UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Blair]

The interesting thing is that I reckon even before the SNP wars begun this seat might have flipped- iirc even in May 2021 labour almost won a by election in Scotland despite putting absolutely no investment in it.

I can’t recall the seat name perhaps begun with an A?

[Blair]

On another subject it's very funny that Tamworth, much like Selby, is now basically just assumed as a Labour win.

Even Selbly when the deed was called was seen as a stretch for Labour; it was only during the campaign and the lack of any Conservative fight which made people realise. It seems like Tamworth has been written off already which isn't great considering...

[Blair]

Oh yes sorry I was referring to the coverage rather than the parties efforts- the Tories will give it a go, especially as the region has a fair few Tory politicians with nothing to do…

[Blair]

Yes I don’t think anyone is disagreeing that it’s harder to win!

But ofc Labour won in Chester when their own honourable member had resigned for errr personal reasons relating to an investigation- I think most U.K. pol people here would agree that the reasons for resigning make a difference.

Iirc I don’t think an MP dying from natural causes has been replaced by a different party since maybeee 2008?

By elections are weird beasts mostly because turnout is weird and equally people do seem willing to vote tactically.

[Blair]

I heard on the THIGMOO grapevine that there were a lot more SNP voters switching than people expected- not out of love for labour but because of a dislike for the SNP- and well tbf there are at least 3-4 different ideological reasons you can have for defections at the moment.

It was telling that the SNP briefed at 10 that they had lost- I don’t think any recent semi competitive by election has seen that.

It was funny that the ‘online line’ appears to be ‘well labour won because of Tories’ ‘labour have no policies’ and ‘it’s the unionist press’- this type of delusional thinking does not help parties who are doing badly and serious people in the SNP rather than keyboard warriors know the issues and what the SNP need to do.

I guess the only saving grace is this is a seat that Labour won in 2017 and it’s the type of seat Labour would have won even if it only won 3-4 in Scotland.

[Blair]

Election Night is really going to be shock. It's going to be hard to cope on turnout figures and raw vote figures in certain seats if Labour win 400 seats isn't it.

[Blair]

How big an effect do people feel the cause of the by-election had?

Personally I tend to think that the effects of such things on results can get exaggerated: voters can be quite forgiving of parties when their previous incumbent had found their way into the MPs Behaving Badly file (as Andrew Teale calls it) an on the other hand voters can still punish an incumbent party after a death (see Chesham & Amersham But that does not mean that causes don’t have some effect.

I feel it certainly didn't help; the biggest factor as said before is that it allowed Labour to essentially run a very long campaign. It was so long ago but equally it's a pretty bad way to go & frankly there's a reason why the SNP wanted her to quit when it all came out ages ago. They might have held the seat if it was in 2020 or 2021- or maybe even the summer of 2022.

Al or others might know but it seemed Labour did really well in turning out people to vote Labour (not all of whom were natural labour voters) usually the problem with Labour in by-elections is that they struggle to get near their GE vote for a whole host of reasons but they really seem to have ran an effective campaign.

[Blair]

Yeah labour did a similar one in Selby with a Conservative voter.

The party has really improved its game for by elections.

[Blair]

Mid Beds will be hard to predict because it could really come down to whether the third parties vote is 20 or 26%; just like with Batley a sizeable third party not only changes the result but also the general vibe.

I honestly have no idea what will happen.

[Blair]

Yes it's quite weird as you drive around Mid Beds and you feel like you're in some sort of brochure for Middle England- where as in Wellingborough all I remember is the very large prison and a lot of awful quality housing.

It's only down the road from Corby- the once famous marginal. 

[Blair]

It’s to put it bluntly a lot of rubbish that was written to be leaked; it even says ‘oh well Rishi is much more popular, and Keir isn’t popular and labour aren’t winning any switchers’ which is what they’ve been briefing for months.

It also has a comically low rate of labour-Tory switchers compared to the national polls.

And it makes no sense as an internal document as it only seems to rely on one form of field data and doesn’t really help the party in any sense. But again some 27 year old in CCHQ will be bragging about landing a great git- this was if we remember the same CCHQ that proudly boasted they would lose 1,000 seats in a form of expectation management that ended up coming true.

[Blair]

It really is up in the air but I do wonder if the Lib Dems might do a good enough job at pulling the Conservative vote down at the edges and allow Labour to come up the middle; or even a weird three way result.

While I know the vibe & optic police will be out in force if the Conservatives win both it is interesting that both by elections are generally not seen as important; compared to say Uxbridge, Rutherlegen, Wakefield or even Selby

[Blair]

People made 'give up the telly and the chippie and the fags'  jibes decades ago. That's nothing new. But mobile phones are necessities now. Particularly if you need to engage with public bodies from DWP to your GP.

Yes it's a very good test to see who doesn't actually understand how the public realm works; especially as now a lot of less affluent people rely on a smart phone to access the internet too as they can't afford an ipad or laptop.

And it's cheaper to get it on a monthly rolling contract anyway

[Blair]

This chat is dangerous for my waistline.

[Blair]

It wasn’t even biblical levels of rains today either!

[Blair]

What time roughly should they finish the counts in these seats?

