Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

There is also potentially a piece that people don't always want to be super specialized. Can make work become stale all the quicker as well as create a feeling of being trapped in that specialty if/when looking to move elsewhere.

For sure - at the minute I think in the civil service it's too far the other way where specialisation is discouraged by their career structure.

I feel the not wanting to super specialise all the time. I am super-specialised as a lawyer But I wish it was possible to work more in other areas or make changes throughout your career and I think it is just very difficult.

[Gups]

There is also potentially a piece that people don't always want to be super specialized. Can make work become stale all the quicker as well as create a feeling of being trapped in that specialty if/when looking to move elsewhere.

Well, that's up to them - everyone can make their own career choices, but to actually require people to start afresh - to move from (say) pensions to ports as a requirement for moving up is madness

[Sheilbh]

And on civil service, haven't read it yet but interesting details from Rory Stewart's book. He was one of the Tory MPs kicked out of the party by Johnson for not being willing to back the risk of a no deal Brexit and is very much from the patrician One Nation wing of the party. Before he was an MP he was a diplomat (spy), he walked across Afghanistan in 2002 and wrote a book about it and then became a governor of a province in Iraq. I have a fair few issues with him but he's very much an anti-populist.

As Prisons Minister he promised to resign if he didn't bring violence in prisons down within a year. At one point he suggested installing body-scanners and searching everyone including prison officers. Civil servants told him he wasn't the first minister to suggest it and all his predecessors had come to the view that it was the wrong way to go. He continued to insist as was told the union would not accept officers being searched - he knew and referred to a recent discovery of a 20kg bag of drugs that had clearly taken into the prison by a guard so he pushed again and said the unions couldn't resist given there waas clearly an issue.

The next meeting, the unions weren't mentioned, but the civil servants said scanners were impossible because of human rights law. In the third meeting that they were a health risk. In the fourth meeting to expensive to buy, install and redesign reception areas of prisons. In the end he was able to show that scanners could be compatible with human rights law and health. He closes "I was unsure why the civil servants were so determined to oppose me. Did they believe that the whole system was so porous and corrupt that technology was irrelevant? Did they resent a minister pushing an option which they had not proposed? Or was resistance just a habit?"

There's another similar story as International Development Minister on funding projects in Syria - which he was sure was actually funding jihadis and tried to veto. He's blocked at every turn, travels to multiple countries to meet various obstacles (all of whom have no issue with him ending the funding), is patronisingly told off by the Prime Minister's foreign affairs advisor - then, two months later, is told by a civil servant that one of the people we'd been funding was filmed in an al-Qaeda video, they've prepared some lines and their advice is to terminate the funding

[crazy canuck]

There is also potentially a piece that people don't always want to be super specialized. Can make work become stale all the quicker as well as create a feeling of being trapped in that specialty if/when looking to move elsewhere.

For sure - at the minute I think in the civil service it's too far the other way where specialisation is discouraged by their career structure.

I feel the not wanting to super specialise all the time. I am super-specialised as a lawyer But I wish it was possible to work more in other areas or make changes throughout your career and I think it is just very difficult.

Don't lose hope. I've made several shifts of what I have focussed my practice on over the years. And the neat part of that is people still remember me from my past focusses and so I end up with a nice diversity of work.

[Sheilbh]

Labour won the Tamworth by-election, overturning a 19,000 seat majority on a 24% swing (bigger than Selby). Labour held the seat from 1997 to 2010 after winning it on a similar 22% swing in a 1996 byelection. But since 2010 it had become a very solidly Tory seat - they won 66% of the vote at the last election. That makes it the largest percentage point majority (43%) wiped out in  a by-election.

I think it's a very good sign in part because it's a Midlands seat and I get that losing seats in the Red Wall and Scotland were traumatic for Labour. But I think the impact of 2015 when Labour went from competitive in much of the Midlands to 10-20 points behind is understated (one of many reasons I'm dubious on having Ed Miliband back on the frontbench). A load of swing seats basically went out of contention in that election, before the Tory advance into Labour heartlands.

Interestingly Tamworth is also one of those areas where Labour was really hurt by the rise of UKIP:

Edit: Just to be clear the 2023 in this graphic is the local elections. The by-election was Labour on 46%, Tories on 41%, Reform (UKIP successor) on 5% - so just enough to keep their deposit.

