Morning music
Battles past
The three by-elections of 20 July 2023
Uxbridge and South Ruislip
The result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uxbridge_and_South_Ruislip_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s.
As I predicted on the blog a couple of days ago, this was a “battle of the apathies”. Complete “Conservative” omnishambles meets Labour mediocrity (both on the national and constituency levels).
The successful Conservative candidate drew a veil over both the non-performance of the Rishi Sunak government and the egregiously poor behaviour (and capabilities) of ex-MP “Boris” Johnson; the candidate just kept hitting at the ridiculous Sadiq Khan ULEZ scheme [“Ultra Low Emission Zone”], and saying very little else about anything.
In a sense that concentration on ULEZ shows how meaningless the supposed “democracy” of the UK now is. The ULEZ idea and policy was first mooted by none other than “Boris”-idiot and the Conservative Party in London. Quite apart from that, the new Con Party MP, one Steve Tuckwell [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Tuckwell] will be able to exercise precisely zero influence over the ULEZ scheme and Sadiq Khan.
The Labour Party candidate, Danny Beales, was arguably not a good candidate in the particular constituency, an outer London suburb. Gay, a former councillor in inner-city Camden, and a graduate of the London School of Economics.
That said, the result was close— 495 votes decided it. Both the LibDem voters (526, fifth place), and/or the Green Party voters (893, third place), had they voted tactically, could have prevented the narrow Con Party victory. Neither Greens nor LibDems had a chance of winning, and both lost their deposits, along with the other 13 candidates, all of whom could be described as either “minor” or “joke” candidates.
The actor Laurence Fox, for Reclaim, did well, in a minor way, to come fourth, not far behind the Green. Still, this was really between Con Party (13,965 votes, 45.2%) and Labour (13,470, 43.6%). The other 15 parties and independents only scored 11.2% between them.
It does puzzle me why LibDem voters in particular did not all vote tactically. Some did, plainly, looking at previous election results where the LibDem vote was higher by far (peaking at 20% in 2010, though only 6.3% in 2019), but not enough.
Why did 526 LibDems bother to trot down to vote, knowing that their candidate had no chance? Even if they hated both Con and Lab, and so were unwilling to vote for either, why bother to vote? As someone said of golf, “a good walk spoiled“.
So a Conservative Party win, though scarcely a ringing endorsement.
Turnout was about 2/3 of that in 2019, and indeed the previous elections. I am assuming from that that many former Conservative voters, in what was since creation in 2010 a fairly safe Conservative seat (a new seat on these boundaries), just threw up their hands in disgust at both main System parties, could find no other home for their votes, and so “voted with their feet”— abstained.
Selby and Ainsty
The result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selby_and_Ainsty_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s.
The successful Labour candidate is 25, once again (like the Labour candidate at Uxbridge) gay (seems that it is almost compulsory now in the Labour Party), and has only worked for 18 months since leaving university. Interestingly, those 18 months were spent working at the Confederation of British Industry, a more usual place in which to find young Conservatives, surely?
Also, he spent some months in 2019 and 2020 working with Wes Streeting, the “centrist” (Labour Friends of Israel) MP. So it seems that Keir Mather will fit easily into the Keir Starmer Labour Party. Not much else is yet known about him: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Mather.
Why did Mather win what had previously been regarded as a safe Conservative seat? As at Uxbridge, the implication is surely obvious: former Conservative voters were appalled at both major System parties, and so preferred to stay home rather than vote Labour (or elsewhere).
Mather scored 46% of the overall vote, as against 34.3% scored by his Con Party opponent.
Since the creation of the seat in 2010, the Conservative Party had won easily all elections, scoring between 49.4% (2010) and 60.3% (2019). Labour, however, had scored only around 25% of the vote, except in 2017, under Corbyn, when the Labour Party candidate managed over 34%.
The key here, as with Uxbridge, lies in the turnout. The by-election turnout was only 44.8%, whereas in 2019 it was 71.7% (and in previous elections, not dissimilar).
The implication, again, as at Uxbridge, is that former Conservative Party voters, in a formerly safe Conservative area, simply decided not to vote.
There was obviously a degree of tactical voting at Selby; the LibDem vote went down from 8.6% to 3.3%; without tactical voting, the result would have been much closer but not, in my view, different.
