

Hartlepool is an absolute tossup as to who will win

Talk about expectations management.

This seat was easily won by Corbyn even in 2019, and when allegations against the Labour candidate were already known IIRC. BXP voters, who couldn't even bring themselves to vote Tory with that party running on a "Get Brexit Done" ticket, are very unlikely to vote Tory now; in this part of the world they are by and large ex-Labour. Add to that government by-election gains being rarer than hen's teeth.

This seat by all rights should be a Labour hold, even if they have troubles at local level. I doubt it would be fatal to Starmer's leadership, but failure to hold Hartlepool when a more toxic leader managed it would seriously undermine his position. You can imagine the crowing from the nuttiest parts of Labour.

Funny.

That second paragraph aged like fine wine.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1392994845837479937?s=20

SNP hold A&S as expected. Tactical unionist voting does however now appear to be a normal thing to plan for in Scottish politics.

[Oryxslayer]

To which the obvious retort is - it didn't hurt them in Hartlepool.

OTOH, Tories had the candidate seemingly closer connected to the Hartlepool community in that by election geographically. Williams had the perception of someone from the south, whereas Jill Mortimer had the Aura of a northerner, even if she was from just outside Teesside. Nobody can deny Leadbeater's connections to B&S, so this time maybe it would be the Tories who suffer from airlifting in a distant candidate. Or maybe geography won't be an issue in this campaign since they are both Yorkshire Northers.  

[Oryxslayer]

52.2% turnout, about 2/3s of last GE turnout.

[Oryxslayer]

Lib-Dem gain, will update with numbers. Ninja'ed

[Oryxslayer]

Serious point here: to the extent this result means something it is that it is not consistent with Boris Johnson and the Conservative party actually being popular. They had a lot of supporters in 2019 and have a lot now who would happily ditch them if the opposition parties could make the right noises.

I mean we have known for a while that the Tories are potentially sitting on quicksand in some parts of the south, but presently circumstances need to align for everything to manifest against them. Labour's brand is trash in most of the south and it currently isn't getting better. The party seems unwilling to pursue the successful path of attaching globalist rhetoric and branding to traditional left-wing programs - look less to US and more to Canadian Liberals, German Greens, and Swedish Social Democrats as better examples for how you can win enough voters from both sides of the identity divide. The Lib-Dem Party brand is better in the south, but the National Party is near irrelevant outside of these by-elections when they can focus on local issues like their more successful local parties. Of course the electoral separation between the two, and also now the Greens, make things all that much harder.

Presently the Conservatives can lose these seats in a GE, but it would be more because of their own potentially poor policies that isolate these communities, and less because of affinity with the opposition.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1406004486313844745?s=20

And the potential flip side of the coin. Could mean a quick end to Starmer's time at the helm.

[Oryxslayer]

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.

Yes, if Starmer oversees two by-election losses then its hard to not imagine the daggers coming out.  Labour arguably have the best B&S candidate possible, so the reaction to a loss would be that much worse.

Starmer's issue, as noted, is that he is a untraditional politician tasked with navigating a political minefield that even experienced politicians abroad have found challenging. This dilemma is of course how most parliamentary systems have unintentionally formed Unity governments in all but name when it comes to Coronavirus-related issues - the most relevant issues for voters presently. Starmer has chosen to not even bother attempting the Minefield, which led to this idea at the local elections that Labour doesn't exactly stand for anything - or at least nothing different from the governing Tories. It doesn't help that the things put forward, like self-defeating flag debate, are superficial and by nature secondary to the big policies that should be proposed.

The proper policy would have been to follow Labour's ancestors and copied Atlee. Labour then sought to "win the peace" by supporting the war but also putting forward a litany of policies that would utilize the war to rebuild society better than previously. If you look at other democratic societies right now, the most successful non-government parties all looked beyond their Coronavirus unity governments. The pandemic either exposed some fault that must be corrected for, its an excuse to move forward on some transformative policy, or the country should reform while rebuilding and progress towards something better.

Which brings us to the case of Andy Burnam, whose stock is on the rise since before the locals. He's got a program, a clear identity, a platform of experience presently outside of Westminster, and I'm not sure if there is anyone who isn't factionalized enough to stop him.

[Oryxslayer]

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.

The argument of the detractors basically is that Labour should be gaining percentage-wise in local or by-election midterms, because they are the party out of power and do not face the scrutiny of the government. The worldwide advantage of opposition is that one always can lob complaints at the government without proposing their own answers to the problem. Labour however is consistently losing ground, and the grassroots narrative (perhaps truthful, perhaps not, likely in between) is that Labour presently stands for nothing. The blame for this has been dumped at Starmer's feet, since he has not proposed how the opposition would differ from the Tories on major policy, nor has he put forward any hypothetical programs. When they tried to go after Tory privileges and sleaze before the  locals, like how an opposition usually criticizes the government mismanagement, voters told reporters it came off as aloof from the actual issues. Starmer's interview with the BBC the day after Hartlepool is an example of this perception, where he keeps using the buzzwords of change and accountability, but can't articulate on exactly what.

To summarize, Starmer has an image of a dutiful technocrat, a image that works well when you are at the helm steering the nation through it's troubles. It does not work when you have no power and responsible for change and the alternative.


But yes, the issue replacing Starmer is that the PLP lacks clear alternative parliamentary - rather than factional - leaders, which is why I suspect if there is a ouster then Burnam will be called to leave Manchester and emulate Cincinnatus.

[Oryxslayer]

I predict Tories win, and it won't be because of the quixotic Galloway.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/LdrTony/status/1410704595144282114?s=20

Sounds like some at the count is getting high off their own stash, but I guess we will see.

[Oryxslayer]

anyone got a good livestream ?

Sky apparently is holding doing some stuff according to the twitters, but its just 1 seat. I guess as a tory-leaning outlet they assume a flip and therefore potential Labour leadership infighting, so there is a point to it.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/REWearmouth/status/1410773557232218114
Is this credible ?

I wouldn't even trust Galloway with a penny, so take anything coming from his camp with a grain of salt like any other rumors. More relevant would be pictures from anyone at the count of the physical ballots getting stacked on tables. That told us who would win well ahead of the declaration in Hartlepool. Said images would confirm any potential spin.

[Oryxslayer]

Galloway isn't at the count.

He's picking fights with the British version of #Electiontwitter right now, in case you want a better glimpse of how his team expects the results to play out.