The Lib Dems have launched a petition calling for Dominic Raab to go as Esher and Walton’s MP.
You will have seen that the report into bullying allegations against Raab has concluded and Raab has now resigned.
Despite him resigning as a minister, people in Esher and Walton still have him as their MP.
The Lib Dems think Raab is unsuitable to be the MP for Esher and Walton, if you agree please join our campaign to unseat him.
Whatever help you can give will be one more way to give Esher and Walton the MP the area deserves.
Lib Dem Monica Harding will be the MP Esher and Walton can be proud of. She will stand up for community, act with integrity, is competent, and knows how to behave.
The local elections on 4th May are a great opportunity for the Lib Dems – local people can send a strong message to the Government that they have had enough of Tory sleaze.
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51 Comments
There’s MPs still in place who have done more egregious things. Besides, surely libdems would prefer Raab to be their target in 18 months?
@Russell: If Raab decides to stand down or do a chicken run, it’s unlikely to be because the Lib Dems started a petition for him to go (as opposed to the cumulative effect of our party’s campaigning making it clear he can’t win). It’s a campaign exercise, pure and simple. Besides, Lib Dems fancy their chances in E&W whether or not he is the Tory candidate. And if he’s forced to resign his seat mid-term, then Lib Dems would almost certainly win the resulting by-election, whoever stands as the Tory candidate.
I thought the recall of an MP is down to the voters of their constituency not another political party.
@Jason Connor: It’s not a recall petition as such, just an ordinary Lib Dem type petition intended to get publicity and embarrass Raab.
The best people to decide his fate are the voters in E&W .. Winning a by-election is one thing – holding it – a completely different matter . As we all know too well.
I know LD’s don’t get media attention easily – while Raab gets lengthy right of reply in wholly supportive ‘newspaper’, an example of client journalism for sure – but are these stunts best way to go?
I guess one has to work with the political media we have in the UK.
@Martin Gray: E&W is no longer the sort of ultra-safe Tory seat where they weigh the Tory vote. Changes in demography and voting patterns (the exodus of liberal-minded young professionals from London into the Home Counties, and the middle class in general being much less reliably Tory than before) have made it and other Blue Wall seats very vulnerable to Lib Dem attack. Lib Dems would most likely win E&W in a GE now, and would have a runaway victory in a by-election.
@George Thomas: Of course it is. As you say we have to work with the media we’ve got.
Martin yes it should be down to the voters. The problem with a by-election is that with Labour riding high in the polls, it could split the opposition vote and help the Conservative retain the seat. By-elections campaigns are always more concentrated than a general election and I can see Labour throwing everything at it. Far better to wait for a general election where the Lib Dems have a better chance of taking the seat.
@Jason Connor: There is no way Labour would have any chance of success in a by-election in E&W or any other Blue Wall seat. Did you see what happened to Labour in Chesham & Amersham? What tends to happen in by-elections is that the where there is an obvious challenger in the seat, the opposition vote rallies behind them. It doesn’t matter how much Labour might fancy its chances, it has none. The greater difficulty for us is in a General Election, when in the face of the Con~Lab air war, we have to remind people in our target seats that it’s Lib Dems not Labour who are best placed to defeat the Tories locally.
And in reality, unless Raab can be shamed into resigning his seat (most unlikely based on what we know about him), the only way it can happen is if he is disqualified or loses a formal recall petition. The recall petition happens automatically if the required tests are met (suspension from Parliament or prison sentence of sufficient length of time).
At the next GE – the labour vote in C&A will return…And the Conservatives always get their vote out . It’s going to be very tough to hold .
The Tories who stayed at home for the by-election [in C&A] will come back, but the Labour vote (already low before the by-election) is likely to stay squeezed. As I wrote above it’s more difficult for Lib Dems to squeeze a 3rd-placed Labour vote in a GE than in a by-election due to the air war, but a by-election is very effective for showing voters who is actually competitive in a seat. In Eastbourne and Ribble Valley, the scenes of spectacular Lib Dem by-election victories from the Tories in 1990 and 1991 respectively, the Labour vote (already squeezed in the by-elections) actually fell even further in the subsequent GE (but the Tories took both seats back due to their voters returning to the polling station). It won’t necessarily be quite like that in the seats we won in this Parliament, but the Labour vote certainly won’t be anywhere near its pre-by-election level in any of them.
Hi Alex, I agree with your analysis about E and W and by-elections in general.