Incidentally, the LibDems only managed sixth place, no doubt because many otherwise LibDems voted Labour. The third place went to the Greens, whose candidate was the only one of the minor candidates to save his deposit (5.1%).
I was interested to see that a “Yorkshire Party” candidate, one Mike Jordan, who failed to fill in his nomination papers properly and so was a blank space (not even “Independent”) on the ballot paper, yet managed to score 4.2%. Not bad in the circumstances, and maybe a sign that localism, or at least regionalism, may be resurgent as central government falters and fails.
The Selby contest had other things in common with that at Uxbridge— contempt for the former MP (at Selby, he had stepped down apparently in order to damage Sunak and his party, and after having been passed over for a peerage); the fact that both seats were 2010 creations on their present boundaries; and of course the fact that the public are both despairing and angry at the overall non-performance by Sunak and his Cabinet. Mass immigration, migration invasion, cost of living increases, inflation, crime, NHS defaults etc.
The result was that Labour won at Selby, and very nearly won at Uxbridge, only by default. There is no enthusiasm at all for the Labour Party and its non-policies (basically the same as the Conservative Party policies), but equally there is no enthusiasm (and no respect) for Sunak and his Cabinet of (mainly) non-Brits (Indians, a black or half-caste or two, the odd Jew). These were by-elections. The ruling party is inevitably on the back foot.
Starmer’s strategy seems to be not to rock the boat now that Labour is ahead in the opinion polls. It is hard for Sunak and Con Party to score a hit on Labour’s battleship simply because Labour policy now so closely mirrors that of the Con Party. Almost indistinguishable. If the Conservative Party attacks Labour policy, it is to a large extent criticizing its own policy. In a sense, brilliant… but also dispiriting and pointless.
Somerton and Frome
The result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerton_and_Frome_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s.
The LibDem candidate, Sarah Dyke [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Dyke] won easily, as predicted. I blogged briefly about her a couple of days ago. Her vote-share of 56.4%, as against the Conservative candidate’s 26.2%, mirrors in reverse almost exactly the result at the 2019 General Election.
Third place went to the Greens, with a fairly sizeable vote (10.2%). Reform UK beat Labour and three minor candidates for fourth place, but still lost the deposit, with 3.4%.
In a mostly affluent and bucolic area of this sort, Labour has little chance, and its vote has dropped below 5% in the past, though it scored 17.2% in 2017 (under Corbyn) and 12.9% in 2019. It is clear that, realising that Labour had no chance, former Labour voters voted tactically at the by-election, and that Labour’s 2.6% vote reflected that.
Turnout was, as at the other by-elections yesterday, pathetic— 44.23%. That compares to 75.6% in 2019, and turnouts in previous election which only once dropped below 70%, and which once exceeded 82%.
The LibDems held Somerton and Frome until 2015, so were always going to have a chance in the seat, once the “Con Coalition” of 2010-2015 faded from immediate memory, though the damage from that was still evident in 2019, at which election the LibDems scored only 26.2% (exactly the same as the Conservative Party vote at yesterday’s by-election).
The conclusion is pretty clear: the Conservative voters of 2019 either stayed home yesterday, or switched to the LibDems, Former Labour voters switched to LibDem to hit out at the Sunak misgovernment.
As at the other two by-elections, the contempt many apparently felt for the ex-MP, Warburton, was certainly another important factor, though perhaps not the most important.
Overall conclusion as to the main System parties in the light of the by-elections
The LibDems only have a chance to gain seats in rural/affluent parts of southern or south-western England. I do not see them recovering in any big way elsewhere.
The Conservative Party government is toast, surely. It will have to fall back on its hard core, mostly fairly comfortably-off homeowners aged 70+.
Electoral Calculus is currently predicting only 100 Con seats at the expected 2024 General Election: see https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html.
475 seats for Labour. That is “elected dictatorship”.
I just tried the “user-defined poll” at Electoral Calculus. My guesses resulted in only 61 seats for the Conservative Party.
What about Labour? Well, I detect no real enthusiasm for Labour, which means that there is every chance that the new MP for Selby may only be an MP for about a year, and will then have to find a less well-paid and less interesting (?) job.
