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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Bye-bye by-elections? Part 2. MPs who resigned their seats and
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Bye-bye by-elections? Part 2. MPs who resigned their seats and stood in the ensuing by-election
In Part 1, I discussed how the reasons for triggering by-elections have changed since 1918. In Part 2, I will discuss in more detail the phenomenon (or lack) of MPs resigning and re-contesting their seats over principle or when they change party allegiance.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Stewart-Murray,_Duchess_of_Atholl
Interesting article thanks Sunil
Your argument is straw-clutching.
1. It's ultimately a very well-heeled area where the there was a preference for a May Government over a Corbyn one, notwithstanding a protest in 2016.
2. Labour supporters felt it was safe to return "home" after voting tactically in 2016 - Goldsmith's vote share was identical in 2016 and 2017, but Labour recovered a bit at LD expense.
3. Quite a lot of Remainers were fairly sanguine in 2017. A mood of, "I don't like it, but give May a reasonable majority and she'll probably negotiate a pragmatic, soft exit and we can all get on with our lives." The anger has grown since as it's descended into farce. So they put down a bit of a marker in Richmond in 2016 but were ultimately willing to give May her majority (so they thought) in 2017.
4. "Oh, but he's such a lovely boy!" Don't underestimate this element - there's a hardcore 20% who'd say, if he was filmed strangling a kitten on East Sheen High Street, that the kitten must have done something horrid to upset dear Zachary, and strangling is too good for it if anything.
The traditional core labour w-c vote is theoretically bigger, and a lot of it is stubbornly anti Tory, but much of that is already suspicious of Corbyn, and is certainly pulled towards Brexit, or even others on the right. That said, the point made in another thread about there being no such wwc rings true, e.g. self made tradesmen, etc who have sufficient nous to vote with their pocket against Corbyn's threat to their wealth, but who still hold other views that mean they'd baulk at CHUK - if they've heard of them.
More significantly, I suspect, they failed to pull out of Twickenham with ten days to go. The seat was in the bag by then, but they fought it hard to the wire rather than shifting troops over the bridge. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and they'd been scarred by 2015. That aspect probably made more of a difference numbers-wise.
Oddly, if May had been heading for a 150 majority by then, I suspect Richmond may have felt safe to go Lib Dem as they had just a few months before.
As it was, by the eve of the election, it was fairly clear May was in free-fall and the issue was whether it'd still be a majority of a few dozen, or something like what transpired. At that stage, I think it would be tempting for some in Richmond to say, "Hmmm, I don't like Brexit a lot, but give her a majority of 50 and she'll do a pragmatic, soft deal". That is, I don't think it was obvious that a slim to non-existent majority made Brexit less likely or a soft Brexit more likely. Indeed, it still isn't - the odds of BOTH no deal and no Brexit are surely much higher than if May had had a reasonable majority to work with.
At that time, Zac was being a bit more coy on his position than he is now (when he rails against Remainers regularly). He was known to be a Leaver, of course, but it was expected he'd broadly fall into line with a negotiated deal (which actually he did on the third vote I think).
But hats off in any case to that quartet. Zac Goldsmith, Mark Reckless, Douglas Carswell and - the odd one out for obvious reasons - David Davis.
https://twitter.com/jessphillips/status/1122090404634144768
https://twitter.com/benjaminbutter/status/1122060864469831680
That suggests tacking to Leave BUT:
1. This ignores the SNP - part of Labour's route back involves maybe 15 gains in Scotland from the SNP, and tacking Leave makes it MUCH harder.
2. It really isn't as simple as "Leave" and "Remain" seats. Tacking to Leave is perhaps unlikely to help in a seat that voted to Leave by say 55/45... it's not obvious that such a seat would be Leave today, and anyway there's a big Remain vote there who could go to the one of the Remain parties.
On balance, I think Labour's strategy of riding both horses for as long as humanly possible is hazardous but probably the best of a bad set of options.
There is no real point to any major British political party with the exception of the SNP. No one really knows what the Tory Party stands for these days. The traditional reasons for voting Tory - pro business, low tax, small state, law and order etc - all disappeared firstly with Cameron and Osborne and now with May and Hammond. May’s attempts to neuter Brexit by making it Brino have failed to command any consensus and have led to Farage’s latest one trick pony of a party. Labour have reverted to an odious cocktail of playing to the politics of greed and envy of others and whose knowledge of Brexit seems limited to how to spell it. Change U.K. and the LD’s are squabbling over who should the party to deny the electorate the result they voted for in the referendum with precious little else to offer.
British politics has degenerated to a sick joke.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/11/more-than-100-pro-leave-constituencies-switch-to-remain
In general, I agree in being minded that there is less clear upside for Labour in coming off the fence. How well they can maintain their manichean position remains to be seen, although the strange youthful allure of Milne must help in keeping supporters on either side of the fence doe eyed.
That tied vote in the Commons would have been a majority of two against the government with Parliament continuing in control of the agenda if just 46 of the 5773 Labour voters had voted LD instead.
F1: mildly annoyed at who ended up on pole.
Going to start writing the pre-race ramble, but it may well be finished and posted tomorrow morning.
If one MEP without a party and not aligned to a group costs that much - that means our MEPs in total cost nearly £150 million to fund. Seriously?
And that is before the extra funds parties get by being in one of the party groups - which no doubt has been a big help to UKIP and the Greens in recent years.
Given its only an 8 seat region its going to be hard anyway for Robinson to win - last time it was split 3 UKIP, 3 Labour and 2 Tory and even the Greens and LDs didn't get a look in. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes the same way again - but with the Brexit party getting 3 albeit with maybe the LDs getting one instead.