It’s worth noting that before the LD by-election victory in 1990 Eastbourne was a safe Tory seat. Since then it has been a Tory-LD marginal, currently held by the Tories. Likely to go LD at the next GE.
Quite a few famous LD by-election victories fit this pattern; in Eastbourne a very activist local party developed post the by-election and kep the LDs competitive.
That is the key factor. Obviously didn’t happen in Ribble Valley.
Jason Conner:
The rationale works the other way around. In a by-election, the tactical vote can be much more clear cut, the campaign is constituency focussed and national trends can be put to one side.
It is in a general election that your concerns are strongly grounded and should be better appreciated. If there is no nationwide tide of support in our favour, targeting of seats is rendered inefficient and not very effective. Currently Lib Dem polling is mired on about 8-10% (possibly 1% up from a few months ago), whereas in 1994-1997 with the Tories almost as unpopular as they are today, we were more often than not polling in the teens (with a few outliers above and below). Unless our polling improves we are likely to face serial disappointments in the next general election.
Recently, there has been a bit more effective action in Parliament, but back in the 90s Paddy Ashdown had much more presence in day to day politics. Today, for a variety of desultory reasons we are insufficiently distinctive. For Labour, a tepid approach might be OK, for the moment, but is not much use for us.
Hope so , as Helen is impressive in the house . But C&A had a strong labour showing in 2019, how tribal that vote is , we’ll see in just over a year .
Too many predictions from posters on on LDV have been widely off the mark ..
In E and W the Labour vote was already squeezed to byelection levels from the 2019 GE unlike many other target seats. Therefore in a byelection the Lib Dems would almost certainly win but if the Con-Lib swing was less than 10% that would suggest the Tories were on course to hold onto power with a reduced majority.
@Martin Gray: Helen is the Lib Dem MP for North Shropshire. Our Woman at C&A is Sarah Green. If the Labour vote were that tribal, then it wouldn’t have switched over at the by-election.
@Chris Moore: Eastbourne was already a hotbed of Lib Dem activity at the time of the 1990 by-election. The Council first turned Liberal in 1973 and has since then alternated between Copnservative and <centre party>. It’s currently in Lib Dem hands. The by-election gave them a bit of a push in Parliamentary elections. Although some people questioned whether we should have contested the by-election due to the event that caused it (and may even be questioning it now given that the political class has taken a different approach to the two recent by-elections fought under similar circumstances), as it turned out the voters weren’t interested in looking back to the event that cuased the by-election. I tend to agree with Chris Rennard who said that if we hadn’t contested Eastbourne then we would have been mocked for throwing our best chance away.
Thanks for the detail, Alex.
The difference when these seats were won in by-elections is that Labour was not polling nationally as high as they are now, over 50% in one recent poll. Some on here seemed to think with tactical voting Labour would not put much effort into winning a seat where they had less of a chance. However now buoyed by polls giving them a convincing lead I can see them making every effort to win these seats or at least devoting more resources. I don’t think it’s as easy as some people above predict when this party is still languishing on 10% or under in recent polls and does not seem to go any higher. Perhaps a dose of social liberalism would help shift the vote and less of the market forces and creeping privatisation agenda their protagonists promote and we read about so often on here.
Labour has virtually no local organisation in E&W nor in most other Blue Wall seats. What happens in by-elections depends on who has the strength locally to campaign, far more than national trends. It’s rather fanciful to suggest that Labour would be able to build a bandwagon amd gain vote share starting from a poor 3rd in any Blue Wall by-election by parachuting in candidates and activists from elsewhere (as they would have to do), however strongly they are polling nationally. AFAIK the only originally Con~LibDem battleground by-election where Labour increased its share of the vote starting from 3rd was Eastleigh (1994), but Labour had a respectable share of the vote (20.7%) in the previous GE. Lib Dems won while Labour pushed the Tories into 3rd place.
Although calling for a by-election in Esher & Walton does no harm, the chance of one is close to zero, so we shall have to take our chances in the next General Election, in which case, the lower we are polling the less habitual Labour voters will lend us their vote.
The issues are very different in Chesham and & Amersham. We should not imagine that it will be at all easy to retain, however the by-election will have given us a lot of campaigning data; as Alex Macfie observes it will be easier to hold on to voters who have already made the switch from Labour before. We need to be very aware of conservative voters who think Sunak is OK.