More seriously, the only way that Indian money-juggler Rishi Sunak could claw back some electoral support would be to STOP the boats, CUT BACK the main (i.e. “legal”) mass immigration, DEPORT hundreds of thousands, RENATIONALIZE water, rail and possibly the energy utilities, and start to really bat for Britain.
Those 2019 Conservative Party voters might return to the Con fold, but only if they see some action; words are played-out.
Still, none of the three by-election seats are natural Labour territory.
Pretty hard, though, for an Indian whose Cabinet is mainly non-white, or Jewish, and who worked for the predatory Goldman Sachs bankers (and so is a globalist “libertarian” by instinct).
It seems to me a 50-50 chance that the Conservative Party MPs will ditch Sunak before the next general election, but if they do, who on Earth can they try to present to the public as a credible leader?
As for attacking Starmer, the only things that might work would be to use American-style personal attacks, and to focus on his complete mendacity, his broken promises, on his “taking the knee” to the “Black Lives Matter” thugs, and his being completely in the pocket of the Jew-Zionist/Israel lobby (the only thing is— so are the “Conservatives”…).
Conclusion, then— Labour will probably win in 2024 by default, but if some real movement on the above-designated issues were to happen, it might be a different story…
Tweets seen
Biden: “What was that slogan? Bread, land, and peace? No, my fellow-Americans, it was ice-cream and war!“…
At least the sparrows will be eating.
There are really only two realistic possibilities: either she is Johnson’s secret daughter (one of them) or she was being screwed by him. It now turns out that she was only a kind of temp anyway, covering the job usually done by a recent mother. Maternity cover.
Britain is so screwed, it is hard to believe.
As for “Baroness” Chapman, she was an MP for 9 years (2010-2019), and then (having been voted out as MP) was elevated to the Lords on Starmer’s nomination, having previously done sweet FA by way of work in her life except a short time as the constituency manager for ghastly careerist MP Alan Milburn. So she can shut up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Chapman.
She is the mother of children, and that (and presumably being a “home-maker”) is a very honourable estate, but it is not the “real life experience” of work in the outer world, as per that clip.
As for Johnny Mercer MP, I have found him a big disappointment as MP, but I think that he can claim a great deal more “life experience” than “Baroness” Chapman, let alone that epicene little creature who is now the MP for Selby and Ainsty.
Many people on Twitter are incredibly ignorant and at the same time very dogmatic. I just saw a tweet saying that the Selby creature is “2-3 years older than Margaret Roberts [i.e. Margaret Thatcher] when she became an MP...”.
In fact, wrong, and on two counts. First, Margaret Roberts was born in 1925, and became an MP in 1959, shortly before her 34th birthday. She had married in 1951, so fought her first successful first election as Margaret Thatcher and not Margaret Roberts as claimed.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher.
Well, there it is. Effete, epicene little “Labour MP” is going to support Starmer, Rachel Reeves etc in continuing the policy (policies?) laid down by the Con Coalition of David Cameron-Levita, Theresa May, “Boris”-idiot, Liz Truss, and now the Indian money-juggler, Sunak.
Anyone who thinks that Starmer-Labour will be in any way an improvement on the “Conservative” omnishambles of a Government is sadly mistaken; in fact, deluded.
Actually, listening to Keir Mather there, I think that “Lord Charles” would have sounded more credible.
To be honest, my first thought on seeing and hearing Keir Mather is that he seemed to be in need of a good kick.
Ian Robert Millard 
Joe Biden gets worse by the day; it is not funny. Changing the subject, I just saw a very good little clip from Katie Hopkins, it seems she has been reading your blog 😁 😁 In a previous video she said that the boy who won one of the elections “makes Owen Jones look as an adult” 😁 😁
She went on to analyse the case “Farage vs. NatWest” and mentioned a fellow named Simon Jack who looks very much like one of (((them))). BTW, I also watched the video where Farage describes the hypocritical and despicable “apology” given to him by the hateful CEO of NatWest. You know what I think of Farage but I am with him 100% in this, but I don’t think the government is going to do anything on his behalf or the other victims of the f… banks.
