UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[YL]

The writ for the Southend West by-election caused by the murder of Sir David Amess was moved yesterday and the by-election will be on 3 February.  Nominations close on Tuesday.

We know that Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and Reform UK aren't contesting this, but UKIP have announced a candidate, as have some new outfit called the "English Constitution Party", and far right activist Jayda Fransen is also supposedly standing.

No doubt about the winner of this one.

Something to look for is turnout - the lowest previous figure for a peacetime UK byelection was 18% at Manchester Central in 2012, if a lot of browned off Tory voters stay at home that record could go.

To be honest I don't think there'll be much point in trying to take anything from the result of this unless something very strange happens.  It's just not a normal by-election.

[YL]

Nine candidates for Southend West:

Christopher Anderson (Freedom Alliance)
Catherine Blaiklock (English Democrats)
Olga Childs (no description) [1]
Ben Downton (Heritage Party)
Anna Firth (Conservative)
Jayda Fransen (Independent) [2]
Steve Laws (UKIP)
Graham Moore (English Constitution Party)
Jason Pilley (Psychedelic Movement) [3]

[1] Address in the Corby constituency; a quick search didn't find anythingsee Tintrlvr's post below
[2] The British Freedom Party isn't registered
[3] Stood in the last General Election in Rochford & Southend East with the similar description "Psychedelic Future Party" and got 37 votes in Westborough ward in last year's Southend council election with this description.

[YL]

The Worker’s Party (George Galloway’s reactionary communists) , Breakthrough Party (young Corbynistas), and Northern Independence Party (extremely online southern based students) are the only 3 that immediately come to mind. The more traditional far left as represented by Socialist Party etc seems to have melted away and only contests random council wards if they even still functionally exist.

In addition to those there was an Alliance for Green Socialism (a Leeds based outfit) candidate in Batley & Spen.  TUSC seem to be by some way the most active at local level, but were dormant during the Corbyn years and haven't stood in any of the recent by-elections.

I think there was some expectation that Breakthrough might try their luck here.

Well they might have got a decent vote share if they had, but possibly they just decided that it wasn't appropriate for them to do so in the circumstances.  They haven't actually stood many candidates anywhere yet so they may just not really be that organised.

[YL]

There's a likely by-election in Lagan Valley, caused by the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson needing to get himself into the Northern Ireland Assembly in the forthcoming election (this May) if he's going to become First Minister.

Briefly, it looked like this wasn't going to happen after all, because the Government announced a plan to remove the ban on double jobbing between Westminster and Stormont in certain restricted circumstances which looked rather specifically defined to allow Donaldson to remain an MP until the next Westminster election.  But now this plan, which went down pretty badly with everybody other than the DUP and some Tories, has been withdrawn, so the by-election is back on again.

[YL]

There's a likely by-election in Lagan Valley, caused by the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson needing to get himself into the Northern Ireland Assembly in the forthcoming election (this May) if he's going to become First Minister.

Briefly, it looked like this wasn't going to happen after all, because the Government announced a plan to remove the ban on double jobbing between Westminster and Stormont in certain restricted circumstances which looked rather specifically defined to allow Donaldson to remain an MP until the next Westminster election.  But now this plan, which went down pretty badly with everybody other than the DUP and some Tories, has been withdrawn, so the by-election is back on again.

This one looks to be a snoozefest based on past results, unless I’m missing something.

It ought to be, but there was a 17% swing to Alliance in 2019 and with the DUP not in particularly great shape at the moment they'd give it a go in a by-election.  If the big U Unionist vote splits they might have a chance.

[YL]

Paulette Hamilton won the Labour selection for Birmingham Erdington.

I presume the fact that Labour have already selected means the writ will be moved in the near future.

[YL]

Dave Nellist is standing as the TUSC candidate in Erdington.

He has an unusually successful electoral history for a far left candidate.  He was a Labour MP for the then Coventry South East constituency from 1983, but was expelled from the party in 1991 over links to Militant.  He stood as an independent in the 1992 General Election; he came third, but got 28% of the vote and actually wasn't that far off holding his seat, one of the best performances by "left of Labour" candidates not called George Galloway in a parliamentary election.  (He did considerably better than the other MP expelled from Labour at the same time, Terry Fields.)  Later he was a Coventry city councillor for the Socialist Alternative (one part of TUSC) for 14 years, and even had two ward colleagues representing the same party for a time, but lost his seat in 2012.