The radical right successors to UKIP continue to vastly underperform compared to their polling - which reflects my experience that the second I talk to people in the real world, no-one's heard about them/to the extent they have think they're nutters.

Mid-Bedfordshire is still counting. That's a bigger ask for Labour as they'll need to overturn a 24,500 majority - also unlike Tamworth this has been a bit more of a three way race (lots of dodgy Lib Dem bar charts as you'd expect). At the last election the Tories won 60% of the vote, Labour 22% and the Lib Dems about 13%. Based on the current national polling, the Tories should hold this seat - but turnout has been very high for a by-election and apparently Labour are starting to sound more positive. If they win that they will also have overturned the largest numerical majority in any by-election ever.

Regardless of whether they win both Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire show Labour overperforming v the polls. Obviously turnout in a by-election is a factor, on the other hand - what can the Tories do to motivate their voters to turn out next year compared to this year when they've stayed at home?

Edit: Seems like we missed a real charmer in Tamsworth where the Tory candidate immediately left the stage (and by the back door) and didn't even say to listen to the Labour candidate's victory speech

Looks like Labour have won Mid-Beds too

Edit: That's the first Labour MP ever for Mid-Beds going back to it broadly being created as a constituency in 1918. It's been Tory since 1931 (went Liberal a couple of times in the 20s).

Edit: In both seats Reform UK (radical right successor to UKIP) won about 2,000 votes - which isn't much and is under-performing the national polls. But in both seats it has been bigger than Labour's majority. I suspect there'll be a lot of pressure in the Tories to write a manifesto aimed at those 2,000 votes which will be exactly the wrong lesson to learn. Especially given that although it was bigger than the margin, Reform lost their deposit in Mid-Beds:

Britain Elects
@BritainElects
Mid Bedfordshire parliamentary by-election, result:

LAB: 34.1% (+12.4)
CON: 31.1% (-28.6)
LDEM: 23.1% (+10.5)
IND: 4.6% (+3.3)
REF: 3.7% (+3.7)
GRN: 1.8% (-2.0)

Labour GAIN from Conservative.

Edit: And apparently this means Labour now are currently running ahead of where they were at the same point in the 92-97 electoral cycle.

[Josquius]

Is there not a concern with by elections that there's more of a protest vote factor?
Conservative people voting Labour knowing their vote won't actually make much of an impact, it's just an extra opposition person for a single year and it will get the tories to care for them more in future?

I do hope the tories chase the fascists more though. I get the feeling their doing this to the extent they have, though it's won them some northern seats, has really started to alienate liberal folk in the south.
I continue to dream the dream or a land where labour and the lib dems are the two main parties.
A much lesser dream than an actual democracy with a myriad of parties of course but hey ho.

[garbon]

I can't imagine many people taking time out of their day to put in a protest vote at a by election.

[Josquius]

I can't imagine many people taking time out of their day to put in a protest vote at a by election.

The turn out was very high.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Prof Curtice thinks that the results are very similar to by-election results prior to the Labour landslide in 1997 :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67166028

I will add that the Uxbridge hold a few months back seems to have lured the Tories into doubling down on policies that appeal to the nasty 20% but seem to annoy everyone else.

[Sheilbh]

I can't imagine many people taking time out of their day to put in a protest vote at a by election.

I think it's possible in Mid-Beds where turnout was about 45% which is high for a by-election (Tamworth was around 35% which is more normal). I think it always reflects underlying turnout so seats with low turnout in a general election tend not to vote at by-elections either.

The classic defence for losing a by-election is always specific, local factors and most of the time it's nonsense. With that seat given Dorries resignation, then not formally resigning etc might mean there's a local factor there. I think it might be a surprise if Labour holds it at the election - but I think all the constituencies in Bedfordshire are too large, so I imagine there'll be some shifts from the Boundary Commission for the next election so who knows. It might be a bit more winnable.

For Tamworth I don't think there's any reason to think that it's mainly protest voting. It would have always been a Tory target, but it's a seat that Labour held from 1997 to 2010. It was a key seat for Labour in 2010 and 2015, but the Tories ran up a bigger majority in 2015 and it's been increasingly safe for them ever since. A bit like Nuneaton which was the media's key bellweather seat in 2015 that Miliband needed to win or make progress in - in fact the Tories increased their majority by 5% and at the last election it went 60% Tory.