Apparently for what I heard, neither Farage or anyone in a similar position can sue the bloody bank as they are protected by the current legislation and that WILL NOT change. Here is Katie Hopkins, I like very much her sarcasm.
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Claudius:
Thank you. I am aware that she has read my blog in the past. Many people do, including MPs and ministers both in the UK and overseas.
As you say, no-one, in the UK at least, can sue a bank *purely* for closing down an account. There may be nuances to that base position, though, eg if loss has occurred via negligence or malicious action etc.
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You made a good point; however, I am sure all the banks have an army of clever lawyers PLUS an army of subservient politicians who will enact laws to protect them. I am sure that, if Richard Branson (or any billionaire) became a national-socialist (that would be a miracle!) and started funding revisionist films and books (((they))) would manage to close his accounts very quickly.
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Claudius:
I expect that you are right; if that ever were to happen, Branson would find that his lines of credit, and other lubricants of commerce, would quickly disappear.
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I see moronic Tory MPs are saying how great the victory is in Uxbridge but it is, of course, nothing of the sort. All the party achieved was to turn it into a single-issue referendum on the ULEZ extension which was Boris Idiot’s idea in the first place so doing that was abject hypocrisy on their part.
What if their candidate had not been English? If an ethnic had been selected it is entirely possible they would have lost still seeing as the margin of ‘victory’ was so narrow.
Both the other results are disasters, particularly the one in North Yorkshire. The simple fact is the Tory vote share shouldn’t be dropping to the extent it is whether that is by active switching by Tories to Labour or Lib Dem or by abstention. I think I am correct in stating that under Thatcher their vote share in by-elections never went down by more than 20%. As the term of a parliament is up to five years only, their vote share from the previous election should only go down by 20% or less on average and 25% as an absolute limit not 29% or even more as it did in North Shropshire.
But then, despite her many faults, Maggie at least had some inkling about what REAL Conservatism is about.
The Tory Party needs to stop its fixation on trying to get a vote which will NEVER come to them in sufficient numbers to make a real difference.
As you say, concentrate on the immigration issue with REAL action on it not just rhetoric.
There are several issues perceived as traditionally ‘Tory’ ones with the most prominent being law and order and immigration. Labour can, with a bit of effort, make a semblance of a case to be trusted on law and order but they NEVER have been able to do that with immigration. This issue should be THE ‘Tory’ issue of the lot.
Of course, that is hard to do with credibility if you have a Cabinet that looks like it does. That may have been a factor in depressing the Tory vote in a rural, and probably pretty white constituency like Selby and Ainsty.
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John:
the Prime Ministers of the Thatcher era had inbuilt credibility because Britain itself had credibility, though the UK was slowly declining. A large and effective Army, Navy, Air Force, an almost entirely white British society, and (under Thatcher in the early 1980s especially) a functioning economy. Even lesser prime ministers such as Callaghan and Major were able to do things both domestic and foreign because of that basis.
Not that everything worked properly back then, in the 1970s and 1980s (telephones often did not), and there were some absurdities but, overall, the society worked. Now, it is gradually (?) ceasing to work properly.
Mrs Thatcher slowed and even stopped Britain’s decline in some areas while accelerating it in others.
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Of course, competing against a party like Labour is hard to do even with decent economic circumstances when that party is so reticent to reveal its real intentions. As I believe Maggie once said of them, Labour is running on an invisible manifesto.
One intention they do have though is to abolish the House of Lords and do some other jigerry-pokery with our governing arrangements which, as ever with Labour, are incoherent and are seemingly designed to cement their power should they gain office and are so badly designed they could well deal the final hammer blow to the existence of the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, a constitutional reform the whole country COULD rally behind and which COULD strengthen the Union ie the introduction of an electoral system for WESTMINSTER based-upon the principle of Proportional Representation (as that is where the real problem is) they are not interested in.
Is it any wonder Scottish separatism is still a big problem?
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A Scottish separatism problem , Labour thought they could appease in 1997 by giving Scotland a parliament which has a fairly decently proportional voting system but leaving Westminster stuck in an archaic time warp with FPTP.
This, of course, is unfair on we English but also on the Scots to an extent as Westminster is still governing them on the ‘reserved’ issues many of which can be controversial like immigration.
