UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Pericles]

My guess, and it really is a guess, is that Labour have better odds of winning Hartlepool than the Tories. Betting against a government gain in a by-election is usually pretty safe. Labour's 2019 win there wasn't that close, so the split of Brexit Party voters would have to go pretty strongly to the Tories. Even if we assume that Labour is down by as much nationally as they were in the 2019 election, they may still be in a better position in Hartlepool because the Brexit divide is fading, and the polling shows that the Remain/Leave divide in voting patterns has reduced slightly. Starmer is a less toxic leader than Corbyn though, even though it's unclear whether he has enough appeal to form a government.

[Pericles]

That Labour vote is 5 points lower than 2019, very hard to believe.

[Pericles]

I don't believe the Hartlepool polls. The Brexit Party vote would have to split very strongly for the Tories, and Starmer has improved on Corbyn both nationwide and it appears the Brexit divide has reduced. However, perhaps candidate quality and bad luck has taken a Labour marginal to a Tory marginal.

[Pericles]

Not sure how on earth that happened, Starmer needs to go further in ruthlessly eliminating Labour's negatives and now take the chance to promote some bold sounding policies that poll well. The problem is that Boris right now is pretty popular with the vaccine rollout, hopefully his popularity will fade over the next few years. It's a shame that there is no electoral penalty for the many errors in the Covid response but there's not much that can be done, Covid is in the past.

[Pericles]

Labour has to stick with Starmer, the voting system means any leadership contest would suck months of time and energy away that the party can't afford and would shift it even further from where it needs to be. If the MPs were the ones with the sole power over the leadership, it might be possible for Labour to roll the dice on a fresh face if Starmer can't get his ratings up.

[Pericles]

My guess is that the Labour vote could surge there, even if they're far behind the Tories. The LibDems have fallen off the agenda since the 2019 election, they're polling much lower, and Starmer appeals to those Remainer LibDem voters. Looking at the constituency results, the LibDems don't have a huge ancestral vote, and their 2019 surge could have been a tactical Remain vote and Corbyn backlash. On the other hand, LibDems do have a good history in by-elections, even in tough seats.

[Pericles]

Chesham and Amersham will be on June 17.
https://www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/your-council/council-and-democracy/election-and-voting/election-timetable-and-notices/

Very close to June 21, why didn't the Tories just have it after they have eliminated all social distancing restrictions?

[Pericles]

Would be interested to know people's early thoughts/predictions on this

Nominating Cox's sister was the right move for Labour here. B&S seems to be a better fit for Labour's current coalition than Hartlepool too. I'd be surprised if Labour lose here. If they go then Starmer is done.

Who replace him that case any leavers???

A pure leaver I think would be unlikely. More likely is someone with a more "nuanced" position ala Nandy. But I struggle to see Rayner not winning the nomination if Starmer's leadership proves untenable.

During his actual leadership Starmer has already shifted Labour a lot on Brexit, he doesn't even want to renegotiate the Brexit deal. Given how much complaining there has been from Remainers about this, the more likely alternative is that a new Labour leader starts attacking the Brexit deal more, when it is likely in Labour's interests to move on.

[Pericles]

They actually did it! Amazing!

[Pericles]

Phew…

If you’d told me Galloway would get that much, I’d have expected a Tory win.  I wonder where Galloway’s vote actually came from: did he actually get a decent share of the Heavy Woollen Indies vote, for a start?

It looks like there would have been a swing to Labour if Batley and Spen used preferential voting, Labour got lucky with a split opposition in 2019 and the Tories couldn't win despite a split opposition now.

[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.

[Pericles]

It seems like the kind of result that is average for everyone, and even if by-elections held any predictive value for the next election, this doesn't give us any new information.

[Pericles]

Chesham and Amersham was also a landslide for the LibDems so they can afford to do a bit worse than there.

[Pericles]

https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1471104297991610372?s=20

Something in the water in old Shropshire, huh... Could be quite the doable lift for Labour if Tories' troubles continue.

Interesting, Shrewsbury and Atcham is pretty much the exact kind of seat Labour would be winning if they got an overall majority.

[Pericles]

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

[Pericles]

I wonder if this is the most boring by-election for one with a majority below 5K- even pre Ukraine there was virtually no interest. I haven’t even seen politics Twitter pretend to understand the seat!

Had it happened a year ago I suspect there would have been much more interest, it could have been another Hartlepool.

But the Conservatives have fallen a lot since those days.

The 2019 result was not like Hartlepool in the key ways. So even if Labour was down by as much as they were in 2019 or in May 2021, it would be much less vulnerable and a reliable Labour seat.

[Pericles]

This has to be a Labour win, in this environment and given the circumstances that the vacancy arose.

[Pericles]

The weird thing about that poll is Starmer was weirdly unpopular in Wakefield. In the nationwide polls it does vary a lot but that rating seems unusually low. This is just one poll and maybe the Tories are down by 20% with a sample skewed towards them.

[Pericles]

I might be imagining it but it's interesting that a fair few Conservative commentators (who are largely anti-Boris) seem to think they'll win Tiverton.

The only difference to Wakefield & Shropshire is that the reason for the resignation was rather hilarious & also short lived, and they seem to have at least have a local candidate. But the political picture looks a lot worse than it did in late December...

Tory MPs would take a win in Tiverton as a relief so that's a minor point about why the rebels should strike now.

[Pericles]

Do these Lib Dem victories portend anything enduring in all these safe Tory seats? Or are they just one time by-election protest votes and these seats will return to the fold in the GE? Would be interesting if we saw a similar phenomenon to what happened in Australia here.

Tiverton and North Shropshire look like normal Leave voting safe Tory seats. The LibDems are on track to do very well in highly educated Remain voting (or narrowly Leave seats) imo, I think they retain Chesham and Amersham. It does show the Tories have a very low floor to a minor party opposition.

[Pericles]

That looks like a much easier LibDem win than North Shropshire or Tiverton.

[Pericles]

If the unlikely does happen and Starmer is forced out, so the new Labour leader takes office at roughly the same time as the new PM, how do the honeymoon effects work? Does the Labour leader get any honeymoon effect normally, so would this reduce the PM's, or just get outshone completely?

[Pericles]

Does the speculation that Boris is using this by-election to move seats have any merit? It would be hard for the party to let him do that and then for him to win a by-election. Problem is if he wants to come back as PM he needs to have a safer seat than Uxbridge, coming back in this term would be too big of an ask. He always would have been a better Leader of the Opposition than Prime Minister anyway. In any case, the easier and more comfortable career path for him is to be another media commentator sniping on the sidelines.

[Pericles]

The Guardian says Labour asked for the recount.

[Pericles]

Lol what a wild result, maximum Westminster drama. Uxbridge going first also helps it be the 'headline result' of the night.