The by-election nobody wants? – politicalbetting.com
The by-election nobody wants? – politicalbetting.com
Suspended Labour MP Mike Amesbury pleads guilty to assault after punching a man in his Cheshire constituency in October 2024 https://t.co/rHUFR5ArkK
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And my gut is that Reform will win it: most Labour supporters will stay home (I'd reckon their vote total will drop to something like 7-8,000), while Reform will grab a few Labour and Conservative supporters, and get their 2024 voters out.
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 25% (-)
🔵 Conservatives: 25% (+5)
🔴 Labour: 24% (-1)
🟠 Lib Dems: 12% (+1)
🟢 Greens: 10% (-1)
These people - pols and royals - have to go out meet other people, it’s their job. Even the most humdrum party worker or activist or even hustings attender can therefore meet a few PMs without breaking a sweat
Meeting famous sport stars, artists, actors - actually MEETING them, conversing, snogging, doing a line of changaroo - is significantly more impressive
It is possible there is no by election anyway if Amesbury only gets a community order. Little chance of McMurdock standing down, Reform are sticking by him and it was a conviction long spent. Indeed on current polls he will likely increase his majority in his Basildon seat at the next general election
And Helsby and Frodsham, which I know reasonably well, doesn't feel to me like natural Reform territory. Frodsham in particular is pretty comfortably off.
Properly met, The Queen, Prince Philip, The King, The Prince and Princess of Wales, the Sussex's
Boris, Truss and Rishi.
Elton John and Chris De Burgh. And my personal favourite, Raj from the big bang theory.
But what is this Tory mini surge? Plus five?!
Sadly, I don’t think Kemi B has seized the imagination of the nation and is benefiting from rhapsodic adulation
My hunch is that polls will stay like this for a while but with Reform slowly edging up and Labour slowly eroding down….
And on that cluster bomb, Vikings Valhalla
I surreptiously fed bags of Maltesers to Lauren Bacall on set.
Wife of Bogart.
Lover of Sinatra.
Friend of Hemingway. (Although his wife warned her off by dropping two bullets into her hand. "I'm a good shot. I won't need both....")
I also - soto voce - sang The Gremlin song to her rather horrible Papillon.
I once had a chat with Bernie Ecclestone about concrete. I met most of the early-/mid-nineties F1 drivers. And I had dinner with Princess Anne, where we talked about whether horse riding was nature or nurture.
But I can never remember the minor royals, especially since all their titles changed after HMQ died. Are the Sussexes Prince Edward and his missus? Never mind, I'll look it up in a minute. Or maybe they got Edinburgh. This must be what it is like on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? when nervous contestants squander three lifelines to confirm it's the answer they first thought of.
I wonder what the Tories have done since the last poll to go up five to 25%?
Still, it is just mid- term blues, I suspect we all expect swingback.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=25&LAB=24&LIB=12&Reform=25&Green=10&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024
It’s just two people who fancied each other at that particular moment in time
Out of his head at the urinals. At a late night knees up at Althorp House. With Chris de Burgh, Jimmy Ruffin, Lady Di's brother and some of Duran Duran.
UNBELIEVABLE!
So you would think this would be a massive opportunity for Reform in a by-election. If we imagine the Lib Dems being in this situation, then we'd be sure that they would have been working the seat since the news of the assault first broke and building a team to win the by-election.
Given that Reform's membership has surpassed 100k, you might expect a few hundred members in a seat like this. Is there any evidence of local organisation being put together to contest any by-election strongly?
Of course, we normally hear about local Lib Dems organisation in a place like this because there are a couple of dozen Lib Dems members who post to PB.com. Do we have any Reform members who can provide similar info on how the party is limbering up for the challenge?
Interesting that the British ability to bodge something together still seems to be in evidence with the new Gravehawk air defence system.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/45-billion-military-boost-to-ukraine-front-line-to-support-uk-growth-and-jobs
(That's £4.5bn, not £45bn, as decimal points are stripped from numbers in URLs such as this.)