Setting-up that PR parliament in Edinburgh without reforming Westminster was asking for trouble, wouldn’t appease the SNP, would destabilise the Union and so it has proved.
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“The Leader” Bernadette Sanders! Ha, ha, if only! I think you actually mean ‘The Dear Leader’ as in North Korea or even ‘Der Fuhrer’ as in Hitler’s Germany.
I am not being too sarcastic here when I say that if Labour was a party in Germany it would be at risk of being investigated by their Constitutional Court and could be banned for being run by Keir Starmer on what would be called the ‘Fuhrer prinzip’ or, in English, the ‘Leader principle’ ie an all powerful party leader who systematically squashes internal opposition and party democracy.
Germany had a dire experience of that with Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) hence their tough laws now to prevent a party being run in a similar way.
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What alternative leader could the Tories have? Being a native Briton would be a start so, I suggest, Jeremy Hunt or Penny Mordaunt.
It would be difficult to dislike Penny and there was some opinion polling evidence last year to suggest she goes down quite well with people in the ‘Red Wall’ seats. Penny comes from a pretty ordinary background. I’m afraid to many in this country the PM’s extreme wealth just rubs people up the wrong way. People can’t relate to him.
Choosing Rishi was definitely the wrong move. Frankly, he isn’t liked pretty much anywhere in the country apart, perhaps, in some well-heeled, fairly cosmopolitan seats like Chelsea and Fulham and the Cities of London and Westminster.
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Why should any Green Party or Lib Dem voter vote Labour? I always thought that one of their main priorities of both parties was to see the United Kingdom finally join most of Europe (with the notoble exception of Belarus) in becoming a real, modern democracy by using Proportional Representation at all elections, INCLUDING Westminster?
Labour, being a profoundly undemocratic party, still doesn’t support fair votes.
This so-called ‘progressive alliance’ thing the Left go on about is a myth. It doesn’t exist due only to the largest non-Tory party in the country ie Labour being utterly selfish, self-serving, dogmatic, UNDEMOCRATIC dinosaurs on the issue and the Labour Party leader being a complete control freak.
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It is clearly an utterly ludicrous poltical situation whereby BOTH the Labour Party leader and the Liberal Democrats have native Britons as their respective party leaders and possible PMs whereas the Conservative Party has an ethnic Indian.
I don’t know who said it but someone once remarked that ‘the Conservative Party is either the NATIONAL party or it is nothing’
Being a libertarian globalist party will NEVER work for the Conservatives and only lead to defeat which could soon be a terminal one.
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John:
For me, of course, there is no point in voting for any System party, and in fact I have not voted since 1974 when, aged just 18, I voted in the now-abolished constituency of Reading North. My preferred candidate came 4th out of 4, and received a not very impressive 594 votes.
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At least Danny Beales is English. Being gay, even if that fact were known to the electorate, would have cost Labour few, if any, votes. A ethnic candidate might have ensured they were further away from victory. Sensibly, they went with an English person to try their luck in an outer London and Tory-held seat as they did in Selby and Ainsty.
If the Tories had chosen an ethnic candidate in West London, that might well have been all the difference that was needed to lose.
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John:
Not entirely sure about that Beales candidate. Uxbridge and Ruislip are suburban areas, “married with children and a family car” areas.
Still, I accept that it is an open question.
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Our utterly archaic electoral system of FPTP positively ENCOURAGES people to vote tactically since the system is so bloody crude and can’t deal wth more than two candidates standing. There is SUPPOSED to be ONE winner and ONLY ONE LOSER in each single MP per seat constituency NOT several losers or loads of them as in Uxbridge and South Ruslip and Selby and Ainsty. We, as a country, have long since outgrown this. I believe I am correct in stating that the last general election in Britain where there were many seats contested by just two candidates per seat was as long ago as 1970!
Why should both Lib Dem and Green voters vote tactically for Labour when that party STILL, even in the 23rd year of the 21st Century, endorses this childish, profoundly undemocratic, complete crap voting system that makes a complete mockery of this country’s supposed democratic credentials? We are the ONLY country in Europe apart from Putin’s only real friend in the world ie Belarus to use this farcical rubbish FFS!
