UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[afleitch]

[YL]

Just a note on the rules for recall petitions.  These are only triggered in three specific sets of circumstances, and the one that is relevant here is if the MP receives a custodial sentence, including a suspended one.  So there won't be a recall petition unless she receives at least a suspended sentence.  Also, it isn't triggered until the period for appeals has passed, or the result of any appeal has been determined, so any petition is some way off.

[Coldstream]

Famously/infamously this was her candidate application form, note no. 5:

To be fair to her, candidates were encouraged to put “Any” down at that point because there were so many vacancies unfilled due to the election being on short notice. It was why you ended up with so many random candidates on the last minute short lists with no connection to the seats.

[Pericles]

The 2019 election? People had to have known that an election was coming, at least for several months and likely earlier. It's easier to say it was a huge surprise if 2017 is the election discussed.

[Coldstream]

The 2019 election? People had to have known that an election was coming, at least for several months and likely earlier. It's easier to say it was a huge surprise if 2017 is the election discussed.

Up until September 2019 most people thought the election would be in the spring. Also the seats she applied for were all ones where the incumbent MP’s had just announced they weren’t standing for re-election in the previous few weeks leading up to the election - they were the ones people were encouraged to put “any” down for. If you look at labour list there were a few other people who ended up on multiple disparate shortlists (Laura Parker, Ibrahim Dogus being two off the top of my head).

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Famously/infamously this was her candidate application form, note no. 5:

To be fair to her, candidates were encouraged to put “Any” down at that point because there were so many vacancies unfilled due to the election being on short notice. It was why you ended up with so many random candidates on the last minute short lists with no connection to the seats.

Why is that ? why do so few people want to run for office ?

[Coldstream]

Famously/infamously this was her candidate application form, note no. 5:

To be fair to her, candidates were encouraged to put “Any” down at that point because there were so many vacancies unfilled due to the election being on short notice. It was why you ended up with so many random candidates on the last minute short lists with no connection to the seats.

Why is that ? why do so few people want to run for office ?

I think it was a mixture of lots of people who might have run being burnt out/disenchanted with Corbyn’s leadership, those who did support Corbyn and wanted to run being in many cases unfit for office (whether it was anti-semitism or something else a la Webbe) and the fact that although the membership was/is huge compared to recent years it’s disproportionately concentrated in some seats. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the active membership in places like Coventry and Leicester had barely risen since 2015.

I remember in 2018 asking someone from the shadow cabinet why we’d lost Walsall North in 2017, and they said we only had 170 members there despite the surge.

[CumbrianLefty]

Which tbf likely means it had under 100 members pre-"surge" - not at all implausible IMO.

Membership increased everywhere post-2015, a few Scottish seats maybe excluded. And it would be surprising if either Leicester or Coventry didn't see a significant bump.

[beesley]

Of course ending on a whole range of ridiculous and disparate shortlists is a standard feature of the Conservative Party. See below:

Whately was selected by the Conservative Party in February 2015 to contest the Faversham and Mid Kent seat in an all-women shortlist.[18] The constituency's previous Conservative MP Hugh Robertson had chosen in January not to seek re-election.[19] She had also made the shortlist for the Wealden, North East Hampshire, South Cambridgeshire, Bury St. Edmunds and Banbury constituencies.

And of course, there was the A List for parachuting. A whole different set of procedures, but the outcome is similar. The notable point is how low-quality a candidate Claudia Webbe was.

[Coldstream]

Which tbf likely means it had under 100 members pre-"surge" - not at all implausible IMO.

Membership increased everywhere post-2015, a few Scottish seats maybe excluded. And it would be surprising if either Leicester or Coventry didn't see a significant bump.

A bump probably, but not a significant one. The membership vaulted up in places like Bristol, Brighton, inner London etc but the increase was negligible in most of the country. It would be very odd for it to have increased evenly everywhere…

In case I’m not clear, I mean negligible in absolute terms. Yes some seats probably went from 50 to 100 members, which is an achievement in itself undeniably: but the 400k plus members were concentrated in certain seats (ie Bristol West having 10k members at its peak) - and few of those, if any, were in the midlands.

[CumbrianLefty]

Um, we are taking about party membership basically doubling in less than a year.

In that case membership increasing pretty much everywhere would be EXACTLY what you would fully expect to see. Why this complete mythology that people only joined in Bristol and Brighton?

My own (iconic, even if for the wrong reasons to a Labour POV) "red wall" seat saw a big jump in membership in 2015 and after - and a smaller, but still real, rise in meeting attendance and activism. That has (especially the latter) reversed somewhat post-Corbyn, but membership is still some way above what it was in the Ed Miliband years, still more previously. And the same is true nationally.

I mean this is all checkable and on the record, so why persist in denying it??

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Party membership figures by CLP used to be published semi-regularly: I once made a few maps. I don't think this has been done for a while, part of a broader pattern of less transparency in recent years - which has been an issue across successive leaderships. We used to get leadership results by CLP as well!

[beesley]

We used to get leadership results by CLP as well!

How close was the correlation between CLP nominations and results (accounting for help to get on the ballot etc.)?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We used to get leadership results by CLP as well!

How close was the correlation between CLP nominations and results (accounting for help to get on the ballot etc.)?

Strong correlation in some places, absolutely none in others. O/c back then CLP nominations were just endorsements and did not affect ballot access.

[Coldstream]

Um, we are taking about party membership basically doubling in less than a year.