I estimate that we are on course to take 8-9 seats from the Conversatives basically Cheltenham through to St. Ives on the target list. I do think that where Labour have a sizeable 3rd place vote e.g Wimbledon, Cities of London and Westminster there is a risk that they leapfrog us.
NS will be a difficult hold as labour polled 12k there in 19… Tactical voting at GE seems to diminish. A rise in the labour vote where they’ve been a poor 3rd could be painful for us …
@Marco: You could be right about CL&W, as our strong showing there in 2019 was based on having a high-profile ex-Labour MP candidate who won’t be standing next time (we have a PPC there, an author and journalist who is notable but not a household name). See also Finchley & Golders Green, where our former candidate has since returned to the Labour fold. But things may be different in Wimbledon, where we have a very active local party and a 2019 candidate who is a bona fide local community activist and is standing again. The likely addition of Coombe Vale and New Malden to the constituency also brings in a load of voters who are used to voting Lib Dem to keep the Tories out.
@Martin Gray: The by-elections in NS and T&H will have clearly established us as the principal opposition to the Tories there. It’s the return of the Tory vote we have to fear.
Alex Macfie – Actually I hadn’t factored in the proposed boundary changes. Most of the top 10-12 targets don’t seem to have changed too radically however. If W’don and C is notionally Lib Dem that would help but Labour only need ~ 9% swing to win. W’land and Lindale would be notionally Con, Fife NE and C’ness S and R SNP.
Marco, I would love to see the analysis to justify your estimate that we are on course to take 8-9 seats from the Conservatives. Currently we need to improve our polling by about eight percent to have a chance of making any gains at all. I see no evidence yet that this is being addressed at all at the moment.
What do you see?
I don’t see national polls being relevant to prospects in a GE. What would matter is polling in marginal seats and our local activity there.
@ David Evans it was based on assumption that in target seats:
CON vote falls by 6%. 3% goes to LAB and 3% to LIB and that 25% of LAB vote over 4% goes tactically to LIB (only in seats where LAB vote is under 20%).
I estimate that this results in the following:
LIKELY GAINS FROM CON: Carshalton and Wallington, Cheltenham, Cheadle, Cambridgeshire South, Esher and Walton, Guildford, Eastbourne. POSSIBLE GAINS: Westmorland and Lonsdale*, Wimbledon and Coombe, Lewes, St Ives, Hazel Grove.
* Lost due to boundary changes
Scotland needs a separate analysis.
No I am not saying Labour would win the seats, highly unlikely, but they will probably put more effort into them and more resources. Again all this does is split the vote boosting the conservatives in those by-elections wins, making retention more of a challenge. In a general election too Labour are the main repository of younger voters. It’s demoralising to see there is little interest in supporting Lib Dem candidates and even trying to win over some Labour held seats which is what the party used to do. Remember Simon Hughes and Sarah Teather. The damage caused by the coalition has never really been recovered in that respect.
Jim,
I understand your logic, but what you suggest is what so many true believers said in relation to the 2015 election and believed, right up to the bitter end, that their knowledge of individual marginal seats and local activity, meant we would win between 25 and 35 seats.
We won 8.
Overall, the polls were right and the individual seat theorists were wrong. Activity helps but its results are massively diminished when national polls indicate we are not doing well because people who are minded to support us, know this and it reduces their belief we can win in their patch and they look to the second best choice. That is why there are so many places where we control the council, but rarely or never have elected an MP.
Contrariwise, when we are doing relatively well in national polls, it tends to magnify the gains we can make.
Unless things improve substantially in the polls, any gains will be only be on the basis of a truly phenomenal local effort, and could easily be offset by losses elsewhere.
“[Labour] will probably put more effort into [Lib Dem targets] and more resources” there was a lot of that sort of thing going on under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership when Labour was dominated by the far Left, including the sort of people who prefer the Tories to win when it’s Tory vs Lib Dem. The party under Keir Starmer seems more sensible and interested in winning seats rather than trying to undermine rivals for the non-Tory vote. So while there will be some local Labour parties wanting to spoil things for us, they probably won’t get much backing from the Labour leadership. (The Kingston & Surbiton Labour party seems to be so inclined.) If Labour in a particular area has no local organisation and no support from the party HQ, then it won’t be able to gain any traction, especially in a by-election.
As I said the main obstacle to a 3rd party squeeze in our target seats is in a general election. Sarah Olney tells an anecdote from the 2017GE (the one she narrowly lost) about mainly young voters emerging from polling stations in RPNK confused because they couldn’t find Jeremy Corbyn’s name on the ballot paper. The quasi-presidential nature of GE campaigns means that some voters don’t realise that they are voting for a local representative not a Prime Minister. In by-elections there is no air war, so this sort of thing doesn’t happen — everything depends on local campaigns.
