UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway, this whole by-election has been an entertaining Tory car crash from start to finish.

Amazing stuff, quite unbelievable. I may very well be laughing as I type.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It may just be expectation management, but pessimistic noises are coming out of the Tory camp.

It's likely the former, but if not it would mean that they think they're struggling to hit their raw vote target, whatever it is. They won't actually know much about how anyone else is doing - no one ever really does in a by-election.

In the event their candidate polled just twelve thousand votes so, yep, failed to hit whatever the target was and (rightly) went 'oh noooo...'

[Pericles]

Boris Johnson is having a really bad time and I love to see it.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Beautiful.

You hate to see it. But more than that, you love to see it.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Well done to the Lib Dems.

Can't see the new MP winning any oratory prizes soon, though.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

"A soap opera of calamity and chaos"

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

Absolute disaster for the Tories here. Labor doesn't even fall a lot and the Greens actually gained in percentage and yet it was still a comfortable LD victory.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is the first time a non-Conservative has won the constituency since 1904.
This is only the second time a non-Conservative has topped the poll since 1832.

[Joe Republic]

The reason why this by-election even happened to begin with was a huge embarrassment for the government.

The government has been undergoing a completely unrelated huge embarrassment for the past week.

And now this by-election result.  If only I had the words to describe its effect on the government…?

[H. Ross Peron]

This is the first time a non-Conservative has won the constituency since 1904.
This is only the second time a non-Conservative has topped the poll since 1832.

1904 is weirdly parallel to the current election in that both were by-elections where the Liberals won a traditionally Tory seat.

The result was "a great surprise for both Conservatives and Liberals alike". Bright believed that the electorate had rejected the government, and that "the whole of Shropshire politics had been simply a policy of Tory bluff and the people seemed to have got tired of it".[6][7]

[Conservatopia]

It's not losing the seat that hurts, it's losing it to them.

Sad state of affairs when voters feel their only outlet is voting for satirical parties.

[Blair]

Oh my.

Much like Hartlepool for Labour it will be the size of the majority that will hurt and really anger the Tories; this wasn’t close at all and they can’t even claim that on another night they would have won, or at least come close.

Well this is also worse as Hartlepool is at least a seat that is difficult for Labour demographically and which they could have lost in 2019- this is like Labour losing Glasgow East in 2008. We all know what happened two years later!

[afleitch]

Well that was fun.

[Geoffrey Howe]

A gentle reminder that the Tories did actually go on to win Christchurch in 1997 of all elections...

[Geoffrey Howe]

Of course, this is nothing but a terrible embarrassment for the Party and for Boris. In a way it's worse than Christchurch - at least the Lib Dems were clearly second there.

[parochial boy]

Question is, will the BBC and the Guardian now do anthropological vox pops in Shropshire asking the locals about their sudden new love of beards and socks and sandals?

[YL]

A gentle reminder that the Tories did actually go on to win Christchurch in 1997 of all elections...

Yes, though that was the only one of their 1992-97 losses they regained, and I think most people will expect that they will regain North Shropshire next time.

The Lib Dems' (and Liberals before them) track record at holding by-election gains is mixed.  You get cases like Ryedale 1986 where they lost it at the next election and never really challenged again, but then there are also ones like Newbury 1993 and Isle of Ely 1973 which were held through several General Elections; perhaps most strikingly there's Berwick upon Tweed 1973 which Alan Beith very narrowly won and very narrowly held in 1974 (both, but especially October), but then held for over 40 years until his retirement in 2015, when the seat inevitably went back to the Tories.

[YL]

Can't see the new MP winning any oratory prizes soon, though.

Of course she would originally, when selected in 2019, have been little more than a paper candidate in a hopeless constituency.  I doubt she imagined she'd be an MP until some day in the last few weeks when it dawned on her that she had a chance.

[adma]

We need a nickname here
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1500086f-08e3-4f29-bc77-3d2a3c969d83

[afleitch]

The average Tory decline across all by-elections is now 7.8 points. Excluding Hartlepool (due to exceptional circumstances) it's a drop of 14.1 points.

It's dropped in every by election since Hartlepool. Labour have dropped 3.4 points and the Lib Dems have gained 13.4 points.

While Labour haven't made a by-election gain since Corby in 2012, no seat has yet presented itself as an opportune scalp from the Tories, the Old Bexley result was their best showing in that seat since 2001 and Batley was only really complicated by George Galloway.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

What’s truly striking is the number of Con -> Lib switchers. With all the talk about tactical voting I don’t think anyone expected that LDs wouldn’t even need Labour votes to win.

[beesley]

Nice news to wake up to this morning.     

I too noticed that if Labour got the same vote share as last time and all of it was taken from the LDs, Morgan would still have won. Perhaps it is sensationalism, but it is impressive how many Tory LD switchers there were (and how many the media seems to come across, all in the sort of demographic that was more used to honour in government)

Forgive me for thinking that when people say Johnson only has one final chance after this, it comes across as more than a little ridiculous. I'm aware that this references his position as party leader and not as Prime Minister, but if all the existing problems with Covid and the economy as well as sleaze weren't enough, this doesn't seem a remotely hard-line position. But I suppose it is a logical one now Brexit is out of the way and the party has no electoral need for him, as Al said.

[CumbrianLefty]

Oh my.

Much like Hartlepool for Labour it will be the size of the majority that will hurt and really anger the Tories; this wasn’t close at all and they can’t even claim that on another night they would have won, or at least come close.

Well this is also worse as Hartlepool is at least a seat that is difficult for Labour demographically and which they could have lost in 2019- this is like Labour losing Glasgow East in 2008. We all know what happened two years later!

Glasgow East was (yes I know) only just lost, though.

Hartlepool certainly has some parallels - not least with an almost disastrously inappropriate choice of candidate for the defending party.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Between one by-election and another we can be fairly sure now, I think, that the insistence from some old cynics that the circumstances of a by-election never matter is... somewhat misplaced.

In terms of severity: because of how safe the seat normally is and because the margin was not close, we're maybe hitting not so much Glasgow East levels of 'oh shit' as if Labour had lost the Glasgow North East by-election the following year.

[Blair]

Oh my.

Much like Hartlepool for Labour it will be the size of the majority that will hurt and really anger the Tories; this wasn’t close at all and they can’t even claim that on another night they would have won, or at least come close.

Well this is also worse as Hartlepool is at least a seat that is difficult for Labour demographically and which they could have lost in 2019- this is like Labour losing Glasgow East in 2008. We all know what happened two years later!

Glasgow East was (yes I know) only just lost, though.

Hartlepool certainly has some parallels - not least with an almost disastrously inappropriate choice of candidate for the defending party.

I only saw this morning what his pledges where and I would have been very worried running a campaign if it had 'I will live' in the seat (making clear he doesn't- if a candidate has any local link it always gets on!) along with the need to promise not to have a second job!

https://twitter.com/DrNShastriHurst/status/1470830406140313600