UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Blair]

Keir (Starmer) visited Selby with Angela Rayner yesterday- seemed to have a lot of activists. The majority is so large though that it’s one of those seats that even on a low turnout by election would need a big jump but if you look at the recent polling…

It’s also only a hunch but I wonder how similar Selby is to the other areas where the Tory vote has really collapsed- there are seats with much smaller majorities where I feel they would defend much more easily.

[Blair]

Keir (Starmer) visited Selby with Angela Rayner yesterday- seemed to have a lot of activists. The majority is so large though that it’s one of those seats that even on a low turnout by election would need a big jump but if you look at the recent polling…

It’s also only a hunch but I wonder how similar Selby is to the other areas where the Tory vote has really collapsed- there are seats with much smaller majorities where I feel they would defend much more easily.

There seems a decent chance that - whatever the actual winning party is - the pro-Labour swing will be quite a bit bigger in Selby than Uxbridge.

Certainly; these sort of outer London seats weirdly tend to have a certain type of partisan toryship.

Added in with the fact it’s a well ran Tory council and they’re essentially running on an anti ULEZ ticket it could be a strange result.

I also just realised how soon it is; only 20 days till polling day.

[Blair]

I don't think the current honourable member is going to resign anytime soon though is he?

[Blair]

Keir (Starmer) visited Selby with Angela Rayner yesterday- seemed to have a lot of activists. The majority is so large though that it’s one of those seats that even on a low turnout by election would need a big jump but if you look at the recent polling…

It’s also only a hunch but I wonder how similar Selby is to the other areas where the Tory vote has really collapsed- there are seats with much smaller majorities where I feel they would defend much more easily.

There seems a decent chance that - whatever the actual winning party is - the pro-Labour swing will be quite a bit bigger in Selby than Uxbridge.

Certainly; these sort of outer London seats weirdly tend to have a certain type of partisan toryship.

Added in with the fact it’s a well ran Tory council and they’re essentially running on an anti ULEZ ticket it could be a strange result.

I also just realised how soon it is; only 20 days till polling day.

Labour are strong favourites in Uxbridge with the bookies* and personally I doubt ULEZ is as much of a magic bullet for Tory electoral prospects as some of them may hope (not least because polling has it nowhere near as unpopular as some media claims in particular might pretend)

(*yes I know they have been wrong before, famously in Chesham and Amersham recently)

Yeah it's one of those issues that certainly will deflate the Labour vote in parts but equally one that tends to convince rival political parties they're onto a winner because of the strength of opposition which gets confused for quantity; added ofc to the fact that most errr political types in london forget how low car ownership actually is. 

[Blair]

It’s quite funny coverage wise as USR actually was a seat I could have seen labour still fail to win even if they won a relatively healthy majority- I think a lot of people incorrectly lump it in with the other Conservative held seats in the North London suburbs.

It’s interesting how little coverage Selby has gotten and the SW one even less- I can’t even recall the name!

[Blair]

It is structurally quite a low-swinging constituency, as were the various Uxbridge seats that preceded it.

Tamworth on the other hand…

This Parliament surely has to have had the most by elections for errrrrr personal reasons hasn’t it?

[Blair]

They ofc have issues but I seem to recall both Wakefield and Batley and Spen having ones that were broadly correct about the direction of travel.

I think a lot of Conservatives have forgotten how far the bottom can fall out at by elections during an economic crisis when you’re trailing by 20% nationally- just very hard for for them to motivate their people to vote.

[Blair]

Oh yes sorry it was HP that was marginally correct not B&S.

I remember someone joked that we could see a bigger majority in Selby and I wouldn’t be shocked if the USR poll is roughly correct- ironic ofc that the rights vote is split to the extend they could win if it wasn’t but equally I think a good rule from all reason by elections is expect the smaller parties to do worse than polling/modelling does.

The annoying thing is that USR result would see a lot of spin about how Labor are struggling in outer London even if the Tories lose the other two; they have a rather bad (for them!) habit of pretending awful election results are actually ok.

[Blair]

If they lose Tamworth and Bedfordshire they’ve basically lost virtually every different type of seat they hold- marginal red wall (Wakefield), safe middle England seat (Amersham), rural safe seat (Shropshire), old south west liberal seats (Tiverton + Frome) and outer outer London seats (Uxbridge)

At this rate the only saving grace will be a few seats in the Black Country and the Tees Valley and even those wouldn’t be nailed on.

On an aside the Conservatives are lucky there majority is quite high; we’re getting to a stage where previous governments lost their majority.

[Blair]

Any predictions with less than a week?

[Blair]

The general vibe for Labour in Selby is almost "we're a bit worried by how well it is going" - it is surely not an accident that I am continually getting "its neck and neck" emails from the party - if they really *did* think it was neck and neck, they would be describing it as "competitive" or similar.

