Unfortunately we don’t have a graphic for that!
The contest in Mid Bedfordshire today is, unusually, a fight between three parties – Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems. The other by-election today in Tamworth is a much more straightforward affair, between the Tories and Labour.
Traditionally on polling day we don’t speculate on outcomes (often because we are much too busy!), but in the early hours of tomorrow morning Lib Dem eyes will be turned towards Mid Beds.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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21 Comments
It is nice to see an admission from a Liberal Democrat source that Mid Bedfordshire is a three-horse race. The mailing I have had from party headquarters has told me it is a two-horse race. Apparently, it is between us and the Conservatives, and Labour aren’t in it. I don’t mind our chances being talked up, but I do mind being fed such obvious untruths.
Naturally I hope that we win but my bigger concern is that we save Sunak from the jaws of defeat.
@ Tim Rogers
On the other hand a Labour win deep in blue wall territory would be very bad news for liberalism.
And equally does anyone doubt that we would be cantering home had Labour not decided to fight this one?
This ridiculous pose as generally perceived of simply being ‘anti Conservative’ gives us no identity.
In addition, thinking that a Labour win is acceptable is mistaken. It isn’t. The subsequent messaging could be very damaging for us and might well bring succour to the Conservatives.
According to an article about the by-election in Wikipedia, there have been two opinion polls conducted in the constituency – one by Survation and one by Opinium – with one showing a Labour lead and one with Labour tied with the Tories. I don’t believe the Liberal Democrats would falsely present this as a two-horse race with Labour third.
Mary: we all know about these opinion polls which were conducted weeks ago and commissioned by L:abour or their affiliates.
The first had Labour 6 ahead of the Conservatives with the Lib Dems fourth, 28/22/15, the second had Labour more less static on 29, the Conservatives up to 29 and the Lib Dems to 22.Since then it is unclear what has happened but if that trend of the second poll has or had continued then Labour could well be third. The reality nobody knows until the early hours of tomorrow morning.
Mary Fulton:
2 Opinion polls published weeks ago and commissioned by Labour organisations.
No 1 :Labour 28, Cons 22, Independent 19, Lib Dem 15
No 2: Cons 29, Labour 29, Lib Dem 22, Independent 9
If that trend has continued Labour could well be third. WE will know tomorrow.
I
@theakes
Yes, I can understand that Labour would want to have poll evidence to show they were the main challengers but I do not believe those reputable polling organisations would taylor their findings to suit the fact that Labour was commissioning the polls. Anyway, let’s hope that we have made the progress needed to snatch this one 😊
The issue with mid Beds, is a lack of polling data. The Tories never bothered with polling data in Mid Beds as the saw it as a shoe in! The Lib Dems and Labour have been so behind over the years that they have never bothered with marked registers . The other issue is whether the likes of the Independent candidate and Reform UK take votes from the Tories. The big question is no body knows how this is going end. The Tories think they are going to loose 30% of their vote. The one strength the Lib Dems might have, is Tory voters who may prefer to switching to the Lib Dems rather than Labour . Remember in both Shropshire North and Tiverton and Honiton , the Lib Dems came from third place in 2019 to win the by elections. Could lightening strike a third time.
Truth is an important ingredient of Liberal Democracy. In the “blue wall” areas we have been pushing the line that we can win but Labour can’t. The mid-Bedfordshire result shows this to be untrue, and will gravely damage our prospects elsewhere. Rather than pretending to be like the Tories but nicer we should be vigorously promoting our values. Liberal Democracy is in danger and we need to fight for it.
@Mary Fulton
Sorry to have to let you know but the email I received on Tuesday from a senior campaigner employed by the Liberal Democrats stated clearly that the two possibilities in Mid Bedordshire this morning were a Conservative MP or a Liberal Democrat one. Whether you can believe it or not, the email is still on my computer. I consider that to be dishonest.
Now we appear to have come third in a two-horse race.
What I was hearing consistently over the last few days was that there was an awful lot of churn amongst the voters, with people changing their vote right up until the last moment. That was in the context of no recent independent polling and little canvassing from any of the parties for many years, so not much data to go on. No-one was able to call it, right up until the night.
Things were shifting all the time, but what is absolutely clear is that there was a strong anti-Tory vote. And it certainly looked as though it was coming our way, so describing the HQ email as “dishonest” is stretching it a bit. By polling day it was too close to call between the three parties, hence my headline.
Well done to our team for an amazing effort.