In that case membership increasing pretty much everywhere would be EXACTLY what you would fully expect to see. Why this complete mythology that people only joined in Bristol and Brighton?

My own (iconic, even if for the wrong reasons to a Labour POV) "red wall" seat saw a big jump in membership in 2015 and after - and a smaller, but still real, rise in meeting attendance and activism. That has (especially the latter) reversed somewhat post-Corbyn, but membership is still some way above what it was in the Ed Miliband years, still more previously. And the same is true nationally.

I mean this is all checkable and on the record, so why persist in denying it??

I’m struggling to see what you’re not understanding, but I’ll try and make it clearer. I did not, anywhere, say people “only” joined in Bristol etc, I said more people joined in places like Bristol than in places like Coventry. I’m not denying Corbyn brought an increase in membership just that it wasn’t evenly spread. And the places where it had least of an impact were the traditional red wall seats which is why so many had parachute candidates in the short list.

If, as you seem to believe, there was an even increase in membership even across the Red Wall - why did so many seats need Corbynite parachutes from outside at the last minute in 2019? Why not simply choose local corbynites if there were so many available as you seem to claim?

This isn’t even a specific Corbyn issue. Since the 90s the membership has been concentrated in those sorts of places, it’s why Bath has 1k+ members despite not being in contention for a Labour win for 50+ years. Whilst target seats around it like FaBS, Kingswood, NES have more like 300-500 even at their Corbynite apogee.

[beesley]

Following the tragic murder of Sir David Amess, there is now a vacancy in the constituency of Southend West.

I post this only to signpost this fact ahead of someone posing a question in this thread. We do not need to speculate or talk about the electoral dynamics of the seat, or what might happen during a by-election - such speculation may be useless before more information is determined anyway.

[CumbrianLefty]

Again, its not a question of "belief" - its the actual facts.

But this thread has - tragically - become rather more relevant to its title, so lets leave it there.

[Bakersfield Uber Alles]

I would suspect and hope that the Lib Dems, Greens, and Labour would not run a candidate, similar to how the Tories, Greens, UKIP, and Lib Dems didn’t run a candidate after Jo Cox’s murder.

[Coldstream]

I would suspect and hope that the Lib Dems, Greens, and Labour would not run a candidate, similar to how the Tories, Greens, UKIP, and Lib Dems didn’t run a candidate after Jo Cox’s murder.

That would be my hope. The party has suspended campaigning in general, so I’d assume a statement about the vacancy will be forthcoming over the weekend.

[afleitch]

There is an old tradition (though not consistently followed), despite certain facts being obvious, to not speculate on by-elections in the case of death until they are properly eulogised and buried.

I'd like this to remain that way.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

There is an old tradition (though not consistently followed), despite certain facts being obvious, to not speculate on by-elections in the case of death until they are properly eulogised and buried.

I'd like this to remain that way.

In any case, Labour, Liberal Democrats and The Green Party have all announced they will not contest the seat. The tradition of not contesting by-elections created by political assignations is fairly new however, does anyone know why it was established only in 2016 with previous by-elections in the 90's caused by the IRA contested with Eastbourne even flipping ?.

[CumbrianLefty]

Tbf there was debate at the time over the propriety of contesting byelections like Enfield Southgate in 1984 and indeed Eastbourne in 1990 (of course the Tories tried to raise it as an issue in the latter, but did so in such a crude and clumsy fashion that it undoubtedly backfired)

The nature of Cox's killing was so shocking and horrific, however, that Cameron's statement the Tories would not contest the resulting vacancy (followed by the other "main" parties, which in 2016 included UKIP even if that's not the case now) was half expected.

And having set that precedent, it would be tricky to back out of it now.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What strikes me is that twenty six years separate the murders of Gow and Cox and that that's more than long enough for significant shifts in attitude. I think a big part of it is just that the magic has very much gone out of by-elections. They used to be something that politicians, for the most part, actually rather enjoyed and that the public took a reasonably keen interest in. These days I don't think that anyone really much likes them: they're an ordeal and a chore, even when they go the way one wishes them to. So perhaps there's an element of revealed preference to this: when by-elections were thought of as a critical part of our democracy, allowing their usual function to be over-ridden in response to a political murder would have been seen as giving in on some level. Now that they are not, the reverse is true.

[CumbrianLefty]

What strikes me is that twenty six years separate the murders of Gow and Cox and that that's more than long enough for significant shifts in attitude. I think a big part of it is just that the magic has very much gone out of by-elections. They used to be something that politicians, for the most part, actually rather enjoyed and that the public took a reasonably keen interest in. These days I don't think that anyone really much likes them: they're an ordeal and a chore, even when they go the way one wishes them to. So perhaps there's an element of revealed preference to this: when by-elections were thought of as a critical part of our democracy, allowing their usual function to be over-ridden in response to a political murder would have been seen as giving in on some level. Now that they are not, the reverse is true.

Hmmm, an interesting take and there is likely some truth in it.

Of course, to those primarily motivated by psephology they will never stop being intriguing

[beesley]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59049343

The suspension of Owen Paterson from the House of Commons for 30 days following him being found guilty of breaching rules by the standards committee will lead to a recall petition, which then might lead to a by-election if the prerequisite number of signatures is reached. The constituency in question is North Shropshire, which has been Conservative-held since its most recent formation and would have a far greater chance of re-returning Paterson than Brecon and Radnorshire did for Chris Davies.