UK By-elections thread, 2021-

[Alcibiades]

In some ways it is unfortunate that the by-election had to be in Hartlepool of all places, as it can easily be spun into the ‘Red Wall’ narrative by those both inside and outside of the Labour Party. I think Labour have to stop obsessing over and fetishising these places, not merely because it could lead to missed opportunities in other areas with more upside, but because the harder you pander to a group, the more patronising and inauthentic you come across as to that group.

Ultimately, if Labour can find a good, effective message (easier said than done of course), it will lead to gains everywhere in the country - Leave, Remain, North, South, working class, middle class - and they don’t need to worry too much about targeting specific groups. I know how clichéd this sounds, but there truly is much more that unites voters in this country than divides them.

[Alcibiades]

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.

[Alcibiades]

There's a non-zero chance of Labour losing their deposit in this by-election.  Would this be seen as "Labour in disarray" or would it not be all that big a deal?  When last did one of the two big parties lose a deposit at a Westminster seat?

Labour lost their deposit at the last general election in a few Lib Dem-Tory marginals, such as Winchester and Richmond Park off the top of my head.

[Alcibiades]

It is of course just one measure, but this quite neatly captures the difference between Richmond Park and Old Bexley and Sidcup: 64% have a degree or equivalent in the former (the highest of any constituency in the country), compared to 27% in the latter (roughly in line with the national average).

[Alcibiades]

If you’re been to Bromley you’ll understand how Bexley is a Tory enclave- it’s very much a completely different world- the fact there are a number of golf courses on the train line down there is a pithy example.

There are parts of Kent that are extremely affluent (owner occupied village with cricket greens) that voted Leave- Brexit has been rewritten since as a largely economic fight but it was very much a cultural one too.

Indeed - one of the several archetypes of a Leave voter that I have in my head is a well-off Telegraph-reading retiree in the Home Counties. There certainly was a decently strong class correlation in the referendum, probably more prominent than any in the last couple of general elections, but age and education (the latter being a function of the former to a large extent, of course) were stronger predictors.

[Alcibiades]

If you’re been to Bromley you’ll understand how Bexley is a Tory enclave- it’s very much a completely different world- the fact there are a number of golf courses on the train line down there is a pithy example.

There are parts of Kent that are extremely affluent (owner occupied village with cricket greens) that voted Leave- Brexit has been rewritten since as a largely economic fight but it was very much a cultural one too.

Indeed - one of the several archetypes of a Leave voter that I have in my head is a well-off Telegraph-reading retiree in the Home Counties.

The only reason you have this architype meme in your head is that's what left-wing remainers had to conjur up to convince themselves they were on the good (poor) side. That's why you get all this blatant nonsense like London is oh so poor and everyone outside the M25 is some rich businessman living in a converted barn. It's complete horsesh**t. The places that are closest to that archetype, such as Tonbridge Wells for example, are the only places around these parts that significantly tilted towards Remain.

Do you think places like Medway or Clacton are well off?

Um, if you actually read my post, you would have noticed I said that there evidently was a class correlation, and that the average Remain-voting place is obviously more affluent than the average Leave-voting one. My point was that old people in, say, Tunbridge Wells, are likely to have voted Leave even if they were well-off, because age tended to trump class. There is, believe it or not, quite a bit of nuance to such patterns. I hate to go all “anecdotal evidence”, but I know of quite a few elderly upper middle people here in uber-Remain SW London who voted Leave. And, by the way, I’m really not the type to obsess over the voter demographics of my preferred side to convince myself of our moral superiority. I’m a keen, but generally disinterested, observer of electoral sociology.

[Alcibiades]

If you’re been to Bromley you’ll understand how Bexley is a Tory enclave- it’s very much a completely different world- the fact there are a number of golf courses on the train line down there is a pithy example.

There are parts of Kent that are extremely affluent (owner occupied village with cricket greens) that voted Leave- Brexit has been rewritten since as a largely economic fight but it was very much a cultural one too.

Indeed - one of the several archetypes of a Leave voter that I have in my head is a well-off Telegraph-reading retiree in the Home Counties.

The only reason you have this architype meme in your head is that's what left-wing remainers had to conjur up to convince themselves they were on the good (poor) side. That's why you get all this blatant nonsense like London is oh so poor and everyone outside the M25 is some rich businessman living in a converted barn. It's complete horsesh**t. The places that are closest to that archetype, such as Tonbridge Wells for example, are the only places around these parts that significantly tilted towards Remain.

Do you think places like Medway or Clacton are well off?

