My initial prediction that the Tories would hold onto the Shropshire North constituency by the skin of their teeth turned out to be incorrect. What actually happened is that a combination of Tory voters deciding to stay at home, Tory voters wanting punish the government for all its missteps and a drop in the Labour vote handed the Lib Dems a stunning victory with a swing of 37% towards them.
Apart from the problems that the Tories have with sleaze, a plethora of non-conservative policies, the ongoing migrant invasion on the South Coast, Boris and Carrie’s green extremism and the allegations of covid rules hypocrisy at Number Ten, what also did for the Tories was a failure to motivate their core vote. It’s a basic rule of elections that the key task is to get your party’s vote out, the Tories failed to do this. Why they could not do this is complex but may be linked to the Tories becoming a tax, borrow and spend socialist party along with putting up a candidate who while they looked good on paper, wasn’t local, had little knowledge of the constituency and was parachuted in from Birmingham. The Lib Dems on the other hand ran with the same candidate that they had in the 2019 General Election which ensured candidate continuity and also allowed the Lib Dems to build up a ground game that started long before the Owen Paterson scandal that caused this by-election.
In a way this loss of a very safe Tory seat is a form of politics as usual a sign that the voters in this constituency felt that they could send a message to their usual party of choice to sort their shit out and start serving up proper conservative policies not Labour-light ones. Despite the panic over the Omicron Covid variant the local electorate decided to behave as many electorates do in a mid term by-election and vote against the governing party candidate.
If the Tories can sort things out whether by removing Boris Johnson and replacing him with a proper nationalistic conservative with bona fides in the areas of economics and liberty or by changing course then they may well win this seat back at the next General Election. But if the Tories want to win back this seat then they need to start their ground game now and part of that ground game might involve highlighting the pro-EU sentiments of the new MP that she mysteriously scrubbed from her website and campaign literature prior to this by-election.
Another interesting fact about this election is the collapse of the Labour vote. Whilst the Tories dropped by 34%, Labour dropped by 12% falling from second to third place. Of course it is difficult to extrapolate from one by-election result a prediction for other seats, but what this drop may suggest is that Labour are less able to challenge the Tories in some seats where Labour were once the primary challenger to the Tories. I can’t help but think that this election result was not just a mid term unofficial referendum on Boris Johnson’s performance but also a test of Sir Keir Starmer’s popularity and credibility as well. If this is the case them Labour have performed exceptionally badly for a party that is the official opposition.
It was a bad day also for the Reform party who failed to attain the necessary 5% of votes needed to save their deposit. I’m surprised about this as they had a good local candidate who was very keyed into local issues. Reform need to do better than this and they should work on building their local party apparatus in the seats where they believe they could do well.
All the parties apart from the winning Lib Dems, the Tories and Labour, lost their deposits. The Greens only managed to achieve 4.6% despite a 1.4% rise in their vote which like the votes for the Lib Dems may well have been protest votes by those discomforted by the direction that the Tories are travelling in by voters who might normally have voted Labour.
Looking down the rest of the undercard, I see that Heritage the once interesting social conservative but now tin foil hat anti vaccination party, managed to completely disgrace themselves by getting less votes than the Monster Raving Loony Party. As someone who believes that there is a need for a party to represent social conservatives I have to say that Heritage has squandered the opportunity it had to be a voice for social conservatives by its leader David Kurten deciding to make Heritage into a specifically anti vaccination party. Maybe it’s time for Mr Kurten to step down as leader and have someone less inclined to wear a tin foil hat lead this party?
Reclaim also did very poorly and the result of the actual election was exceptionally variant to this party’s support online on social media. Reclaim managed to only get 375 votes or 1% of the electorate and only managed to 0.7% more votes than the Monster Raving Loony Party. Maybe Reclaim need to learn the lesson that the real world of politics is not the same as the world of politics that exists on social media? Even taking into account that this is one of Reclaim’s early electoral outings this result is pretty poor when you realise just how big their social media game is. Unfortunately for them Reclaim could not translate positive results on social media into real world election results. Reclaim maybe should shift back into being a free speech promotion party and pressure group and accept that they’ve had their fingers burned by going down a similar path to that trodden by Heritage?
To conclude. This is a good result for the Lib Dems but this is also a classic protest vote at a mid term period. The Lib Dems were assisted by a collapse in the Labour vote, the worryingly low turnout which appears to have hurt the Tory vote and most importantly the constant stream of cock ups and self inflicted wounds incurred by the Tories. The Tories could win this seat back at the General Election but this will depend on whether the Tories decide that they are going to go back to the days when they acted like Tories and also if the Tories can repair the trust issues that are seriously hurting them at the moment.
I find it disappointing that the new startup parties didn’t do better. The country is crying out for a genuinely conservative party. Even if the new parties don’t have candidates getting elected, they might start to focus the minds of the current faux conservative party if they get a good enough showing.
I didn’t expect Heritage to do well at all as Kurten’s descent into tin foil hat stuff has put off a lot of people who might be inclined to vote or a social conservative alternative. Reclaim really didn’t manage to translate their strong online presence into real world votes and that should be a lesson for them for the future. Reclaim need to have a suite of policies of stuff that they are FOR rather than a list of things that the are against.
For me though the performance of Reform was the most disappointing. Out of all the alt parties this is the most credible in terms of organisation and talent. I believe that they need to focus in building a presence in each of the constituencies that they are targeting doing the grunt work that builds support such as rubbish clearing drives or sensible social action in order to make themselves look credible for council and then parliamentary elections. The Lib Dems do this sort of stuff and it gets them votes. I also think that Reform need to look at abandoning policies that are vote losers such as an elected upper house as it puts voters like me off of voting for them as the last thing Britain needs is two houses each with a democratic mandate fighting each other into administrative stalemate.
Yes, I actually quite welcomed the result although I’m sorry you predicted it slightly wrong.
I’m not sure about the Reform Party though? I have to confess I didn’t follow their specific campaigning in North Shropshire but looking at their website suggests they are a pressure group to slowly turn public opinion towards less trust in the NHS, and to counter the opposotion we have in the UK ATM towards fracking? As opposed to actually winning seats?
I believe that you may have the Reform Party wrong. They are as I see it and from what I’ve gained from reading their stuff a party that is basically Thatcherite in nature. I don’t see any sign from reform tht they want to create less trust in the NHS but rather want the NHS to do what we damn well pay them to do which is to provide a competent and safe health service free at the point of use. As for fracking I believe, especially in the light of the upcoming energy crisis, that banning fracking was a big mistake. It could have provided Britain with relatively clean natural gas and reduce reliance on imports and interconnections.
I do believe that Reform have made big mistakes such as by pushing for an elected upper house as I don’t believe tht there is tht much enthusiasm for that particular policy and it is an error to make that policy so prominent.
With Shropshire North what we have is a classic mid term by-election. Local voters who would normally have voted for the Tories wanted to send a message to Westminster but could not bring themselves to vote for a Labour candidate, therefore instead they voted Lib Dem. The Lib Dems are often the repository of mid term protest votes and it will be interesting to see what happens in the seat in the General Election.
*opposition
Marian, you talk as though hospitals that kill you and sky high fuel prices are a good thing.
And now there’s been an early Frost…
Yes indeed. As I say in my article on this subject, it’s beginning to look a lot like the ends of the Thatcher and Major administrations.