By-elections might be political candy, but tell the seers of Westminster little
By-elections are strange events. They can defy political gravity. Sometimes they launch sparkling but short-lived careers, sometimes they are obvious protests against incumbent governments, and sometimes they are signs of genuine shifts in the political landscape, harbingers of greater changes to come.
In any event, they stir the pot of political commentary. Hypotheses are built, trends extrapolated and models unveiled. They are, over the lifetime of a parliament, about as accurate as haruspicy, if less bloody. But, on the principle that everyone else is doing it, let us peer into the latest viscera from Old Bexley and Sidcup last week and see if any prognostication is possible.
The contest was initiated by the death of James Brokenshire, a capable minister and respected MP. At the 2019 general election, he had been elected with a thumping majority of nearly 19,000 (the seat has been a Tory stronghold for its entire history and was once held by Edward Heath). At last week’s by-election, that winning margin was slashed to less than 4,500, with a 10 per cent swing from the Conservatives to Labour.
For excitable and nervous politicos, this has sounded loud alarm bells. A 10 per cent swing to Labour nationally would give Keir Starmer sight of the gates of Downing Street, and—this was not unnoticed—mean the loss of Boris Johnson’s own Uxbridge constituency. Ellie Reeves, who led the campaign in Bexley, called it a “remarkable” result.
Mebbes aye, mebbes no, as my Glasgow forebears would say. The assumption that a by-election result can simply be extrapolated nationwide is a basic error of political punditry. For a start, the turn-out in Bexley was almost shamefully low at 33.5 per cent. That is less than half of the rate at the last general election, and will not be replicated at the next.
Several factors can be adduced to explain this—the cold weather, public disenchantment with politics as a whole—but you can also draw conclusions which favour your party interest. People stayed at home because they didn’t want to register their usual Conservative vote; or they stayed at home because they are broadly content and were not motivated to brave the December chill for a foregone conclusion.
This is a rewarding festive season for by-election lovers, for the circus arrives in North Shropshire on 16 December to choose a successor to Owen Paterson, the Tory former cabinet minister who resigned under a (lucrative) financial cloud. His majority in 2019 was even larger, ar 23,000, so the Conservative Party should expect an even more certain hold.
By-elections bring out the Liberal Democrats like a cesspit attracts flies. Their leader, Sir Ed Davey, said last month that they were effectively giving Labour a free run in Bexley (hardly generous, as they scraped less than 4,000 votes in 2019) and concentrating their resources on campaigns where they see a possibility of success, such as North Shropshire.
Davey’s optimism cannot be faulted. Their candidate Helen Morgan was almost 30,000 votes behind Paterson last time. A parish councillor who runs half-marathons for charity, she has strong local ties, but will need voters to turn from blue to yellow in vast numbers to stand any chance at all. Castigating the Conservative candidate, Neil Shastri-Hurst, for being an outsider (from Birmingham, more than 60 miles away), seems weak tea indeed.
The lessons to be drawn are, really, that nothing seismic has changed in British politics during this parliament. The opinion polls still regularly give the Conservatives a lead, albeit smaller than a year ago. Boris Johnson’s personal ratings have slipped, but Sir Keir Starmer’s have not risen significantly. Revelations of corruption, sleaze or impropriety seem to smear the political classes as a whole rather than any one individual party.
The Tories held Bexley and will hold North Shropshire. Unless politics is thrown into turmoil, they will likely win a general election in 2023/24. Beyond that it is pointless to peer. The message, unexciting though it may be, is steady as she goes.