Now that we're over 4 months into the new parliament, thought it was time to open up a new by-election thread, ahead of any potential Westminister by-elections on the cards, as well as ones outside the HoP.

 

Since the General Election in July there has been 150 by-elections in councils across Great Britain. Many of these have been as a result of newly elected MPs resigning their council seats, although there are other reasons for stepping down, such as retiring, getting up to unacceptable behaviour, or moving house. The aggregate results make for interesting reading, with Labour losing 22 seats and the Tories winning nearly the same amount, with Reform UK & the Greens also making net gains. Now there obviously could be local factors at play in these by-elections that transcend party politics in some of these cases, but those quite a lot of seats lost in such a short space of time, especially given their recent successes in the local elections in May.

 

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There were a few yesterday

 

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Big drops for Labour of course. They did hold one other though but with a big percentage decrease again.

obviously the 'notable' story is the huge debut performance of Reform, to which this analysis seems pertinent:

 

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significant movements but not as much once you price that in.

So are Reform a major player in British politics now?

Mike Amesbury has resigned as MP for Runcorn following his conviction for assault. The first byelection of this parliament will be in a seat won by Labour in July with a majority over Reform of over 14,500.

Interesting electoral test, and valuable information for the polling space. My instinct is that without more favourable headwinds to Reform, Labour should hold this, though obviously with a much reduced majority and helped by right-wing vote splitting.

though a world where they lose it isn't out of the question

One suspects that Mike Amesbury was holding off of resigning his seat long enough until Reform started to dip in the polls, hence why he waited until after the weekend.

I’m going to predict a Labour win in this one, albeit one by a slim margin, as I suspect quite a fair few voters will want to give Labour a bloody nose (if you’ll pardon the expression given the reason for this by-election).

The fact that Reform has lost 25% of their parliamentary party due to accusations of bullying, and that 25% of the remainder carry a conviction for domestic violence should make things difficult for Farage's fascists even with the reason for the byelection.

Very hard to judge how this one will go hopefully they do some polling. If Labour were to lose this it’d need the greens or Lib Dem’s to take substantial votes from Labour

Just now, Liam S said:

Very hard to judge how this one will go hopefully they do some polling. If Labour were to lose this it’d need the greens or Lib Dem’s to take substantial votes from Labour

With Reform in seco9nd place, it could be rather harder for the Lib Dems and Greens to win over Labour support. Many potential switchers will be reluctant to risk a Farage win.

First poll has reform winning the seat, pretty comfortably too

Britain Elects/New Statesman currently predicting a slight Labour win. Their analysis is quite interesting, as the seat is split into areas that are equally as likely to vote for Labour and Reform (as well as a few Tory leaning ones)

New Statesman

A Reform Labour showdown looms in the Runcorn by-election

The polls are fractured, but Farage’s party fancies its chances.

Assume Runcorn is an ‘old Labour’ style seat?

A seat that as that New Statesman article puts it, has been divided between a commuter/manufacturing town (Runcorn) in the north and a swathe of the Cheshire countryside, a newly created seat so more vulnerable to these unstable FPTP vote swings. Interesting that they are predicting the Reform strength to come from Runcorn as yes, if anywhere, it would come from there, the countryside is too old Tory-friendly for it to be too friendly to them, but the council results from May 2024 are all Labour with Reform nowhere near though of course that does predate their Faragian retakeover and general election campaign, before he rejoined as leader they famously were completely shit at council elections.

The Labour candidate appears to be a local woman, no word on the Reform candidate yet (odds on them being a swivel-eyed loon reasonably high) I think this is just going to come down to which of Labour/Reform can motivate their voters to vote against the opposition, and for every Reform maniac ready to test the wheels of their electoral machine in a by-election, the local Labour party will respond with tying Farage to Putin or something similar.

Constituency poll this early and telephone methodology likely to have high amount of variance with the actual result.

Can't see Labour losing this,

Current odds

Reform 8/11

Labour 11/8

Pretty much a 50/50 odds wise. Looks set up for reform to win to me though. A lot of those countryside Conservative voters should be easy pickings for reform when it becomes apparent the Tories aren’t in the race

The date for the election is May 1st.

