UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Blair]

Very telling that it’s basically assumed labour will easily win a seat with an 18K Tory majority in a heavily leave area.

[Blair]

Apart from the rigged one, every recall petition has easily passed. Is this a good thing? I'm of two minds.

The interesting thing is that the current system is a weird hybrid; it was originally intended that a recall would happen if you were suspended for longer than 10 days from the House. This often only happened in rather obvious breaches of rules of traditional parliamentary rules e.g not declaring free flights or hotel trips, doing lobbying etc and this had to be investigated by the standards committee and was relatively rare.

But then the ICG scheme was introduced which specifically created a body that could investigate bullying and sexual harassment by MPs; this has in several cases reported and caused MPs to quit rather than face the indignity of a recall.

By my count this is the 10th by election related to members personal conduct

It has never been said but I assumed the hope is that one way to stop this behaviour is that for MPs to realise that breaches of the behaviour code will lead them to lose their jobs; I can't recall all the reports but the committee & body basically now have a button (recommendation of suspension for more than 10 days) which can lead to a by election.

[Blair]

Why has there been a reduction in the number of MPs resigning to take ‘big jobs’?

[Blair]

I think the notion that he ever had a personal vote in the seat is contentious - it went from a marginal to a very safe seat, but a lot of seats with similar demographics followed the same trajectory and nobody thinks Chris Pincher had a personal vote.

From what I’ve read the worry is that he’ll take support from the various association figures locally; but seeing as the Conservatives don’t really rely on volunteers as much as Labour it’s unclear what difference could be made.

[Blair]

Labours move is made harder by the fact the Bristol NE PPC is currently the Mayor of Lewisham (he grew up in Bristol and beat the v unpopular mayor of Bristol in the selection) and it’s rumoured that Dan Norris might run against Mogg- he’s the current mayor of the south west and is (I assume) up for re-election.

So might be tempting for labour to find some staffer or councillor to run as a placeholder…

[Blair]

A sign that that they have played politics on easy mode for 20 years. None of the other main parties would be so arrogant to try this.

[Blair]

Tbh that shortlist looks rather good for him, whether by accident or design - and I do suspect that the decision not to include any *local* councillors was deliberate.

Judging by the campaign materials of his rivals Waugh should win by simply turning up.

[Blair]

Labour doing some expectations management with Kingswood, it seems.

I chuckled at the ‘well it was a 11,000 majority in 2019’ which errrr the follow up question is what was the Mid Beds, Tamworth, Selby majority?

[Blair]

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.

[Blair]

Oh what a circus oh what a show

[Blair]

The funny thing is if it was just Kingswood tonight it would probably be written up as ‘solid, but average win’ for Labour- I guess labour were starting from a relatively high base, greens clearly did well (am I right the area is a bit new world- like some parts of the south west?) and reform did well.

Also I guess it helps the ex member resigned for political reasons rather than a scandal

[Blair]

I did wonder how long it would take for the Tories to back AV or PR.

The Tories taking the wrong message from by-elections partly fuels further polling and by-election losses. So I hope they do.

It annoyed me as it means we have to listen to a week of ‘well reform voters are scabs’ and ‘well stop the boats and we will win’ from various outriders and MPs but equally it will just push them further down the rabbit hole.

I’m also actually not sure what more they could do from a policy stance to stop people voting reform- they’ve had a year of chasing these voters! Three pieces of legislation to deal with channel crossings, a tax cut, about 100 culture war stories etc.

[Blair]

It’s really really bizarre to see it take off as a mainstream talking point- it has never been a measure that has been used to measure by election success!

The one thing that a lot of those people aren’t ready for is if labour win 420+ seats on election night- you would have thought they would want to face up to reality! Labour did in 2009 and it’s the reason why the result wasn’t a wash out… and why we have the Equality Act

[Blair]

It’s interesting how many people on Twitter who are interested in politics have shown that they’ve never ran a committee room or vote count (even in fantasyland type places!) as there’s a constant belief that each party automatically starts the election (whether a by election or a general) with all the voters they had in the last - people were claiming labour only got 107 new votes in Wellingborough!

But it’s rubbish- voters obviously move, die, change their views, or don’t bother voting. It’s so strange how many people who claim to follow politics don’t actually understand one of the most fundamental parts of it

[Blair]

Scott Benton has quit and thus we will have a by election- he was already facing getting chucked out after a report by the standards commissioner.

How many times will we hear ‘Blackpool once a place of….’