Um, if you actually read my post, you would have noticed I said that there evidently was a class correlation, and that the average Remain-voting place is obviously more affluent than the average Leave-voting one. My point was that old people in, say, Tunbridge Wells, are likely to have voted Leave even if they were well-off, because age tended to trump class. There is, believe it or not, quite a bit of nuance to such patterns. I hate to go all “anecdotal evidence”, but I know of quite a few elderly upper middle people here in uber-Remain SW London who voted Leave. And, by the way, I’m really not the type to obsess over the voter demographics of my preferred side to convince myself of our moral superiority. I’m a keen, but generally disinterested, observer of electoral sociology.

The correlations you are talking about are aggregated over the whole country though. When talking only of certain areas these break down.

I'm from Kent originally, I know it and the people well. I was driving around during the referendum when all the signs were up. There were so many here on private properties it was pretty easy to see the correlations. The dominant factor of whether any property was Leave or Remain was clearly not age, but the socio-economics of the area. Townhouses, converted barns, new-build for London escapees were all uniformally Remain. Ex-council estates and decrepit victorian terraces etc (which by their nature tend to house younger families here) were a sea of Leave.

The reason for the age factor is the massive demographic difference between London (and to a smaller extent other cities) and the rest of the country. Young people outside the cities are not necessarily strongly remain, old people not necessarily as Leave as the aggregated figures suggest either.

It's incredibly frustrating when people not from the area claim the reason places like north and east Kent voted leave was because they're actually full of rich old people; I know from my own experience it was precisely the opposite.

Oh, please don’t get me wrong; economic depression was obviously one of the main reasons that north and east Kent voted so strongly for Leave. Just trying to point out a bit of the subtlety to such things.

[Alcibiades]

It would be interesting to see how he would go down in Hartlepool today.

Heh, was wondering that myself after seeing the scale of the NS swing.

Not impossible it is one of the few places that still remains *relatively* loyal to him - its different from even most of the "red wall" areas it gets bracketed with.

It’s totally politically unique, different from just about everywhere else in the country, yeah. So I suppose it is a possibility that his popularity hasn’t declined as much there, but considering just how much of a hit it has taken across the board…

[Alcibiades]

They still wouldn't be voting (official) Tory though would they - some of those types might stick with the party reluctantly if Parish doesn't run.

To put all this into context perhaps, bookies have the LibDems as clear favourites - which is still a bit remarkable when you look at the last GE result.

Well, by most measures it ought to be an easier gain for them than North Shropshire…

[Alcibiades]

Well it wouldn’t be a shock if we have another south west by-election but god knows the Tories will be moving heaven and earth to stop any. The only seats that are safe are the ones facing Labour in Essex.

Also to be blunt MPs facing investigations often stay in Parliament- they in some cases get legal advice paid for them (as I believe the Hartlepool MP did via insurance) and leaving means they lose a large amount of their income.

The traditional thing after a big byelection upset is to project the results nationally as Peter Snow's "just a bit of fun" - Tiverton/Honiton would have an almost total Tory wipeout outside three areas:

1) a belt through Lincolnshire into Fenland;
2) a ring of seats immediately to the north of the W Midlands;
3) a clutch on both sides of the Thames Estuary (ie Essex and Kent)

This is maybe a pretty good guide to the seats they could reasonably expect to hold in a byelection right now - the last bastions of Johnsonism.

Seems telling that if the UK had a stronger far right populist party, these are presumably the kinds of seats they’d win. Goes to show what the Tories have increasingly become (hopefully to their ultimate detriment).

[Alcibiades]

Maybe you need a repeat of Carswell or Reckless?

Cameron offering a referendum was arguably the trigger for the UKIP surge, ironic as that may be. The Carswell and Reckless defections were after the UKIP 'victory' in the European elections (which probably has to be considered UKIP's peak).

The UKIP surge was actually well under way in 2012, with them getting into double digits on a regular basis by the end of the year and scoring well at by-elections (12% in Middlesbrough, 15% in Corby and 22% in Rotherham). Personally I’m a believer in the theory (which I think George Osborne has also advanced) that one of the major triggers for the rise of UKIP wasn’t, in fact, Europe, but instead same-sex marriage, which was regularly in the headlines throughout 2012 and pissed off a lot of traditional Tory supporters. Obviously it wasn’t the only factor (2012 was probably the Coalition’s worst year, with it spinning its wheels in the mud amidst a stagnant economy and legislative failures), but I think it was a key factor that divided Cameron (and Miliband for that matter, although for him it was less of a problem) from a lot of ‘conservative with a small c’ older and middle aged voters for whom UKIP provided a convenient receptacle of protest (which of course was a role that the Lib Dem’s could no longer fulfil).

This is certainly an interesting theory, but I think it’s complicated by the fact that this period also saw UKIP’s support shift from its traditional, but much smaller base, of disaffected right-wing Tories in the Telegraph-reading Home Counties to postindustrial towns in what would later be termed the “Red Wall”, as suggested by your list of by-election successes. On the face of it, this would seem to imply that immigration (importantly as distinct from ‘Europe’ as whole though, which was generally more of a niche obsession of the aforementioned Telegraph-reading classes until shortly before 2016) was a more salient factor than same-sex marriage, I think.

