By-elections are seen as bellwethers of national political trends – the equivalent of the water diviner’s twitching rod. Just as often though, they are trip wires over which cocky parties can suddenly stumble, or which turn safe seats into a muddy slog, with resigned preparation back at HQ for the media round telling us that the leadership has “listened to the voters” after a rude rebuff.
Large portions of humble pie are likely to be doled out for both of the main parties over the next fortnight. The Opposition faces a mighty mess over the mishandling of candidate selection in Rochdale, where a by-election on 29 February intended to reinforce the Opposition’s glide path to power has ended up with a Azhar Ali, hastily selected and then belatedly dropped as the extent of his conspiracist comments on Israel’s alleged provocation of the war in Gaza surfaced.
Conservatives, meanwhile, look anxiously to Wellingborough on Thursday, where the sitting MP Peter Bone, bearer of a mighty majority with a punchy Brexiteer career and support base, has been recalled after the parliamentary watchdog upheld allegations of bullying, physical assault and sexual misconduct, which he denies. Labour would dearly love to snatch a Northamptonshire seat in circumstances deeply unflattering to the Government.
But this is also a situation in which Reform, the anti-immigration party hoovering up support on the right wing of sundry culture wars, can hope to strike gold by harrying Rishi Sunak’s leadership on Brexit, incomplete Rwanda deals, and the tacit desire to bring on a Nigel Farage-level challenge on the right of British politics.
On the face of it, these are very separate sagas – though both leave the respective party bosses looking hapless and disconnected from constituency upheavals. But their threads also interweave with national stories and the growing tendency of the Gaza conflict to split voters, disproportionately so on the left of centre. This until recently unforeseen factor is pushing incensed opinion to the Lib Dems and Greens.
Labour’s base has long occupied a different stance on Middle East conflicts to its leadership. Tony Blair’s incursion into Iraq cost him the Leicester South by-election in 2004. The hesitation in dropping Ali resulted in testy conversations between campaigns co-ordinator Pat McFadden, Starmer himself and other aides on how best to control the fallout. It reflects the same fundamental dislocation of opinion inside the party in a different geopolitical era.
Mismanagement at the centre is a bi-partisan issue, however. In both Rochdale and Wellingborough, unforced errors are benefitting challenger parties and providing a stage on which disaffected party-switchers and apostates can ply their trade.
Peter Bone leaves a mightily “safe” seat vulnerable to Labour, in the kind of sleazy circumstances which remind voters that the Tory party has struggled to control conduct issues among MPs.
The installation of Bone’s partner Helen Harrison as replacement – a local association own-goal which infuriated No 10 – is also a chance for Labour to surge. Ministers have stayed away from a toxic fray and only neighbouring Tory MPs felt obliged to show up. As one Conservative Central Office source puts it, “the problem is that it is an example of the kind of ‘just-stay-home’ vibe likely to be Sunak’s biggest headache in bringing a strong Tory turnout to the general election”.
Rochdale’s contest features ex-Labour MP Simon Danczuk, suspended from Labour over alleged inappropriate texting in 2017, who is standing for Reform in Rochdale, plying a narrative of an out of touch Labour “mafia”. It reflects an anxiety among Labour strategists that a mix of dissatisfactions, from the sidelining of the Corbynite Left, to resentment at Starmer’s pro-Israel stance after 7 October and his pride in attracting sleek Southern professionals back into key Labour positions, is leaving, as one local agent puts it in fury, “a two-tier party: friends of Keir, who are indulged, and the rest of us.”
That combination accounted for two key errors in Rochdale – a hasty nomination process, which resulted in choosing a candidate with strong Asian support, and then being too slow to drop him as Code Red warnings about his professed views emerged.
George Galloway, the firebrand left-wing campaigner leveraging the Palestinian cause to relaunch his sporadic assaults on centrist Labour orthodoxy, certainly has more material for the campaign trail.
What is less certain is whether a week of chaotic news emanating from Rochdale wields much influence over by-electors in other key battlegrounds. The “Gaza election” is an idea which offers a shred of comfort to Tories spending recess contemplating the doldrums (or like the popular Tory MP Tracey Crouch, using the recess lull in SW1 to announce her retirement after beating breast cancer, in the safe seat of Chatham and Aylesford).
By the end of the month, the outcome of these local contests will have filled out the complex jigsaw that launches the general election year. Beside the high drama, the more important portent might be the routine by-election coming up in Kingswood. So for all the giddy thrills and spills of Wellingborough, keep eyes on the classic three-way Labour-Tory-Lib Dem in Kingswood. This will see extra input from the Greens, given that the Tory MP there departed unconventionally, in protest at Sunak’s decision to extend oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
It is the most sturdy prospect of Labour gains and would mean overturning the kind of 11,220-majority which, if writ large, would speed Labour confidently back to Downing Street. A reminder that when by-election fever takes hold, it’s worth remembering the signal can be very different to the noise.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor of Politico and host of the Power Play interview podcast
The Tories have got their own by-election woes
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13.02.2024
By-elections are seen as bellwethers of national political trends – the equivalent of the water diviner’s twitching rod. Just as often though, they are trip wires over which cocky parties can suddenly stumble, or which turn safe seats into a muddy slog, with resigned preparation back at HQ for the media round telling us that the leadership has “listened to the voters” after a rude rebuff.
Large portions of humble pie are likely to be doled out for both of the main parties over the next fortnight. The Opposition faces a mighty mess over the mishandling of candidate selection in Rochdale, where a by-election on 29 February intended to reinforce the Opposition’s glide path to power has ended up with a Azhar Ali, hastily selected and then belatedly dropped as the extent of his conspiracist comments on Israel’s alleged provocation of the war in Gaza surfaced.
Conservatives, meanwhile, look anxiously to Wellingborough on Thursday, where the sitting MP Peter Bone, bearer of a mighty majority with a punchy Brexiteer career and support base, has been recalled after the parliamentary watchdog upheld allegations of bullying, physical assault and sexual misconduct, which he denies. Labour would dearly love to snatch a Northamptonshire seat in circumstances deeply unflattering to the Government.
But this is also a situation in which Reform, the anti-immigration party hoovering up support on the right wing of sundry culture wars, can........
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