I’m doing a bit of moonlighting tonight.
ALDC is always first with the by-election results and they’ve decided to recruit a team of volunteers to report them.
Tonight's by-election reporting comes from @caronmlindsay. Caron is on the exec of ASLDC and is editor of @libdemvoice. Thank you very much for helping and if you're interested in helping send us a message! pic.twitter.com/AmEV6SBT9k
— ALDC (@ALDC) January 31, 2019
It’s a great way to get involved and it’s something you can do on your sofa in your pyjamas while watching Question Time. Don’t worry, I won’t post a photo.
All you need to do is keep an eye on a couple of places on the internet and post the results in a few places.
If you fancy a shot at doing this, drop ALDC a message on Twitter.
Tonight, there’s just the one by-election – Warlingham division on Surrey County Council. The Conservatives are defending and last time round we came second. Our candidate, Charles Lister, has fought the ward twice before, in 2017 and 2013.
So now, we wait.
And it was worth sitting up for – a really good increase in vote share.
Surrey CC, Warlingham division
Conservative 1199 48.1% (-8.1)
Charles Lister (LD) 990 39.7 (+10.8)
UKIP 176 7.1% (-2.9)
Labour 126 5.1% (+0.3)Good increase in vote share for Charles Lister and @Surreycclibdems
— ALDC (@ALDC) January 31, 2019
It bodes well for the local elections in May.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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5 Comments
ITV Peston programme on 23/1/2019 had a calculation turning factual bye-election results into forecasts of parliamentary elections, with all the usual caveats. The result is a hung parliament. Assuming the DUP continue to support the Tories they are still short of an overall majority.
Whatever their leaders say most MPs hate general elections, there is lots of extra work and lots of extra risk. They know about Michael Portillo, Ed Balls etc. The leader of the SNP lost his seat once (their current leader is the Scottish parliament).
We should remember what Charles Kennedy said on BBC tv Question Time.
“Speaking as a Scot, they hate each other.” A Labour-SNP coalition at Westminster is therefore unlikely. A Labour-SNP-Liberal Democrat is even more unlikely, even if fantasy mathematics make it possible.
‘The leader of the SNP lost his seat once’
When there’s no Home Rule the leaders of Scots, Welsh Northern Irish parties tend to seek Westminster seats. When there are Parliaments and Assemblies, the Party leader sits in them and there is also a Leader in the Westminster group. The SNP Westminster leader lost his seat in 2017. As did the DUP leader, who was also NI Chief Minister and was defeated in his Westminster seat in 2010.
The last serving leader of one of the three Great Britain wide parties to lose his seat in a General Election was Sir Archie Sinclair (Liberal) in 1945. Even more galling was that the margin between first and third in his seat was around 60 votes.
Meanwhile, in an Aldermanic election in the City of London:
Billingsgate (City of London) Result:
IND B. Masojada: 52, IND A. Heath-Richardson: 25, IND R. Kent: 15, IND A. Raja: 9, IND J. De Suasmarez: 8, SDP: 0
Read that again – SDP: 0. Nil, nada, nothing. If they thought that the Bootle result of many years ago was bad, this is something else.
Yes, I know that the current SDP is a phoenix party after Owen closed down his version of it, and yes it is very very small, but someone saw fit to contest this election in the Square Mile, and they got the reaction that could have been predicted. You have to laugh.
All the same, as an original SDP member, it does sadden me to see the name soiled by association with the anti-EU cause. It isn’t what the Gang of Four started it for.
Yes it isn’t what they stood for and it has become a right wing nationalist party unlike the SNP and Plaid which are more left wing and more popular in their areas. What I can’t understand is why the votes were so low for all the independent candidates including the winner but I imagine any party with a label would garner few votes there.
@marcstevens – it’s a City ward where most of the electors are business electors, and there aren’t all that many of them. It’s still not a massive turnout, but it’s not that remarkable. The City of London has many peculiarities, and this is one of them.