UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[AustralianSwingVoter]

If this is a resigning issue, then I expect many more by-elections this year, given that there are rumours of far greater misdeeds.

Ah, but many of those in question feel no shame about what they have done, whereas the former Upstanding Member for Tiverton and Honiton is obviously extremely embarrassed. Or at least his friends and family are.

Or perhaps he'd rather not journalists start digging around lest they find anything else more damaging. That's the vibe I got from just how abrupt it was.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Lord Ashcroft poll shows Uxbridge and South Ruislip at 50% Conservative to 33% Labour.  Despite not jiving with national numbers it is interesting.  If Tories somehow hold it, may give them some hope and bad news for Labour.  Still I think based on national environment Labour will flip seat.

That poll (a week old) has been comprehensively rubbished by all serious observers, and is widely seen as a crude attempt at boosterism for Johnson (the VI question had him as the Tory candidate)

Lord Ashcroft faking polls to push a narrative? Who could’ve seen that coming from the esteemed tax cheat. A man who called the PM a pig fcker because he was denied a job in the Foreign Office? Lying?

[AustralianSwingVoter]

If there’s a decently smaller swing in Uxbridge I can already see a potential Tory tabloids’ spin that it’s proof of Boris’s enduring popularity. Seems an appropriate level of tripe that qualifies for by-election “analysis”.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

If there’s a decently smaller swing in Uxbridge I can already see a potential Tory tabloids’ spin that it’s proof of Boris’s enduring popularity. Seems an appropriate level of tripe that qualifies for by-election “analysis”.

That makes no sense at all. If Boris were still so personally popular then you would expect Tory support in Uxbridge to collapse even more with him no longer on the ballot and replaced by a generic Tory candidate. It’s not as if Boris is out campaigning in the by election and asking people to vote Tory to show their support for him. If anything a Tory vote now in Uxbridge is a vote for Sunak..

He was talking about Tory tabloids’ spin, not things which make sense.

Absolutely! Though nowadays the worst spin seems to be from the Torygraph rather than an actual tabloid which is rather pathetic.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Sounds straight of of the Back to Basics era in all honesty.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

I don't know if incumbency carries as much value in Britain as in Australia, but I'd think getting a local MP entrenched, even for under a year, would markedly help Labour's chances against Moggy in NE Somerset & Hanham come the general election.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Sometimes when looking at old constituency boundary maps I really wonder what they were thinking. That 1983-97 version of Wansdyke is a case in point.

Only old constituencies? The last three attempts at boundary reviews weren’t exactly sensible at times. Mersey Banks sums it up in two words.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Meanwhile down under a particularly famous disendorsed candidate would be Pauline Hanson, disowned by Howard after calling for the abolition of special assistance for Aboriginals. She’d flip the previously safe seat anyway, swept up in the landslide rejection of Keating.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1758355823917416647

[AustralianSwingVoter]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68375450

But it was clear from speaking to voters in the rain-lashed town centre on Tuesday evening that some Labour supporters were either not aware of him being dropped by the party or did not care.

Truly bizarre. Not so much the 'don't care' part but the 'not aware' part. The dropping of Ali was the main national news headline for a couple of days. Surely anyone who is engaged enough to be voting in a by-election (or even aware that there is a by-election on) would also at least be glancing at national news headlines, especially when your town is a major subject in them. Were there people voting in the Bermondsey by-election of 1983 with the presumption that Peter Tatchell was a heterosexual Labour moderate?

Leaflet campaigns have always proved to be the most effective way to get a message out in local elections, and Bermondsey had some incredibly vicious ones (“Which Queen will you vote for”). Question is who’d be orchestrating a mass leaflet campaign against Ali, given Galloway agrees with his stance.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

https://twitter.com/harry_horton/status/1763389285326004511?t=qCxGq0ufyBJQQHspuX...

"INDEPENDANT"

[AustralianSwingVoter]

He was Vice-Chamberlain of the Household for a while. It's a rather interesting post: the holder is usually the fourth ranking Government Whip, but also has the responsibility (no, duty) to provide the Monarch with the latest parliamentary gossip including things that, as they say, do not make the papers. Especially those.

Informing the monarch on daily parliamentary gossip? A post you'd surely give to someone well informed and rather in the know. So I wonder who the Tories have currently filled it with...

Anderson has said that he had no knowledge or interest in politics during his military career. For example, at the time he went to Northern Ireland, he says that he had no knowledge of the background of The Troubles. He first developed an interest in a political career around 2005, but did not act on it for another nine years, when, after discussing it with his wife, he bought a book called Politics For Dummies and googled "how to become an MP". He voted for the Conservative Party in 2015, because in Hereford "you don't vote for Labour" and said there was no one else running. In fact, several other party candidates stood in Hereford and South Herefordshire at the 2015 general election. Anderson says that he did not know anything else about the political parties.[5] He joined the Conservative Party in 2016.[9] He had previously ridiculed party activists, but found that although he did not always have the depth of knowledge required, he enjoyed speaking to voters on the doorstep.[5]