It is promising to see new things being sent.
Kissed: 1 (then, not now) member of an England football team
Although I suppose who hasn't seen Bill Nighy in Fortnums?
The result would be genuinely informative about Reform prospects. If they did badly or if they did OK but lost, something would be learned about future possibilities. If they won, it would be the start of something significant and they would gain massive national publicity.
Betting wise, there is a chance that Reform would be underpriced early on.
Reform will want this battle. For the Tories it's a loser in every way. If they fight strongly or give up and lose badly - which they will - the message is clear.
At this moment I think there is a roughly 50% chance for both Reform and Labour.
In any case, it'd be unlikely to be a major plank of the election campaign (speaking from experience in Wakefield). Reform have other issues to go on and it doesn't swing many votes anyway. The individual has been held to account and will be gone if an election occurs.
Noting the tweet, a stupid comment from Barker-Singh given that Labour won an outright majority and the Tories and Reform by no means fish exclusively in the same pool.
All said, I would expect Reform to start as favourites, although it's worth noting that UKIP didn't perform particularly well in the predecessor seats in their high-point of 2015.
I was sat in a tea-room in Wales with an ex-Aussie PM once too. Didn't say anything though.
There is a reason to turn out for Reform - they are the only party that isn't tainted by government and won't make you install a heat pump that doesn't work and power your car by windmills.
Previously, there have been a number of occasions where various UK missiles designed for air launch, have shown up on ground based launchers in Ukraine. Some appeared to be adapted test launch systems from trial ranges.
"Vote Tory, get Miliband" - ouch.
I am conflicted as to whether Suella is right and the Tories need to jump into bed with Reform or Farage is right and he doesn't need the Tory party.
My brother peed next to Kanye West at a urinal.
I have danced with Ringo Starr.
My wife has met everyone from Oprah to Madonna.
Oh, fashionista Phoebe Philo told me she was going to the bar and asked if I wanted any chips at a David Byrne concert.
Bloody idiots.
It is very difficult to determine who is the most stupid party at Westminster now.
Callaghan - Avuncular
Cameron - Smarmy
Are your 6 PMs in order and complete or are there gaps (eg Callaghan, Thatcher, Brown)?
On the other hand my three year old granddaughter goes to School with 2 of BoJos offspring and with Elon Musk's godson.
She's better connected than I am.
I don't look at/read the Tory client media but another intuition (guess) is that at some point some might decide - if they haven't already - that supporting the Tories is about as popular as supporting the Taliban or Hitler in 1940.
You only have to listen to/read Rory, Gauke, Grieve, Clarke, Hague, Parris a bit to realise that the Tory party doesn't actually exist at the moment.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/15/johnson-removes-mike-turner-as-intel-chair-00198522
"Johnson cited Trump as a reason for the ouster when the speaker met with Turner Wednesday night, according to a person familiar with the conversation who was granted anonymity to describe it."
The sudden shift into unemployment after an election defeat is brutal – and so is finding work when you were a Conservative parliamentarian
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/16/ex-tory-mp-unemployed-political-views/ (£££)
Set up an employment agency and you can meet any number of forcibly-retired MPs.
It will pit massive pressure on Labour if Reform win .
If Reform lose it pus the Cons on the front foot.
I agree with those who say this would be a Labour vs Reform contest.
I don't necessarily agree with the idea a narrow Labour win could increase the chances of a Tory-Reform pact at the next election. If Ref easily leapfrog Con then it potentially muddies the waters, as some previous Lib Dem byelection performances have done in Lab-Con marginals.
They'd always be 20 mothers surrounding him, hanging on his every word.
I would say this by-election is low risk for Reform. If they win, they will bag it as an indicator of momentum; if they don't win they will they say have increased vote share, going in the right direction, and will win the next time. I doubt they care about one of their MPs being a thug
There's also the inner city professional Labour vote, which is in the party's sights after they lost it almost completely between 2010 and 2017. That's where the frustration with Starmer's EU cowardice is strongest.