11 Comments

• John Roffey 18th Jun '21 - 4:17am

  Congratulations to Sarah Green on an a massive win.

  I haven’t been following the Party’s campaign strategy – but whatever it was – keep doing it!

  Although Boris Johnson will be struggling to find a response – it is Keir Starmer who will be most dreading any deeper analysis.

• Michael 1 18th Jun '21 - 5:57am

  According to Wikipedia it’s the third highest swing that the Lib Dems have achieved in a by-election and you have to go back to 1993 and Christchurch and Newbury for the two higher ones – when the Tories were under 30% in the opinion polls 🙂 !!!!!!

  It’s also the second highest increase in the Lib Dem vote in a by-election – only beaten by Christchurch 🙂 !!!!

  It’s also the lowest vote for Labour in a by-election (1.6%) – lower than Winchester in 1997 (1.7%) and Newbury in 1992 🙂 !!!!!!!!!!

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_by-election_records

  —-
  The second highest increase in vote share after Christchurch

  1993 Christchurch by-election 38.6 Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats gain

  2021 Chesham and Amersham by-election 30.4 Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats gain

  2016 Richmond Park by-election 30.3 Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats gain

  2003 Brent East by-election 28.5 Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats gain

  1991 Ribble Valley by-election 27.1 Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrats gain

  And third highest swing from the Conservatives to the Lib Dems

  1993 Christchurch by-election 35.4 Conservative Liberal Democrats

  1993 Newbury by-election 28.4 Conservative Liberal Democrats

  2021 Chesham and Amersham by-election 25.1 Conservative Liberal Democrats

  2016 Richmond Park by-election 21.73 Conservative Liberal Democrats

  2003 Brent East by-election 28.9 Labour Liberal Democrats

  2004 Birmingham Hodge Hill by-election 26.72 Labour Liberal Democrats

  1983 Bermondsey by-election 44.2 Labour Liberal

  1979 Liverpool Edge Hill by-election 30.2 Labour Liberal

• Michael 1 18th Jun '21 - 7:44am

  According to my calculations the Lib Dems would have a majority of 4 in Parliament over all other parties and be ahead of second place Tories by 189 seats on the current boundaries if this result was repeated nationwide – with:

  Lib Dems 327 seats, Tories 138, Labour 113, SNP 48, PC 3, Other 2, NI parties together: 18

  The two “others” are the Speaker’s seat and East Devon where with the Tories going down, the independent wins. Obviously the nationalists potentially “benefit” in this analysis because it was an English by-election.

  —

  People may be aware that the Boundary Commission has come out with its provisional boundaries for England and it is more than likely that the next election will be fought on new boundaries and they will probably not be too far away from these preliminary seats.

  The New Stateman has modelled the notional results for 2019 in these seats if they had been fought on these new boundaries. Looking at England only as the new boundaries for the other devolved nations have not been released, the results on the C&A swing would be approximately:

  Of the 542 new seats (excluding the Speaker’s):

  Lib Dems 307 seats (56.7% of seats)
  Lab 124 seats (22.9%)
  Con 110 seats (20.3%)
  Green 1 seat (0.2%)

• Fiona 18th Jun '21 - 7:49am

  It’s a great results for us, for our activists and most of all Sarah.

  It’s a bad result for the Tories, but we should be careful of letting anyone use the result to criticise Labour because we know full well that many traditional supporters, including some who would rather have had a Labour MP, voted for Sarah to beat the Tories. I hope the Labour leadership understand this and that Labour activists still pining for Corbyn don’t use this as a stick with which to beat Starmer.

  I know some people thought Labour should stand down, but that was never going to happen and as far as I could tell, Starmer didn’t push for activists to swamp the constituency. I did see Angela Raynor, but to be fair, I saw Labour voters getting angry that she was in Chesham where Labour couldn’t win, not Batley & Spen where they need to fight.

• Martin 18th Jun '21 - 9:13am

  On the BBC web site they are quick to comment “Labour had one of the worst by-election results in its history, with 622 votes.”

  An election result showing that the Tories can be beaten cannot be ‘one of the worst’ for Labour. It should give Labour hope for Batley and Spen. Any sort of loss (narrow or otherwise in the Batley and Spen by-election would be ‘one of the worst for Labour’.

  Never mind though, the result is ‘one of the best’ for us.

• Peter Martin 18th Jun '21 - 9:51am

  @ Fiona,

  “…..Labour activists still pining for Corbyn don’t use this as a stick with which to beat Starmer.”

  Keir Starmer has been a disastrous choice for Labour. He’s just not the right person for the job and he hasn’t got the right politics to recreate the momentum needed to for a Labour revival. The return of New Labour, albeit 21st century style, isn’t what is needed right now. Jeremy Corbyn would probably volunteer to be an interim leader but his age alone precludes him from a permanent role.