It's a bit of an odd headline, isn't it? I mean, Robinson could of course get an MEP salary if people see fit to elect him, as they did Nick Griffin at one time. That sticks in the craw, but what do the Telegraph suggest we do about it? I mean, it's mildly annoying to me that Jared O'Mara and Christopher Chope get paid for their "efforts"... but that's for the people of Sheffield and Christchurch to answer to.
http://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/eu-votes-to-create-gigantic-biometrics-database/
£87k salary - taxed at only 12%
£259k for staff
£47k in general expenditure allowance
'a lucrative pension' - not costed
and £280 per diem for attending the parliament
Making an estimated total of £400k plus - which over 5 years is nearly £2 million.
The article is driven by comments by a Tory MEP - who sees no irony in that he has been claiming the same sums off taxpayers potentially for the last 5 years and as a result will get a bigger pension! And that ignores the extra handouts paid to members of groups such as the Tories via the ECR.
If its wrong for Robinson to get these eye watering sums isn't it also wrong for the other 72 MEPs we will send to Brussels. Let alone the costs of MEPs across Europe on the same benefits we contribute towards - as presumably we already help fund MEPs from the far left to the far right who no one here voted for!
https://twitter.com/survation/status/1122158151623675905?s=21
I was surprised by Verstappen's qualifying pace but uncertain how much that was down to the cooler conditions.
I'll need to dig up the post again but I think all but 1 of the overperformers were electronic voting with the majority having no paper trail (New Jersey was a huge over performance for example) and the bottom ten all but 2 were manual counts IIRC.
And agree about the irony-defective Tory MEP!
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/26/sleepy-biden-2020-1291181
Keep it up Joe!
https://nypost.com/2019/04/27/joe-bidens-killer-advantage-heading-into-2020-election/
https://twitter.com/TheMiliverse/status/857512326043500544
Leaver articles of faith are not enough.
This is the first poll to give the pro-Brexit parties 50%, but OGH has linked to a thread by Martin Boon, which warns of the possibility that support for the Brexit Party could be a bit overstated.
https://twitter.com/kevverage/status/1122173260353949697
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1122175518772813830?s=21
Although the main reason Milne disliked is his political views, if he was more supportive of war and the occupation of Palestine he wouldn't be targeted. Also being close to Corbyn will get you attacked in the media, if he was just working at the Guardian there would be much less reason to target him.
If he was a centrist you would have Nick Cohen writing an article complaining about people targeting him! (as per my article and extract earlier)
Buttigieg and others have this right - making this a referendum on Trump is a losing strategy in 2020. I see why Biden is doing it... his selling point to Democrats in primaries is perceived electability, and that comes to the fore if you care more about beating the incumbent than about who replaces him. So I expect that to be his approach - make it about Trump and a battle of the Big Beasts... as Alan Hansen (wrongly) had it "you win nothing with kids".
But that's tactics, not strategy... Democrats will struggle in a General Election if they look as if they are saying the electorate were wrong in 2016 and should try again. And that's exactly where Biden is positioning himself. He may well seek to pivot once he's got the nomination, but it may be too late.
Further, I think Trump recognises his own age IS a problem, hence his theatrical attempts to talk up his vigor and health. Biden (or Sanders of course) neutralise that problem immediately.
None of that's to say Biden doesn't genuinely get under Trump's skin. He'd frankly be more annoyed to lose to Biden than anyone else who's in the running. A win by a younger candidate can be painted as (and indeed would be) a generational shift. A win by Sanders is at least another defeat for the Establishment who laughed at Trump. A win for Biden is hard, even for someone as delusional as Trump, to take as anything but a personal humiliation - a win for the Establishment, for Clinton, for Obama etc.
This time it’s different. Perhaps.
What it says to me is that the country is as divided as ever. Perhaps Remain would win a second referendum 52/48. Perhaps they wouldn't. What it wouldn't be is a 60/40 blowout for either side - that's always been a daft fantasy. I suspect, to the extent there has been a glacial shift over the past three years, it owes more to the Grim Reaper than anything.
Labour 25, Brexit 22, Conservative 11, UKIP 5, Lib Dem 4, SNP 2, Plaid 1.
On Opinium's,
Labour 26, Brexit 24, Conservative 9, SNP 3, Lib Dem 2, Change 2, Green 2, UKIP 1, Plaid 1.
But, no one is bound to win in politics.
The Tories actually get quite a bit if money from the Russians, not that anyone actually cares otherwise there would be a fuss about that rather than Milne apparently being the pro Putin but people just use it for a propaganda weapon.
In an important sense, vanishingly few people "want" a second referendum. Die hard Remainers just want to remain. Die hard Leavers just want to leave. A lot of other people just want prompt resolution to the matter to end the uncertainty. There aren't a lot of people there saying, "I don't mind about the result but just think it's important for democracy that the deal gets a confirmatory vote". What makes it a live option is if enough of each of those three groups think their best chance to get what they want given Parliamentary arithmetic is a referendum.
The returning officer thanks them for their donation... I mean deposit.
Brexit party will win the EU election by quite a margin
TM will be forced to resign
Boris will win a succession election
No deal Brexit will become the most likely outcome on the 31st October
Boris and Farage will rout Corbyn
And I am not a champion of Boris or especially Farage but an earthquake has happened that is going to create the mother of all political upheavel
Not sure about Scots Independence in all this but probably a border between Carlisle and Berwick, just like the Irish border, will see it fail
And apologies to Hyufd who seems to have called this right
https://twitter.com/J_Bloodworth/status/1066821013416103936