The continued use of stand alone FPTP is a major reason why this country has such fucked-up politics and we, as a country, never really progress.
https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk
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John:
Elections with only two candidates were common in the 1950s, and prior to that decade. If you look at the 1920s and before, you find quite a few candidates elected unopposed, especially in rural areas. Of course, MPs were once entirely unpaid, until 1911.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/mps-pay-has-risen-sharply-since-the-1970s-but-it-is-outside-earnings-that-should-really-concern-us/
As that blog article says, the real value of MP pay declined from 1911 (£400, then a fairly good amount) until the 1980s or even 1990s.
In other words, in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, the personal *financial* incentives for persons to try to become MPs were all but non-existent. That was one reason why few stepped forward in rural constituencies (and the election deposit, though small, was another).
I was reading, a couple of years ago, one of the recent books about John Stonehouse. His own financial situation probably mirrored that of many MPs of the 1960s and 1970s.
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Yes, that is the case. If you look on Wikipedia at UK parliamentary seat results you will find that in the 1950’s and before nearely all of them had just Labour and Tory candidates. As Labour and Tory had around 90% plus (sometimes up to 97%) of the national vote between them the FPTP system produced little difference between vote share and seat share for them. The Liberal Party suffered but the discrepancy wasn’t particularly large so FPTP made sense.
FPTP has been producing wide variations between vote share and seat share ever since the elections of 1974 when the Liberal Party first got a substantial share of the national vote of about 19% but received few seats.
Now, we have the SNP with its separatist philosophy getting many more seats than its vote share justifies because its vote is concentrated across just 59 seats.
Regional parties able to concentrate their votes are yet another phenomenon this archaic system can’t deal with. Some historians have argued that the UK’s use of FPTP helped to strengthen separatist feelings in Ireland which resulted in 26 counties eventually breaking away to form the Irish Free State in 1922.
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A SANE and RATIONAL electoral system would allow people to vote with their hearts for the party they really believe in rather than encouraging people to vote for a party they don’t in order to beat a party they like even less.
It is high time we done away with stand alone FPTP and stopped having an effective lottery for an electoral system.
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Really? Do you have any clue as to what MPs and ministers do read your blog?
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John:
There have been clear indications a few times that my blog has influenced some MPs and ministers; also, one or two foreign politicians, as well as UK MPs, saw my Twitter account tweets until I was expelled in 2018 (Jewish interference, as usual). MPs, and foreign politicians, tweeted publicly to me on a few occasions, after having seen some of my tweets on various issues. A greater number, however (Westminster MPs) blocked me even though I never contacted them. They just disapproved of my comments about them in tweets. Nadine Dorries, John Woodcock, many others. Expenses cheats, freeloaders, puppets of the Jewish lobby etc.
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Hello Ian: I have no doubt that some people in Westminster read your blog; obviously they did not agree with you or even did not understand what you said! As we say in Argentina: “La verdad siempre duele” (Truth hurts) 😁 😁 😁
BTW, I love the expressions you use: “freeloaders” and “expenses cheats”. Having said that, I suppose none of those corrupt bastards who were caught lying about their expenses were properly punished (i.e.: forced to returned the money and fined/fired) Of course, if the people in power were decent and patriotic, those “freeloaders” would be sent to jail or shot. If John was in charge of the Home Office, they would by hanged 😁 😁 😁
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Claudius:
Thank you.
A small number of MPs were convicted of fraud in the aftermath of the expenses scandal of 2009; a few were imprisoned for periods of months. One or two did longer. Most MPs were not prosecuted even when fraudulent, because the applicable rules were so lax. Some MPs had to step down, or not seek re-election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_parliamentary_expenses_scandal
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Thank you for the explanation; it turned-out to be as I expected, however, at least some of the crooks had to resign. I remember my wife telling me the outrageous case of an MP who claim the cost of building a large (and very expensive) conservatory on his garden as part of his/her “expenses”. People like that deserved to have their assets confiscated and spend sometime doing real hard labour, jail is too nice for them!