[YL]

The writ for Birmingham Erdington was moved yesterday and the by-election has been called for 3 March.  Nominations close on Tuesday next week.

[YL]

Slightly better both turnout and Tory share-wise than I had thought might be the case.

But the number of spoiled ballots shows even a token fringe left candidate would very likely have come second (and taken the winning percentage down a few points)

Probably, if only by scooping the Labour voters who turned up not knowing there wasn’t a Labour candidate; after all I imagine that that’s where a lot of the spoilt ballots and Psychedelic Movement votes came from.  (I doubt most of those 512 people actually knew about some of the weirder right wing sounding stuff in the “manifesto”.)  But they may well have decided that in the circumstances they didn’t want to, just like Labour etc. themselves.

[YL]

Southend West is probably still a long shot for Labour in next election, although if getting a majority without Scotland, this would likely be on target list.  Neighbouring seat of Rochford and Southend East probably more winnable.

The current boundary change proposals reverse that situation, at least according to some calculations.  E.g. if you enter some recent polls into Electoral Calculus and select the current proposals, the new Southend West comes up as a Labour gain.

[YL]

12 candidates for Birmingham Erdington:

Robert Alden (Con)
David Bishop (Militant Bus-Pass Elvis Party)
Jack Brookes (Reform UK)
Lee Dargue (Lib Dem)
Paulette Hamilton (Lab)
Siobhan Harper-Nunes (Green)
Clifton Holme (Independent) [1]
Michael Lutwyche (Independent) [2]
Mel Mbondiah (Christian People's Alliance)
Dave Nellist (TUSC)
Thomas O'Rourke (Independent) [3]
The Good Knight Sir NosDa (Official Monster Raving Loony Party)

[1] This LinkedIn page, I suppose.
[2] Active Twitter account @LudforE; he's a Justice for the 21 campaigner (referring to the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings; comes across as something of a localist-populist
[3] There are news stories referring to someone from Birmingham of this name, but whether it's him I don't know.

[YL]

Has any party other than Labour been actively campaigning or are they fielding paper candidates?

Labour, TUSC, Ind Lutwyche and the Tories all have Twitter-detectable campaigning activity.  Former Derby North MP Chris Williamson has been campaigning for Nellist.

[YL]

Forgive my ignorance but could anyone give a summary of Erdginton as a constituency?

The majority is roughly the same size as Batley and smaller than Hartlepool yet it seems to be treated as if the majority was 15K- I know that the polls are a reason partly.

Labour got (just) over 50% in 2019, which is a striking difference from Batley & Spen and even more so Hartlepool.

I don't know the constituency, but AIUI it's a mostly working class slice of north Birmingham, between the M6 and Sutton Coldfield.  I suspect it would have been vulnerable in some circumstances, especially if the current MP for Birmingham Northfield had been the Tory candidate.  
Here are its rankings (out of 650) on some census variables (over 10 years out of date now, of course):

Managers, directors and senior officials: 614
Professional: 508
Associate professional and technical: 538
Administrative and secretarial: 212
Skilled trades: 374
Caring, leisure and other service: 79
Sales and customer service: 165
Process plant and machine operatives: 98
Elementary occupations: 56

No qualifications: 29
Level 4 qualifications: 402
Full time students: 190

Deprivation (2016 data): 12

[YL]

Andrew Teale's preview (together with various local by-elections).

There's been a bit of a fuss about some comments the Labour candidate made in 2015, going as far as for the Tory MP for Birmingham Northfield (and councillor for Kingstanding, partly in the constituency) Gary Sambrook to call for her not to receive the Labour whip if elected.  This Birmingham Mail story has some details.

[YL]

Joke parties like the LibDems, Loonies and Elvis did very poorly - again a reflection of low turnout.

Everybody except Labour and the Tories did pretty badly really: third place was only just over 2%.  Yet another by-election in not entirely unpromising territory where Reform UK got nowhere, and even if he did manage third the noise to votes ratio for Dave Nellist was very high.

[YL]

Genuine question - when was the last parliamentary byelection before this one to give Labour/Tories combined over 90% of the vote? Suspect it was some time ago.

Tooting 2016?

[YL]

Wakefield by-election confirmed: Imran Ahmad Khan is resigning as an MP.  He's not admitting guilt, but saying the appeal process will take a long time and that the constituents shouldn't be without proper representation.