(it helps that, despite some initial cynicism about him, the candidate does seem quite impressive)

A lot of media chatter and briefing about Uxbridge, but most Labour people actually on the ground do seem cautiously optimistic. But yes, ULEZ does at least make it likely the Tory vote won't collapse.

ULEZ is fascinating- it’s such an emotive and obvious issue meaning so many people mention it but it’s equally hard to know whether they were going to vote Labour anyway. There was a council by election in Heston where it was suspected to have tanked the labour vote by around 20% but the Lib Dems rather than the Tories ended up surging.

It’s hard to tell when it comes in whether it will suddenly get a lot worse or if people will adjust- I can’t think that many people own a diesel car in London but perhaps I’m wrong. A secondhand ULEZ compliant car isn’t too expensive…

[Blair]

I really wonder why they aren’t panicking more about Selby- this is not a seat that they should be losing to Labour and it would suggest the bottom of their vote has fallen out.

[Blair]

A sign of the times is that I thought Somerton was only a 7-8K majority because it’s so widely expected to flip- but no, it’s almost 20K!

It says something that there’s two seats with such huge majorities and there’s barely a shrug that they will not only be lost but lost easily. A bit like Crewe and Norwich in the fag end of the New Labour days.

[Blair]

Love when people discover how insane by elections can be

[Blair]

On reflection the reports from Uxbridge of doors getting slammed in faces should have suggested things weren’t exactly great.

In a weird way it’s a set of results that gives each party something to be happy with.

[Blair]

The funny thing is the margin in Uxbridge is the same nearly as Batley and Spen when Labours victory saved Keir- equally I’m not sure if Labour won by say 100 votes whether the coverage would be that different today.

But yeah clear briefing already from labour re blaming it on ULEz and Sadiq…

[Blair]

I also think the swing in Uxbridge was iirc the same as that in Wakefield?

[Blair]

I wonder with Uxbridge if they would have picked someone else for the by election; Labour is running a few councillors from London in seats outside of London (which Uxbridge for political purposes is!) and has always done so (see Lisa Nandy) but while DB was not a bad candidate he struggled to make a disintinct brand- the Tory leaflets called him a “councillor from Camden’ and I believe in that capacity he’d uttered warm words about ULEZ.

The issue ofc is that Labour doesn’t have many councillors in the seat iirc

[Blair]

any guesses on the spin from the press?

The swing against the tories?

or the tories hanging on in Uxbridge?

Even the Sun correspondent on BBC was admitting it was a good night for Labour. I think the Uxbridge result will be played as less a national indication but more of a local issue for Sadiq Khan and the London mayoral election next year.

Though most of Greater London is not at all like Uxbridge.

(an obvious point perhaps, but some still seemed to be missing it this morning)

I do wonder though if this will see the bottom truly fallout in outer London for Sadiq- he ofc didn’t win Hillingdon in 2016, or 2020 but he’ll still need part of the labour vote there, in Harrow and Croydon- I worry that outer London has been written off to the extent that labour are expecting to get 0 zero votes.

[Blair]

Worth noting ofc that while the Mayor/TFL have had funding issues they’re different to local councils mucking around with traffic closures- the mayor has a very specific set of powers around transport and air pollution, and the office has successfully introduced the congestion charge and inner London ULEZ.

The issue is really the lack of funding for the scrappage scheme but even those who are eligible have faced issues…

I think I mentioned it much earlier in this thread but this will not bode well for the big decisions national governments need to make about roads, cars and taxation- electric vehicles are largely exempt from our various revenue/taxes but everyone wants to pretend that there isn’t a looming black hole.

[Blair]

Someone made the point on twitter that there was a very clear 'actually we're in Middlesex, not London' feedback from voters in Uxbridge

[Blair]

IIRC we could have a Rutherglen and Hamilton West by election in October; although I'm not sure how the dates work with two different recesses coming up.

I imagine it will be interesting; I assume the SNP will try and make the two child cap an issue & attack Starmer from the left. I might be displaying my ignorance but I can't think of another competitive* by election that hasn't featured the Conservatives in the top two for a while?

*there was one in Scotland in 2021 that ended up being close but no-one really realised as Labour were chucking the sink at the local elections.

[Blair]

On the above people still get angry as they say they were ‘told’ to buy diesel…

[Blair]

Can one of our fine posters do a summary of the constituency?

[Blair]

I feel very stupid when posting about Scottish politics but I am generally curious how much of the
former labour voters who vote SNP are people driven by the issue of independence versus people who are wanting to vote for a viable social Democratic alternative. I’m sure a bit of it is both factors…

It is ofc complicated by the fact that people in their 30s could have easily have voted SNP in every election- a lot of Westminster and the media still act as if the Slab dominance of the 90s was one or two terms ago.