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Claudius:
One MP, a Jew, had claimed foe repairs to the *moat* around his house! Another, or the same, for a duck house.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Steen#Expenses_scandal
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The Globalist Tories are, of course, spinning furiously about that solitary ‘success’ in the trio of by-elections. As I said, their choosing a local councillor and Englishman to be their candidate could have been the difference between winning or losing, but there could have been two other explanations for the very narrow win and these are:
That pro-PR group I mentioned above was doing some campaigning in the seat so they might well have persuaded some Lib Dem and Green supporters to stick with their respective parties instead of voting tactically for Labour
Also, you now have to take ID with you to vote at any election so a few probably Labour inclined voters may not have had that ID or forgot to bring it with them so depressing the Labour vote sufficiently to allow the Tory candidate to squeeze over the line.
The results in Somerset and North Yorkshire are much more indicative of the national trend and that is the feeling of many is that this government has been a wretched failure for the most part and this applies particularly in the views of large numbers of people on what used to be known as traditionally ‘ Tory’ issues ie law and order and immigration control hence the large loss of Tory support in those contests.
As a result, the Conservative Party is in a dire electoral hole and is due to lose office.
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It is going to have to be a truly miraculous recovery to avert what looks like a surefire bet.
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John:
I think that there is an almost irreducible hard core of Con Party voters. I would put that at about 20%, either those who actually like the (in this case) Sunak government, or people 70+ in age who are traditional unthinking Con Party voters *and* intend to vote Con no matter what; others would be affluent (and mostly older) homeowners who credit the Con Party with the fact that their mortgage-paid-off houses are worth £1M, £2M, or whatever; people who vote purely on whoever promises to lower taxation; also those who vote Con because they hate Labour even when its policies are quite similar to those of the Con Party.
20% is the base line. I do not think that, nationwide, or across the board, the Con Party can go much lower. At present, the opinion polls are saying that Con Party is between 23% and 28%, the last time I looked.
Still, *if* the Con Party can get that percentage up to 30%, then we may be in hung Parliament territory.
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The Tory Party had better hope the SNP sees sense and dumps its present leader. They should have chosen Kate Forbes who had much better voter appeal. If they got rid of him and installed her the SNP might recover and retain more of its seats which would damage Labour’s chances of an overall majority.
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Much below 30% of the vote a ‘tipping point’ will appear in our archaic, rigged fraud of an electoral system and they will see seats starting to be lost in truly heavy numbers albeit it only by small margins of 500 odd votes or less.
But a loss even by a single or two votes as happened in Winchester in 1997 when the Liberal Democrats gained that seat by that miniscule margin is still a lost seat and will reduce the total.
John Major only narrowly averted an even worse electoral disaster by polling 31% of the national vote which was the lowest Tory vote share in history.
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The Conservative Party, if it is to have a prayer, needs to get its poll ratings consistently above 30% AND reduce the now large gap in those polls between it and the Labour Party.
Labour support needs to trend down because the Tory Party’s support is having considerable difficulty in rising above 30% with regularity.
Or they had better hope the non Tory parties split their total support between them more radically. The vast bulk of this vote share is lining-up behind the Labour Party’s banner.
A scenario like that of 1983 or 1987 is not on the cards in this way.
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John:
Starmer is obviously trying to cherish Labour’s poll lead by mirroring Con Party policies, and not saying *anything* that might rock the boat.
People in England tend now to vote *against* more than vote *for* a party. In 2019, Con Party vote nationwide increased over 2017 by little more than 1 point (1.2%) but Labour’s vote diminished by 7.9% over that of 2017. People voted *against* Labour and that includes those who “voted with their feet” by abstaining (more former Labour voters abstained than switched from Labour to Con Party or to other parties).
I doubt that many former Con Party voters will switch to Labour, though some probably will. I expect some to switch to LibDem or elsewhere but far more to abstain. The key question will be— “how many?”. Many Con Party voters are older people in whom the “duty” to vote is a powerful motivator. So will those people just tick the usual box, or not? How many will abstain?
The sheer incompetence of the past 13 years, which has become a total “omnishambles” in the past 4+ years, makes me sceptical that the Con Party *can* pull a rabbit out of the hat somehow, particularly under Indian money-juggler Sunak, but *if* the MPs were to dump him, and *if* they were to find another (superficially credible) idiot to replace him, then appeal to traditional Con voters and floaters, it still might not be enough to win outright, but might be enough to create a hung Parliament or even a single-figure Con majority. I am thinking about a national Con vote somewhere in the 30%-40% area.