[YL]

It’s the first Tory-held Red Wall seat to go up for election since 2019, and a rare chance for a Labour pick-up.

For those playing the home game - Labour have had a historically bad run in by-elections since Brexit realigned the electorate, starting with the Tory gain in Copeland (former Labour heartland and mining area with big pro-Leave vote), under Theresa May. This by-election provides Labour with their first and best chance to flip the script before 2024.

Wakefield sits a short distance from Leeds in West Yorkshire, and was Labour-held for 90 years until 2019. Khan’s majority was only 3,358 votes, so expect a high profile contest.

Only a short time after a narrow margin in Batley and Spen (which borders Wakefield), saved his bacon, the trajectory of Keir Starmer’s leadership is once more going to be shaped by the whims of a few thousand voters in West Yorkshire.

It's a rather different sort of seat from Batley & Spen.  (Most are, TBH.)  It has more of a coalfield influence, and the Heavy Woollen District bits (Horbury and Ossett) are much less Muslim than Batley or Heckmondwike.  (The religious segregation in those parts would embarrass much of Northern Ireland.)

The core of Wakefield, the old County Borough, forms four wards of Wakefield Metropolitan Borough, each named as "Wakefield" plus a compass point.  Wakefield South, traditionally a safe Tory ward, is not in this constituency, having been moved to Hemsworth in 1997.  The other three, which are in the constituency, all usually vote Labour, although Wakefield East voted Tory last year.  (The Tory councillor has since fallen out with the party and now sits as an Independent.)

West of Wakefield South is a ward with the rather unhelpful name of Wakefield Rural, which is in the constituency.  This includes the areas of Crigglestone and Durkar which are fairly built up and close to the city, but stretches out over a more rural area with some mining heritage (indeed it includes the National Coal Mining Museum, as well as the Yorkshire Sculpture Park at West Bretton) to the South Yorkshire border.  This ward usually votes Conservative, but did vote Labour in 2012 and 2014.

The rest of the constituency is the towns of Ossett and Horbury, which were in the Normanton constituency from 1997 to 2010, and form the wards of Ossett and Horbury & South Ossett.  Ossett ward has voted for four different parties on current boundaries, being Lib Dem until 2008 and then being a Con/Lab marginal but voting UKIP in 2014; more recently it has been Conservative leaning and currently has three Tory councillors, one of whom posts on Vote UK as "Armchair Critic".  Horbury & South Ossett, where UKIP came close a couple of times but never won, is a little better for Labour, and they held their seat there last year.

Boundaries were rather different further back, and are currently proposed to be very different in the near future, but of course that won't affect this by-election.

Some demographic rankings from the 2011 census, out of 650:

Managers, directors and senior officials: 387
Professional: 492
Associate professional and technical: 354
Administrative and secretarial: 373
Skilled trades: 302
Caring, leisure and other service: 381
Sales and customer service: 285
Process plant and machine operatives: 119
Elementary occupations: 81

No qualifications: 140
Level 4 qualifications (i.e. degree level): 491
Full time students: 455

Deprivation (2016 data): 202

(So: fairly working class, but not strikingly so, and more deprived than the median but again not strikingly so.  Not very educated or professional.)

[YL]

Any idea as to when the by-election will be held?

By-elections caused by resignation can't have the writ moved during recess, so it won't be moved until the middle of next week.  Then you need 21 to 27 working days from the receipt of the writ.  Given the current trend is to get things done quickly, I think that makes Thursday 26 May a likely date, especially as the Thursday in the week after that is a Bank Holiday.  The Tories could delay it for longer than that, though.

It can't be held concurrent with the locals...can it?

No, a couple of weeks too late for that.

[YL]

The seat has quite an interesting history; it’s not one of the seats Thatcher won in 1983 (see Darlington, Batley etc) nor is it one of the ones that had huge Labour majorities in say 2010 or 2015.

It has been changed quite radically at every boundary review since (and inclusive of) 1983. As well as the changes alluded to by YL above, the constituency that existed in the postwar decades stretched a surprising distance south to include Royston (a large mining town just north of Barnsley) which greatly bolstered the Labour vote; its removal then made it a constituency quite vulnerable in a poor year and Labour were lucky that Walter Harrison decided to run one last time in 1983 - in the event he hung on by the skin of his teeth.