Conservative people voting Labour knowing their vote won't actually make much of an impact, it's just an extra opposition person for a single year and it will get the tories to care for them more in future?

I'm not so sure about that. I think voters are sophisticated and able to send the message they want through whatever the electoral system is. But I don't think they speak in riddles.

In Tamworth it looks like a classic run-up to a change election where the Tory vote collapsed and Labour surged. Mid Beds is more complex (three-way election, Dorries) but I can't see that sort of message.

For what it's worth I think, as with Uxbridge as RH says - I suspect the Tories will draw the wrong conclusions and focus on the 2-5% Reform won in these by-elections and not the 20-25% they lost:

[Josquius]

I don't see the riddle.
Voting for a party when that vote will have a minimal actual impact vs. in a general election in a very different thing.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah that's just protest voting - I suppose I don't understand what the message they're sending is? I think there is a bit of that in Mid Beds over Dorries, but it looks to me more like a general decline/collapse in Tory support which is primarily benefiting Labour in line with national polls.

Also I think people don't tend to vote Labour or Tory when they protest vote because it's helping the other side who will plausibly form a government. It's swining from one party of government to the other. You vote Lib Dem if you want to protest vote because it's the pox on all your houses party.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I think it is important to note that both seats could have been won by the Tories if you add the "Reform" vote to theirs. I'm not convinced that Reform will stand in a general election, mush as UKIP didn't in the 2017(?) election.

[Sheilbh]

I think it is important to note that both seats could have been won by the Tories if you add the "Reform" vote to theirs. I'm not convinced that Reform will stand in a general election, mush as UKIP didn't in the 2017(?) election.

I think they probably will - in part because they need to to justify their existence whereas UKIP could point to not standing against pro-Brexit MPs as being about delivering a bigger goal. Also I think they're moving on to other issues because  Brexit is done. I also haven't seen anything that suggests they're making a pitch for traditional Labour voters in the way UKIP and Farage did. The other factor is there is a bit of bunfight to be the next UKIP/radical right party so I think in some areas that small vote will actually fracture - for example if Laurence Fox's party stands a few candidates. So if they don't run then there's a chance that someone else takes the lead.

But you're right and I think the Tories will draw that conclusion and focus on that 2-5% of the vote which has cost them seats that are basically their 150th and 125th most safe seats in the country - in doing that I think they'll ignore/turn off the 20% of the vote that means the Tories are defending those seats in the first place.

Also I think it is worth noting that in every by-election we've had, and in the locals, Reform have significantly under-performed their national polling. As I say my experience is that you look at the national polls and Reform are soewhere around 5-10% and you see people talking about them. You go offline and no-one knows who they or Richard Tice are

One other thought is that the UK moving to PR for European elections in 1999 was really key for UKIP and the Greens - both Farage and Lucas become MEPs. They both raised the prominence of their party and became media figures (winning in the European Parliament also massively increased the funding of both parties). There's weird fights in UKIP but in general they were sensible enough to keep Farage as leader and main spokesman in the media, while the Greens seemed to not realise how much of a star Lucas was so passed that honour around various underwhelming Australians and councillors from Brighton. I'm not sure how easy it'll be for Reform to even break through to the public consciousness when there's basically no PR elections for them to compete in. They might get an AM in London, they might get a member of the Senedd in Wales but it's tough to see them having that type of breakthrough. I could be wrong but suspect they'll end up a little bit more like the Referendum Party than UKIP (or the Greens for that matter).

Obviously it might look a little different (but I'm not sure how much) if Farage returns to politics.

[Josquius]

Yeah that's just protest voting - I suppose I don't understand what the message they're sending is? I think there is a bit of that in Mid Beds over Dorries, but it looks to me more like a general decline/collapse in Tory support which is primarily benefiting Labour in line with national polls.

Also I think people don't tend to vote Labour or Tory when they protest vote because it's helping the other side who will plausibly form a government. It's swining from one party of government to the other. You vote Lib Dem if you want to protest vote because it's the pox on all your houses party.

.

Except in a by election the other side can't form a government. The gap is too big at current that this is a conceivable risk.
In voting Labour at this point they could be sending a very definite message not to take their votes for granted- voting for a party with a chance of winning locally and nationally does this most effectively.

I hope it is a overall change in attitudes that carries forward but I am skeptical these recent byelection wins will be repeated when it matters - though I'm still fairly confident for the country overall.