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 