I think the 1983 boundary changes were mostly just the removal of Royston; is that right?  (NB Wikipedia does not mention Royston as ever having been in the seat, but the historical maps on Vision of Britain show that it was indeed included.)  Obviously the removal of Royston helped the Tories, as you say.  It seems a little surprising that Labour held on in 1983.

The 1997 boundary changes moved Wakefield South to Hemsworth and Horbury to Normanton and brought in Denby Dale and Kirkburton across the border in Kirklees.  This seems a weird Boundary Commission decision, but I don't know what the alternatives considered were.  I guess the partisan effects on this seat were neutral to slightly pro-Labour?  (Wakefield South's Toryness replaced by Kirkburton's, and Horbury and Denby Dale both being marginal)

The 2010 boundary changes removed the two Kirklees wards again and brought back Horbury, bringing with it Ossett, which had been in Normanton since 1983 and before that had been in Dewsbury.  I assume this helped Labour a little; in fact the seat might have fallen in 2010 on the previous boundaries.

Meanwhile the current proposals effectively abolish the current constituency and divide it between two new constituencies, although one of those would take the name "Wakefield".  That one would contain the three Wakefield (compass point) wards together with the two Outwood wards to their north, currently in Morley & Outwood, and the Rothwell ward of Leeds, currently sharing the rather lumped together Elmet & Rothwell constituency with Garforth, Wetherby etc. but once giving its name to a constituency in its own right.  The other one, provisionally named "Ossett & Denby Dale", would include Ossett, Horbury and Wakefield Rural, actually the majority of the current constituency, together with Wakefield South from Hemsworth and, again, Denby Dale and Kirkburton, currently in Dewsbury.  You'd imagine that a Labour winner of the by-election would aim for the new Wakefield whereas a Tory would aim for Ossett & Denby Dale.

[YL]

(From the THIGMOO thread in IGD)

Muttering Ed Balls might be running in Wakefield and ofc Gordon Brown is briefed as supporting it.

I do respect that he’s the only ex prime Minister who still gets involved in THIGMO beef.

I would be shocked if it happens- I’m not sure he’s local other than previously having a house (I assume) in Morley. Smacks of Hartlepool.

He was MP for the old Normanton constituency before it was abolished and he followed the Outwood wards to Morley & Outwood.  So he has been MP for part of the current Wakefield constituency (Horbury and Ossett) before.  I'm not sure that makes it a good idea though.

From the same story, it appears Ahmad Khan hasn't actually formalised his resignation yet, so we may be waiting a bit longer.

[YL]

If you want a laugh in these troubled times, then the weekend "Tories see (Lord) David Frost as their electoral superman to win Wakefield" concoction might just provide it. Quite apart from the trifling matter of it actually being illegal, it shows just how clueless many in that party currently are.

I don't think it actually is illegal.  He could resign from the Lords according to the terms of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 and then would be eligible to stand as an MP according to section 4 of that Act.

[YL]

LOL, that's a by-election cause I didn't have on the bingo sheet.

Lib Dems will probably start as favourites given recent form, though they were third in 2019 (like North Shropshire) and the seat and its main predecessors have been Tory since forever (like, um, North Shropshire); unlike a lot of West Country seats it's never had a Lib Dem MP, though it was close in 1997.  But it needs a 23% swing and presumably some day the Tories will actually choose a sensible candidate for a by-election defence against the Lib Dems.

[YL]

It’s a pretty safe Tory seat - i.e majority over 20,000 since 2015. The closest it’s been was a 2,000 vote majority over the Lib Dems in 1997. Labour are typically in second place, since 2015 at least, but the centre-left vote gets pretty badly split.

There is a world where the Conservatives lose the seat, but based on the past few cycles, the Lib Dems would have to stand back, Labour would have to run a strong candidate, and there would have to be significant apathy amongst Conservative voters.

Labour, and Starmer, will most likely be focusing their fire (and funds) on Wakefield at the time, but if they were to win here, it would be quite significant.

It’s actually numerically pretty close to North Shropshire, the seat of Owen Paterson that fell to the Lib Dems (majority of 2,000 in 1997, majority north of 20K over the past decade). Time will tell whether that wild result could be replicated here.

I think this is another of the sort of seat where Labour may have been second in recent elections, but they can't win, will know this, and will leave it to the Lib Dems, especially as Labour will focus on Wakefield.

[YL]

Tory whips worried this might not be the only South West by-election…

Somerton & Frome, or is there another possibility?

I suppose the Tories might not mind Lib Dem resources having to be spread around a bit.