1.30am for Mid Beds and 3.30am for Tamworth (I think might be wrong way round!)

[Blair]

What is again notable is how much tactical voting there is for Labour in Tamworth

Monstrous swing. The parts of the constituency outside Tamworth town put a hard limit on things, and yet nevertheless...

Btw, as far as social and economic structures are concerned, the area has changed quite substantially since the 1990s (not in Labour's favour at all) and Pincher had a 2:1 lead over Labour in 2015.

It is also an extremely strong Leave voting seat; not sure of the top of my head of numbers but it was in the top 100 leave vote seats.

A few vox pops I saw had some voters displaying some errrr rather right wing views which perhaps suggests why the various populist right parties got 1,000+ votes but still there was a time when the lobby and co would insist labour and keir had a problem with leave voters…

[Blair]

God losing Mid Beds is mad. Absolutely mad- this is a seat that has never had a Labour MP and which has no real base for Labour to even start in.

Absolutely thrashed the Lib Dem’s. Should kill them off across the country and force them to stick to a few dozen deeply Tory seats.

Actually, when it comes to Mid Beds, they may have had a point in spinning their effort as an "assist" in defeating the Tories.  That is, as a valid vote park for "never-Labour" disgruntled ex-Tory voters.  Or had they only offered a token effort a la Tamworth, Labour might have been *less* likely to win, rather than more...

I did suggest this earlier; the issue has been a very small number of hyper online Lib Dem activists, councillors and others who have ran a rather rude and arrogant campaign- they suggested labour were not campaigning in the villages, said Labour couldn’t win in rural seats like Mid Beds and it even infected the official campaign as they attacked Labours candidates in Lib Dem leaflets- there is a reason why both Conservative and Labour activists generally dislike Lib Dems activists and the party culture.

It’s something deeper than the stupid bar charts but still a small piece of joy to take at how much some of them really embarrassed themselves.

[Blair]

Andrew Bowie had the hilarious line that people are supportive of what the Conservative Government is doing, they’re just not prepared to come pout and vote for them.

[Blair]

I am annoyed I didn’t post how this felt similar to the Ealing Southhall by election in 2007- it was a safe Labour seat which on paper was relatively fireproof.

Cameron and the Tories tried to make a big show of running a hard campaign in it and ended up coming third- this is politically the same in a way as if the Conservatives had won. It would have led to a meltdown in Labour and a real panic…

[Blair]

Yes the line appears to be ‘well labour vote only rose by 1000 in Mid Beds’ which is mad considering it’s a by election with 44% turnout compared to what 70% plus in the GE.

I’m really don’t get the effort to spin -why not just say ‘it’s bad, we’re listening and we’re going to do better’ and eat some humble pie!

I kept saying this after the last locals- this never ending effort to pretend it’s all okay is going to make it harder especially when CCHQ still appears to be running an electoral strategy based on 2021.

Mid Beds may be one of the most outstanding Labour by-election wins in their history.

They shouldn't be winning there. It is as has been suggested, and seen in the local symbolic of the Tories 'respectable' rural loyal core vote being disengaged. Abandoned.

'What's Tory about the Tories anymore' should be a bigger discussion than it is.

Equally even though it’s a rural seat it’s is not as if it’s very farming heavy like other by election loses have been; they can’t even blame it on the NFU and countryfile!

[Blair]

This all stems from the morally bankrupt decision to put Mr Blobby in charge.

[Blair]

It’s been briefed overnight that the Tories are fine because ‘Starmer isn’t Blair so it won’t be 1997’(the fun counter is that 2024 could end up in political memory as being worse!) and that voters really want tax cuts and flights to Rwanda. What a strange party.

[Blair]

Fun fact: the Labour Party has only made one gain in a by-election in the 21st century (Corby in 2012).

In general, the party has had bad luck in what seats have come up; but it's been a very poor record - even in the Miliband era you had herculean efforts to win seats like Heywood and Middleton etc. The rot has been settling in, and sadly it's bigger than Corbyn and Starmer.

Maybe this matters, maybe this doesn't: after all the Lib Dems have a history of patting themselves on their back and then flopping in the real election (before Chesham we have Eastleigh and Richmond Park, both of which were washed away in the very next election). But the fact is we have a repeated event of Labour desperately trying to stop losses from opposition, even in times of unpopular governments. Peterborough. Hartlepool. Stoke Central. Copeland.

This old post is why I find the "muh turnout" cope from Tories so fascinating. Even if it is true (it isn't) that all the abstaining voters were the Tory base, what seemed like the new normal of Labour really finding by-elections tricky has quite abruptly been turned on its head.

Yes I’m old enough to remember when winning in Wakefield was seen as a very good result as it was iirc a 6K majority- we’ve now reached the stage where labour and Liberals are under performing expectations if they don’t overturn 20,000 majorities

[Blair]

Out of interest where has the weird trend come from about looking at raw vote totals rather than vote share?

I've heard a lot of political commentators, even the non-hacks, basically repeat rubbish such as 'well Labours raw vote barely went up so there isn't any enthusiasm'- yet even when I did my A-levels I knew that by elections always had lower turnout...