UK By-elections thread, 2021-

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Nominations close for Wakefield next Wednesday and I haven’t even seen a discussion about who the Tory candidate is.

They announced a shortlist yesterday:
- Nadeem Ahmed, councillor for Wakefield South (not in the constituency) and former leader of the Tory group on Wakefield council;
- Laura Weldon, losing candidate recently in Wakefield West and formerly associated with the Yorkshire Party
- Tanya Graham, candidate for Bradford South in the 2015 and 2017 general elections.

According to "Armchair Critic" (who will know) in another place, they've selected Nadeem Ahmed.

What is his religious background? This is important.

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Kate Green is now Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, so Stretford & Urmston is officially vacant and the by-election can be on 15 December as suggested.

We could face a rather high number of by elections this term- especially considering how few are from ill health or death.

About 4 or 5 per year seems to be typical going back some time, though it was less in the Noughties (only 6 in the 2001 Parliament), but yes the proportion of them which are due to deaths is lower than in the past.  The rate was noticeably higher before 1979, but a lot were caused by deaths, and some by succeeding to a hereditary peerage, which of course can't cause a by-election any more.

The 1983 Parliament had 31 by-elections, but 15 of those were caused by the mass Unionist resignation in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement.  If I've counted correctly from the list on Wikipedia, the 1959 Parliament had 62!  (Two of them in Bristol South East, for well-known reasons.)

Reading about the politics of the early '20s, it's shocking how many by-elections there used to be. By year:

1919: 20
1920: 24
1921: 37
1922: 27

In total there were 107 by-elections to the House of Commons elected in 1918. 18 were ministerial by-elections, which were abolished soon after, but that still leaves 89. That's so many!

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I think that this showing indicates the problems that Starmer will have in the coming hung parliament thanks to his weak metropolitan support. Will the SNP be willing to accommodate the sort of policy measures that it would take for Labour to win those voters back?

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I would go further than others. Labour shouldn’t just be winning this, they should be doing so comfortably if the polls are remotely accurate.

Though a by-election is much tougher for Labour than a GE in this context as they can’t use the ‘give us a majority’ messaging which will be the centrepiece of their Scottish campaign.

I'm not sure "give us a majority" is a winning message anyway. It seems like left-wing voters who have voted SNP in the past would probably prefer a Labour minority that needs the SNP to govern to a Labour majority.

Swings toward Labour in 2017 would suggest that this is not the case. In general I do not think that voters express preferences in this way.