As I said Marco, I would love to see the analysis to just your estimate.
What looks like a glorified guess (Con down 6, us up 3 and Lab up 3, coupled with us gaining a quarter of the Labour vote) isn’t analysis, at best it is a very optimistic scenario.
@ David Evans I thought they were fairly modest assumptions. Polls have Con vote collapsing by more than that which would help us.
For Scotland I have likely gain: Fife NE possible: Caithness, Bearsden and Campsie Fells.
From a starting point of 9 this would result in 17-23 seats so would not necessarily vindicate our current strategy.
David Evans, Marco and Alex Macfie all make important points that are less mutually exclusive than it might appear.
David stresses our overall polling (as do I), because in a GE election many voters are predominantly influenced by national trends (as Alex explains).
“when we are doing relatively well in national polls, it tends to magnify the gains we can make.” needs to be etched into our strategists thinking.
David’s estimation that we need a further 8% to gain any seats is probably not quite correct, though he is right that we cannot bank on gaining any with current polling. An important reason for this is that Marco in his otherwise fairly cautious analysis has not considered numbers of previously Lib Dem voters who might, particularly in a GE, switch to Labour, even though the Labour candidate has no chance of winning. We could win seats simply as a result of a diminished Conservative vote, but only if our vote is maintained.
The Party does need to accept that much of the past year’s strategy has been ineffective an even misplaced. There has been too much reliance on ‘feel good’ positioning and too little to establish and reinforce a strong modern Liberal identity. More critically I am worried that we have too little to appeal to younger voters.
That’s why I said that if the younger vote turns out Labour are likely to be the main beneficiaries not the Lib Dems. That was certainly the case with Jeremy Corbyn and I think will continue with Keir Starmer. I also see the Greens unfortunately picking up some of that vote. It does not help of course and saddens me that the Lib Dems nationally do not support their candidates in Labour held or facing seats despite the quality of the candidates, many of them women. So these candidates are just standing as paper candidates and don’t ever get a leaflet from the party.
Hello, David Evans, you are too pessimistic.
Given the sharp fall in the Tory vote, we are likely to win around 10 new seats on a national swing. (Current swing from Tories to LD’s 5-6%). Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus currently gives us 20 in total.
Tactical voting should give us a few more.
That’s on our current share of the vote.
Both Martin and Jason rightly mention our lack of appeal to younger voters.
In target seats, this seems to be less of an issue. Students, in particular, are open to tactical voting. So in Ox West and A, for example, we do get a lot of support from students.
I wonder if it’s a question of getting into contention, so younger voters are minimally aware of us? Or if something specific has to change?
We certainly have a better record on LGBT+ rights than Labour, for example. And the house building of some of our local councils is a real positive for poorer younger voters. Shouldn’t we commit as a party to far more social housing?
@Jason Connor: Of our top 20 most winnable seats, only one (Sheffield Hallam, the #3 target) is Labour-facing. One (the #1 target, as it happens) is against the SNP (that’s East Dunbartonshire). The rest are all Tory-facing. Looking further down the chart, there are a few red squares and one green (for PC) and a few more yellow (for SNP). Our electoral battleground of realistic wins is mostly Tory-facing. That’s the reality, and is why we are focusing mainly on taking out Tories.
Regarding the two MPs you mentioned in Labour-facing battlegrounds. Simon Hughes won his seat in a by-election in very specific circumstances. Sarah T’s by-election was during a Labour government (notably we won from 3rd place, something we hadn’t done for about 25 years and would not do again until North Shropshire last year). 2005 was the first GE in which we won a significant number of seats from Labour. We should have won a further haul in 2010. Here I don’t quite agree with David Evans where he writes “when we are doing relatively well in national polls, it tends to magnify the gains we can make,” because we suffered a net loss of seats despite an increased vote share. We certainly should not have lost seats to Labour. It has been suggested that this was due to the Cleggmania surge leading to candidatitis in long-shot seats and us taking our eyes off the ball targetingwise. Then again, we were coasting before that, so maybe we would have done even worse without it.