• Peter Watson 18th Jun '21 - 9:58am

  @Michael 1 “The New Stateman has modelled the notional results for 2019 in these seats if they had been fought on these new boundaries.”
  One concern I had about that analysis was that while the Lib Dems had a net gain of 1 seat (based upon 2019 voting rather than last night’s swing!), it was two additional seats in the south at the cost of Tim Farron’s seat in the North, highlighting the narrow (and perhaps narrowing) geographic and socioeconomic nature of the party, something that yesterday’s result only reinforces.

• Michael 1 18th Jun '21 - 10:12am

  Some minor error corrections to my earlier posts.

  I, of course, missed off the Greens still having 1 seat on these swings, although it was in the total etc.

  There is a spurious 2nd decimal place in some of the swings – this was in fact note 2 etc. in wikipedia etc. but I didn’t edit it out so ignore it!

  As noted – it’s the third highest swing from the Conservative to the Lib Dems – not the third highest from any party as we have also had some higher ones from Labour as well.

  🙂 !!!!!!!!!!!!

• Michael 1 18th Jun '21 - 11:08am

  @Peter Watson

  There are two issues. The notional results can only model what it thinks the result is in the ballot box on that evening. And that can’t take into how voters on that evening would have behaved if they had been in a different constituency!

  Take the following scenario:
  Seat 1 – Lib Dem/Con marginal consists of wards A,B,C
  Seat 2 – Con/Lab marginal consists of wards X,Y,Z

  And on the new seats swaps ward A for X – so:

  New Seat 1 – consists of X,B,C
  New Seat 2 – consists of A,Y,Z

  It is now likely that Labour voters in ward X will now vote Lib Dem and Lib Dems there will now vote Lib Dem rather than tactically for Labour. But this isn’t picked up in the notional results.

  On this basis – I’d suggest the most winnable seat in the Westmorland area is looking tough for us but “doable” if Tim choses to fight it:

  Notional result:

  Westmorland and Eden – Con win: Maj: 19.7%, Con: 50.6%, Lab: 14.8%, LD: 30.9%, Brexit: 0.2%, Green: 3.4%

  In addition in the NW are Cheadle and Hazel Grove which are “home counties” seats that just happen to be in the North!

  On the C&A swing on the current boundaries we win 34 seats in the NW – (25 from the Tories, 8 from Labour and keep Tim’s seat)

  —

  BTW FWIW – there was a net gain of 2 (there was a typo in the article). The 9 seats we win are:

  New Statesman notional Lib Dem seats in England on the provisional boundary commission proposals:

  (Apologies if this doesn’t format very well)

  Seat, Winner, Second, Majority %, Con %, Lab %, LD%, Brexit % (if applicable), Green % (if applicable). Greens in particular didn’t stand in some of our held seats.

  Esher and Walton LDem Con 0.9% 47.2% 4.3% 48.1%
  Wimbledon LDem Con 2.6% 37.8% 21.0% 40.4% 0.1% 0.1%
  Finchley and Muswell Hill LDem Con 3.4% 32.4% 30.2% 35.8% 0.4% 1.0%
  St Albans LDem Con 10.9% 39.1% 8.6% 50.0% 2.0%
  Richmond Park LDem Con 11.9% 41.2% 5.1% 53.1% 0.1%
  Kingston and Surbiton LDem Con 17.7% 33.8% 10.3% 51.5% 1.1% 2.1%
  Oxford West and Abingdon LDem Con 17.7% 35.7% 9.3% 53.4% 1.4% 0.1%
  Bath LDem Con 22.1% 31.8% 13.0% 53.9% 1.1% 0.0%
  Twickenham LDem Con 22.2% 33.9% 8.4% 56.1% 1.2% 0.3%

• John Roffey 18th Jun '21 - 11:54am

  Tom Harris in the Telegraph:

  It is Keir Starmer, not Boris Johnson, who should be more worried by the Buckinghamshire uprising

  The Lib Dems’ shock victory in one of the safest Tory seats is a warning for Labour ahead of imminent by-election in a Red Wall stronghold

  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/18/keir-starmer-not-boris-johnson-should-worried-buckinghamshire/

• expats 18th Jun '21 - 1:18pm

  A great, great result and, I believe, not just due to (Boris’s brief dismissal) ‘particular circumstances’,,,,
  ‘Leafy’ voters are more centralist than traditional ‘Red Wall’ voters; more concerned about international matters, less ‘Brexit’ fixated, better educated, more environmentally concerned, less likely to accept ‘one line’ policies, etc.

  Johnson has chosen to pander to the more ignoble aspects of voters which seems to resonate with a different mindset than those in C&A…

  Was it a vote ‘for’ LibDem values or ‘against’ Johnson’s brand of Toryism..I’d suggest the latter but in such seats, with no strong Labour presence, this won’t be a ‘one-off’ showing for this party..