Odds remain the same at this moment

The vibe around reform is not good with a lot of people not liking Tice/Farage/Yusuf

The vibe around Labour is worse however with this constituency being over represented by disability benefits which should hurt Labour too

The candidates for the Runcorn and Helsby have been announced -

• Catherine Anne Blaiklock (English Democrats)

• Dan Clarke (Liberal Party)

• Chris Copeman (Green Party)

• Paul Duffy (Liberal Democrats)

• Peter Ford (Workers Party)

• Howling Laud Hope (Monster Raving Loony Party)

• Sean Houlston (Conservatives)

• Jason Philip Hughes (Volt UK)

• Alan McKie (independent)

• Graham Harry Moore (English Constitution Party)

• Paul Andrew Murphy (Social Democratic Party)

• Sarah Pochin (Reform)

• Karen Shore (Labour)

• John Stevens (Rejoin EU)

• Michael Williams (independent)

As expected, as it is the first by-election of the new parliament, the high profile nature of this election has seen a mammoth candidate list, where outside the 3 parties who could realistically win the seat are many smaller parties who are presumably more involved to gain publicity for their party/themselves rather than hoping to actually win (those of us with a long memory can remember the high-profile Corby by-election of 2012, where one of the candidates was Mr Mozzarella, a character from the JustEat adverts). Alongside the usual parties, there is the pan-European centre-left party Volt UK, Rejoin UK, whose raison d'etre is left to your imagination, and the deputy leader of George Galloway's Workers Party. Those nostalgic for the heady days of 1987 will be glad to know that alongside the Liberal Democrats, there are also candidates from the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. Catherine Blaiklock, who founded the Brexit Party before Nigel Farage forced her out, is standing for the far-right English Democrats. As sometimes happens, there is a party running I'd never heard of before now, the English Constitution Party. As they split off from the English Democrats, and have expressed admiration for ousted Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, you can probably guess where they are on the spectrum.

The by-election is on 1 May, the same date as the local elections in many parts of England. Despite talks of a Reform gain, I'm still forecasting a Labour win, albeit with a margin that will make Keir Starmer a bit unsettled.

16 minutes ago, Brett-Butler said:

The candidates for the Runcorn and Helsby have been announced -

• Catherine Anne Blaiklock (English Democrats)

• Dan Clarke (Liberal Party)

• Chris Copeman (Green Party)

• Paul Duffy (Liberal Democrats)

• Peter Ford (Workers Party)

• Howling Laud Hope (Monster Raving Loony Party)

• Sean Houlston (Conservatives)

• Jason Philip Hughes (Volt UK)

• Alan McKie (independent)

• Graham Harry Moore (English Constitution Party)

• Paul Andrew Murphy (Social Democratic Party)

• Sarah Pochin (Reform)

• Karen Shore (Labour)

• John Stevens (Rejoin EU)

• Michael Williams (independent)

As expected, as it is the first by-election of the new parliament, the high profile nature of this election has seen a mammoth candidate list, where outside the 3 parties who could realistically win the seat are many smaller parties who are presumably more involved to gain publicity for their party/themselves rather than hoping to actually win (those of us with a long memory can remember the high-profile Corby by-election of 2012, where one of the candidates was Mr Mozzarella, a character from the JustEat adverts). Alongside the usual parties, there is the pan-European centre-left party Volt UK, Rejoin UK, whose raison d'etre is left to your imagination, and the deputy leader of George Galloway's Workers Party. Those nostalgic for the heady days of 1987 will be glad to know that alongside the Liberal Democrats, there are also candidates from the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party. Catherine Blaiklock, who founded the Brexit Party before Nigel Farage forced her out, is standing for the far-right English Democrats. As sometimes happens, there is a party running I'd never heard of before now, the English Constitution Party. As they split off from the English Democrats, and have expressed admiration for ousted Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, you can probably guess where they are on the spectrum.

The by-election is on 1 May, the same date as the local elections in many parts of England. Despite talks of a Reform gain, I'm still forecasting a Labour win, albeit with a margin that will make Keir Starmer a bit unsettled.

Those of us who are even older remember the Independent - Buy your Chesterfield in Thame Party candidate in the 1984 Chesterfield byelection. That byelection was used, successfully, by Labour to get Tony Benn back in parliament after he lost his Bristol seat in the 1983 general election. The Independent - Buy your Chesterfield in Thame Party candidate got 24 votes. Six candidates did less well.

Tony Benn loved representing Chesterfield!