UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I think that is an.......over-simplistic reading of things. Labour going into a 2019 GE on an openly Lexit platform might have seen them lucky to get 150 seats never mind 200.

I thought this at the time, but the truly abysmal performance of the LDs under Swinson suggests most of the left-leaning Remainers would have returned to Labour. It is not as if they did well amongst right-leaning Remainers even with their pro-2nd referendum stance.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I think that is an.......over-simplistic reading of things. Labour going into a 2019 GE on an openly Lexit platform might have seen them lucky to get 150 seats never mind 200.

I thought this at the time, but the truly abysmal performance of the LDs under Swinson suggests most of the left-leaning Remainers would have returned to Labour. It is not as if they did well amongst right-leaning Remainers even with their pro-2nd referendum stance.

The LDs didn't do awfully under Swinson. OK, they should have done better; but they came very close in a good few seats, and overtook Labour in much of southern England. With one more percentage point nationally they would have got quite a few more seats.

Of course seats-wise they didn't do well, but that didn't much matter in a Boris landslide.

They absolutely did awfully under Swinson. They went backwards from 2017 in terms of seats and lost their leader's parliamentary representation, failed to retake their most plump Labour-held* target, lost all of the progress they made under Vince Cable, and completely collapsed in most of their Conservative-held targets (especially their former stomping grounds in the Celtic fringe). Even in metropolitan, Remainer-leaning areas, they failed to squeeze all they could out of Labour in, say, Wimbledon. When the dust settled, they had fewer realistic target seats than after 2017, and the list is probably even shorter in reality because ex-MPs like Andrew George have probably lost their appetite to contest these seats again.

*It was actually held by disgraced former Labour MP Jared O'Mara on election day, but this makes the failure to capture the seat even more embarrassing. Labour did a really good job of defending against the LibDems, and could probably have gotten away with being a bit more Lexit-y.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I think that is an.......over-simplistic reading of things. Labour going into a 2019 GE on an openly Lexit platform might have seen them lucky to get 150 seats never mind 200.

I thought this at the time, but the truly abysmal performance of the LDs under Swinson suggests most of the left-leaning Remainers would have returned to Labour. It is not as if they did well amongst right-leaning Remainers even with their pro-2nd referendum stance.

The LDs didn't do awfully under Swinson. OK, they should have done better; but they came very close in a good few seats, and overtook Labour in much of southern England. With one more percentage point nationally they would have got quite a few more seats.

Of course seats-wise they didn't do well, but that didn't much matter in a Boris landslide.

They absolutely did awfully under Swinson. They went backwards from 2017 in terms of seats and lost their leader's parliamentary representation, failed to retake their most plump Labour-held* target, lost all of the progress they made under Vince Cable, and completely collapsed in most of their Conservative-held targets (especially their former stomping grounds in the Celtic fringe). Even in metropolitan, Remainer-leaning areas, they failed to squeeze all they could out of Labour in, say, Wimbledon. When the dust settled, they had fewer realistic target seats than after 2017, and the list is probably even shorter in reality because ex-MPs like Andrew George have probably lost their appetite to contest these seats again.

*It was actually held by disgraced former Labour MP Jared O'Mara on election day, but this makes the failure to capture the seat even more embarrassing. Labour did a really good job of defending against the LibDems, and could probably have gotten away with being a bit more Lexit-y.

It probably won't stick, but they laid the foundation in many seats across the South, getting by far their best results since 2010; in some places coming close to that. Obviously they should have done better given how bad the others were. It doesn't help much to talk about Scottish seats which have a completely different dynamic.*

*I saw someone say that the loss of East Dunbartonshire showed their anti-Brexit stance backfired, which is ridiculous since they lost it to the pro-EU SNP.

When I referred to losses in the Celtic fringe, I was thinking less about Scotland and more about the southwest of England and, to a lesser extent, the Brecon/Montgomery/Ceredigion trio in Wales.

The LibDems built foundations in new places, but the end result was fewer targets where they were within 10-20% than after 2017, in addition to fewer seats held than after 2017.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I think that is an.......over-simplistic reading of things. Labour going into a 2019 GE on an openly Lexit platform might have seen them lucky to get 150 seats never mind 200.

I thought this at the time, but the truly abysmal performance of the LDs under Swinson suggests most of the left-leaning Remainers would have returned to Labour. It is not as if they did well amongst right-leaning Remainers even with their pro-2nd referendum stance.

The LDs didn't do awfully under Swinson. OK, they should have done better; but they came very close in a good few seats, and overtook Labour in much of southern England. With one more percentage point nationally they would have got quite a few more seats.

Of course seats-wise they didn't do well, but that didn't much matter in a Boris landslide.

They absolutely did awfully under Swinson. They went backwards from 2017 in terms of seats and lost their leader's parliamentary representation, failed to retake their most plump Labour-held* target, lost all of the progress they made under Vince Cable, and completely collapsed in most of their Conservative-held targets (especially their former stomping grounds in the Celtic fringe). Even in metropolitan, Remainer-leaning areas, they failed to squeeze all they could out of Labour in, say, Wimbledon. When the dust settled, they had fewer realistic target seats than after 2017, and the list is probably even shorter in reality because ex-MPs like Andrew George have probably lost their appetite to contest these seats again.

*It was actually held by disgraced former Labour MP Jared O'Mara on election day, but this makes the failure to capture the seat even more embarrassing. Labour did a really good job of defending against the LibDems, and could probably have gotten away with being a bit more Lexit-y.

It probably won't stick, but they laid the foundation in many seats across the South, getting by far their best results since 2010; in some places coming close to that. Obviously they should have done better given how bad the others were. It doesn't help much to talk about Scottish seats which have a completely different dynamic.*

*I saw someone say that the loss of East Dunbartonshire showed their anti-Brexit stance backfired, which is ridiculous since they lost it to the pro-EU SNP.

When I referred to losses in the Celtic fringe, I was thinking less about Scotland and more about the southwest of England and, to a lesser extent, the Brecon/Montgomery/Ceredigion trio in Wales.

The LibDems built foundations in new places, but the end result was fewer targets where they were within 10-20% than after 2017, in addition to fewer seats held than after 2017.

From a purely FPTP perspective, it was bad. But they substantially increased their number of second places (I’m not sure on the exact numbers, but quite possibly more than doubled, maybe almost tripled), and of course increased their vote share by 5 points. Perhaps more importantly, their electoral coalition looked more cohesive than it has in a long time (i.e. affluent, educated Southern Remainers) - not great if you want to recapture the success of Charles Kennedy, but good for achieving the more reasonable goal of maintaining a modicum of medium-term relevance, and trying to clear 20 seats again.

This is a fair point, and I'm not going to move the goalposts from 2017. There are some bright spots in the 2019 results relative to them.

I maintain that the Swinson leadership was awful, even if the performance was not, because her tenure consisted of throwing away most of the gains the LDs had made under Cable and alienating even more Brexiteers. Some of that was inevitable, but the scale of the retreat over a few months was astounding. Even in traditional Tory-Lib Dem fights like Cheadle, Labour voters went back to the red team in significant - and electorally fatal - numbers.

The base was quite small by the end, and they probably couldn't have eaten much into Labour in a GE under her leadership so long as Labour had been careful with their Lexit-y rhetoric (perhaps Labour clarifying what the Corbyn deal actually meant would have helped them, as their rhetoric was really vague to begin with).