@John Nicholson
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Sending out an email like that is clearly the sort of behaviour we would expect from opponents who don’t share our principles, but not from Liberal Democrats. I trust this will be followed up.
I received no fewer than 24 emails from London Region alone urging me to go up to mid Beds from when the election was called until polling day. The danger of this result is that next time, I receive an email from London Region I am less likely to take it seriously, because from at least two weeks out from the election those running the campaign must have known from our own canvassing that we were in third place. There is also the issue of the cost of this campaign. The expenses limit for a Parliamentary by-election is £100,000, but this only applies after the election is called. It is possible that our Party has spent up to twice this much because we started campaigning when the mid Beds by-election might have been on the same day as Uxbridge and Selby. One wonders how much, if any, of the collection on the last day of Conference is left; unlike the Tories with their big business donors and Labour with their Unions, we rely on individual donations and have to husband our limited resources more carefully.
@Laurence Cox – now you have confused me!
Are you saying if it was indeed true that 2 weeks ago the Campaign knew we were in third place – in a very close contest – that we should have pulled out at that stage? Of course not – there was everything to fight for. But in any case everything I have heard suggests that this election was more volatile and unpredictable than any we have fought before, so the figures two weeks out could not be taken as hard prediction.
And are you saying that we should only spend money on campaigns where we are guaranteed to win?
Mary Reid, our messaging does concern me. I was there yesterday and it did seem unpredictable as you say; so that means we should not have said it was a 2-horse race. One of my relatives has been annoyed about this and also rather fed up with so many messages asking for money from both national party and local. We do need to remind people that we do not have other big sources of funds like Labour and Conservatives, but unfortunately what happened this week has caused my relative to resign membership of our party.
@Mary Fulton “Thanks for taking the time to respond. Sending out an email like that is clearly the sort of behaviour we would expect from opponents who don’t share our principles, but not from Liberal Democrats. I trust this will be followed up.”
Sorry but this is absolutely standard behaviour from the Lib Dems — the infamous misleading bar charts about ‘only X can win here’ have been famous for decades.
@ Former Dem – Whereas Labour Party election leaflets are renowned for only ever stating the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Yes, right.
@Mary Reid
From the time that the election began, as opposed to our campaigning before Dorries resigned, are you telling me that our own private canvassing was so at variance with the polling (which proved to be fairly accurate) that it showed us and the Tories close together with Labour some way behind, because when I get emails like: “The word is that it is still nail-bitingly close on the ground, meaning this final polling week is more important than ever” just 72 hours before polling opened, that is what I would expect. The result was nail-bitingly close, but between Labour and the Tories with us on only a fraction over 2/3 of the Labour vote. If this had happened at a General Election, or an all-up local election, I would have hoped that whoever was running the campaign would have pulled helpers out of any constituency or ward where we were this far behind. By-elections are special, yes, but we as a party don’t have the money to throw around like the Tories and Labour, and more importantly we cannot afford to disillusion activists. There was always the option not to keep pushing people to go to mid Beds once we knew we were falling behind.
I very much agree with Peter Wrigley.
The barrage of wildly over optimistic messages from HQ explicitly stating that the Liberal Democrat candidate only needed extra help to push her over the line undermines the veracity of similar appeals for future by-elections. Either the canvassing returns were hugely inaccurate or the party lied about what they showed.
Much more fundamental is the fact that when faced in a “solid” Conservative seat with a possibility of either Labour or Liberal Democrat being the viable alternative then the electorate chose Labour. And, frankly, why not? Why should anyone vote Liberal Democrat when there is no vision of the kind of society the party envisages and promotes? All there is is a regular flurry of detailed policy, all of which is very worthy but does not of itself add up to a coherent image of what a Liberal society would be like. The consequence is the lack of a core vote – as seen in Tamworth and many other places – a poll rating barely into double figures for the past ten years, and an inability to attract key “movers and shakers” in order to influence political thinking and lead electoral change.
I really hate this approach to Bye elections . We should have a strategy of using these opportunities to build something from nothing . We must run better campaigns in EVERY Bye election. It’s a chance to get local parties back up and running. We can do so much better with a bit of vision. Pretending we were going to win Bedford without a single councillor in the constituency or even a marked register was pretty stupid. The emails encouraged unreasonable expectations and now we’re deflated. It would have been better to have been honest with the members and said “come to Mid Beds we’re not going to win as we have no foot in the door at all but let’s get as many Tory votes as possible. It would have been better to have given some of the budget to Tamworth and set up an office and a presence in that Constituency at leat we had a Cllr there! Might have been able to started something!