[Alcibiades]

While obviously Selby and Uxbridge are rather different seats in some ways, in others they’re actually strikingly similar. Compare below:

Socioeconomic status (managerial & professional/intermediate/routine & manual/students/never worked & long-term unemployed) (%):
Selby: 36.8/23.1/29.7/4.8/5.5
Uxbridge: 34.3/22.5/22.7/11.9/8.7

2016 Leave vote (%):
Selby: 57.7
Uxbridge: 57.2

This I think further strongly suggests the primacy of the ULEZ issue in why the Tories held on to Uxbridge. Some of the takes suggesting it proved that Starmer had alienated liberal metropolitan voters* were very silly, and you wonder if the people making them had ever actually been to Uxbridge, which, as the Brexit stat above shows in just one way, is very different to most of London! Of course, in terms of humdrum Outer North London in particular, it may be part of a broader pattern, as this is not the first sign we’ve seen of Labour doing poorly there while doing well in the country, and indeed the capital, as a whole — see the 2021 mayoral election, and the 2022 local results in Harrow and Enfield.

A final note on the ULEZ: something that seems to not have been mentioned very much is that it only applies to older vehicles, which do not meet modern environmental standards (pre-2006 for petrol, and pre-2015 for diesel). It is not my intention at all here to nod to the recent ‘cars are the new class war’ discourse, which I find extremely wrongheaded on the whole, but I think it should not be entirely ignored for the purposes of electoral analysis, in light of the kind of place that Uxbridge is, that the ULEZ is not something which affects people with, for instance, shiny new SUVs.

_{*This could still turn out to be true — indeed there is some extremely tentative evidence that it might be — but this set of by-election results is not proof of it in any way.}

[Alcibiades]

On the above people still get angry as they say they were ‘told’ to buy diesel…

Yes, I remember when it seemed the ‘conventional wisdom’ was that diesel is better than petrol. To provide a very oversimplified summary, I think the issue is that diesel is better as far as CO₂ emissions/global warming are concerned, but worse for local air quality, and it is of course the latter that the ULEZ is designed to improve.

[Alcibiades]

I actually thought Labour would win this by a bit more - doesn't point to these 'swingy' ex-marginals swinging hard back to Labour. If the swing in the national polls does indeed come to pass, we may well need to get used to a very unfamiliar looking map.

I think they'll take a 23% swing lol

My point was not to do down the Labour performance (not at all! It is clearly a spectacular result) - it was purely about the way a large Labour swing in a general election will present itself. It may be that the shifts we saw in 2019 are more permanent than many expected.

There's always a floor for each party meaning hig swimgs won't be uniform,  and i expect that Brexit voters have changed what the Tory foor is in certain former Labour safe seats or marginals. Is that what you're getting at?

Pretty much - the size of the swing in the polls has led many (including myself) to conclude that Labour will see a bigger swing back in their favour in Brexit-voting marginals and ex-marginals, whilst possibly falling short in a place like Rushcliffe, a remain voting area which has recently become semi-marginal.

This result (not to over-extrapolate!) may indicate that the swing at the next GE is going to be more uniform than expectations.

I don't know what you're talking about. In July we saw a swing of five points in an affluent suburban London seat and a swing of more than twenty in a Brexit-voting Red Wall seat.

I don’t agree with icc’s argument here, but just worth noting that Uxbridge had an essentially identical Brexit vote share (a substantial 57% Leave) to Selby.

[Alcibiades]

Anyway, hilarious pair of results. You’re almost tempted to feel bad for the Tories trying to tell us that they’re not that bad, actually, because reasons — until you remember how utterly they deserve it.

[Alcibiades]

In case you've not seen it, this footage is real, somehow:

https://twitter.com/jacksurfleet/status/1715202369573572924

I guess you could say he “f**cked off”.

[Alcibiades]

Reform UK have announced they will not stand in ‘protest’ against the “disgraceful abuse” of the soon to be former member.

Given current polling would get them 10%, and UKIP would have done a lot better in a by-election, you can read into that what you will.

And indeed, UKIP got 15% in the constituency in 2015…

[Alcibiades]

Quite a few in the media are, a big "splash" in the weekend papers for example.

Well, Sunak is still in a very bad position and if he goes for an election in October or November there is still time to get rid of him while that would be impossible by now if the election is in May.

If he sees a crushing defeat in May as near certain, he may still decide to take that chance. After all, quite a few rumoured challenges have fizzled out to nothing already.

Yes, personally I very much doubt he'll be replaced before the election; it seems that at the moment all the anti-Sunak energy is coming from the hard right of the party, but I definitely don't think that a majority exists in the parliamentary party to get rid of him if it's framed as Sunak vs The Right.