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I think the best they can hope for is about 35% but even that score will take a lot of effort on their part ie less PC globalist idiocy, REAL demonstrable ACTION in traditional Tory policy areas such as immigration and probably yet another new leader with at least a modicum of voter appeal.
Other things are out of their hands ie they had better hope Starmer slips up in some way, gets viewed by the public as a very untrustworthy ‘flip flopper’, the SNP recovers ground and prevents Labour from taking back scores of seats etc.
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The gap in vote share between the Tories and Labour is what is crucial. If the Tories went down to 20% but Labour was on 25% or 30% that would be better than the present opinion polling but, of course, this is very unlikely to happen.
Last October, I was very surprised to see just how low the Tory opinion poll ratings became. One or two were even as low as 14% some others at 19%. I thought I would never see them below 25%. I think that was the lowest they became under John Major.
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Yes, the turnouts were not impressive but they never are at by-elections nowadays. I think they were about average for TORY-held seats though. The highest turnout at a by-election we have had recently was in Tiverton and Honiton which was just over 50% but that may have been because that seat supposedly has one of the higher proportions of elderly voters in it and, as you say, they tend to vote at a higher rate than younger people.
In Labour seats, particularly if they are safe/very safe, turnouts at by-elections can be truly dire.
As recently as the 1990’s by-election turnouts normally only fell to 50% to 60% or so.
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John:
My point about the turnout percentage in all three by-elections was that these were constituencies where most people have voted Con for many years. They were lost (Selby), lost (Somerton and Frome), and nearly lost (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) simply because a great number of former Con Party voters abstained.
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Yes, the swings look better than they actually are because of the turnout factor. It will be the case that the majority of people who did vote in December 2019 but didn’t on Thursday in these by-elections were overwhelmingly Tory voters.
I do think there was a part of the swing that was a positive movement to the Liberal Democrats and Labour but the lower turnout made it look bigger.
Still, that still leaves the Conservative Party with a big job to do to get these people back to voting Tory on the day of the next general election.
As the turnout goes up at that election then the present majorities of the new MPs will be cut or overwhelmed entirely.
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John:
It all depends on whether the Sunak “government” can either entice those missing Con voters to return to the Con fold (by actually doing “what it says on the tin” or, in the alternative, frighten them sufficiently so that they vote to keep Labour out.
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Yes, I think these people are very disillusioned with this government and a large percentage are really wondering what is the point of the Tories when they haven’t, so far, even ‘stopped the boats’ let alone really got to grips with the entirety of the overall immigration crisis, reduced the more overt aspects of political correctness ext, reformed the police so that they deal effectively with REAL crime and not non-PC tweeters, people who have a liking for displaying golliwogs in Essex pubs as it revives fond childhood memories etc.
The softness of the Tory vote should be of some considerable concern to Tory HQ.
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It does appear to be the case that the Tories lost in Selby and Ainsty due to mass abstention by their habitual voters. Most of the huge ‘swing’ to Labour was caused by that factor.
If you look at the result in more detail on Wikipedia the Labour candidate only increased the number of actual votes by around 3,000 odd from that polled in December 2019 by their candidate then.
Relatively few Tory voters from 2019 directly switched to Labour. A local factor may have been in play boosting the Labour Party vote. Some reports suggested that quite a few people there complained about the poor state of public transportation in the seat particularly local bus services. Labour normally does have a fairly good reputation when it comes to public transport.
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John:
I am thinking along the lines of the Con Party managing, somehow, by the time the 2024 (?) General Election comes around, to persuade at least a certain tranche of usual/former Con voters to return to the fold. Maybe a quarter of those who are presently inclined to abstain. That alone would take the gloss off any Labour victory.
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Yes, they need to recover a big proportion of their current abstainers. Without doing so they are doomed. The Conservative vote really shouldn’t be as soft as it is.
In theory it should be possible to prevent a Labour landslide but an outright Tory victory is probably not possible now unless there is a monumental ‘swingback’ in the polls. A loss of office by the Tories only requires a ‘swing’ of just 3% whilst a Labour overall majority needs a plus 10% swing – something which has only happened three times in British poltical history.
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