Meant to post the link to our target seat chart. Here it is
https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/liberal-democrat
Re North East Fife. Lost narrowly in 2015 it was won back in 2019 by Wendy Chamberlain
Labour definitely lost out on some seats last time because they would rather compete with us in seats they couldn’t win. I’d like to think they’ll learn from that, and they may do in certain areas, but there will be others where the surge in Labour polling means naive activists in areas they have no chance in will be convinced they deserve to win and have a good chance of doing so.
Or in some cases they’ll know they can’t win that seat, but are convinced they’ll win the election, so they become less focused on getting the Tories out, and fixate on stopping us from making progress.
@Mike Falchikov
Actually, we lost North East Fife by 9.6% in 2015 (following a 19.9% swing to the SNP). The SNP vote then fell back by 8% in 2017 and they only clung on by 2 votes. The SNP vote actually increased by 7.3% in 2019 but massive tactical voting by Conservative voters helped the Liberal Democrats to take the seat by 2.9%. The challenge in 2024 will be to persuade Conservatives to continue to vote tactically to prevent the SNP taking the seat.
On the subject of the latest polling stats and winning seats, I hope the Lib Dem leadership are taking due note of the latest poll by Statista of 2,005 respondents carried out on 18/19 April.
The result ? 53% thought it wrong to leave the EU and only 33% right to leave. Their long term graph shows this gap has widened every month over the last two years.
A misleading slogan about NHS funding on a bus took us out of the EU…. The danger now is of missing the bus rapidly going in the opposite direction. Messrs Davey and Pack please note.
North East Fife is pretty safe IMO. The party threw a lot at that seat for the 2019 election (as did the SNP), and but Willie Rennie doubled his majority at the more recent Holyrood elections and we gained councillors there in the local elections (under STV).
Not that we can afford to be complacent, but whatever the local party is doing has worked and Wendy is an excellent MP.
I would like to reiterate David Raw’s comment. The significant point is the inexorable trend. The party needs to be ahead of the curve, directly addressing the damage of Brexit. I imagine that the leadership would advocate extensive regulatory alignment, but we do not hear enough to be sure.
Although I am far from keen on referendums, I do think there will have to be one t countermand the 2016 vote. If I am right about this we should be proposing a referendum earlier rather than later. There could be a referendum to mandate negotiations towards a closer more collaborative relationship. In theory this is not needed, however in practice, without a new vote negotiators would be hamstrung without one.
The target seats shared by Alex Macfie are under the current boundaries. The proposed new boundaries would see the Lib Dems start with 8 seats and Westmorland and Lonsdale, Fife North East and Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross would be notionally lost. I have a list of the new target seats with majorities if people want to see it.
1-8 is:
Wimbledon and Coombe 518 Carshalton and Wallington 665 Fife North East 972 Cheltenham 1404 Sheffield Hallam 1537 Esher and Walton 2018 Cambridgeshire South 2074 Cheadle 2337
I recall Charles Kennedy once explaining the timing of the Devolution Referendum., and related changes. He said that the formal matters were handled after the politics were done. I think his words were that “it (devolution) was the settled will of the Scottish People”. He also noted that “a Settlement extinguishes prior claims”.
It took a huge upset (Brexit) for that settled will to be visibly changes. Brexit illustrated to Scots voters that the UK government would change the status of the relationship between Scotland and the EU in a way that overrode part of that prior settlement. The consequences are with us today. We should be working towards a new settlement. Patches and tactics are not sufficient and the voters will respond accordingly. Our legacy policy is for a federal settlement. We might wish to check that we are jointly happy to continue that. Dithering will not impress.
These are indicative not 100% accurate
Eastbourne 3222 Caithness Sutherland and Easter Ross 3701 Guildford 3754 Bearsden and Campsie Fells 4031 Lewes 4205 Westmorland and Lonsdale 4850 Hazel Grove 5126 St Ives 5290 Cities of London and Westminster 6326 Winchester 6367 Finchley and Golders Green 6606 Cambridge 8310 Sutton and Cheam 8318 Bermondsey and Old Southwark 8513 Woking 8705
@David Raw, @Marco: You will presumably be pleased with Layla Moran on #BBCQT on Thursday when she attacked Brexit in an exchange with a Tory minister who looks like the “Computer Says No” woman on Little Britain
@Alex Macfie “a Tory minister who looks like the “Computer Says No” woman on Little Britain”
That seems unnecessarily personal, and given that the “woman on Little Britain” is David Walliams in drag, it feels out of place on this site for a number of reasons.
@ Alex Macfie
Yes very good would like to see more of this from Lib Dem MPs.