The political world was graced this week by no less than 3 by-elections in England; the seats of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in Northwest London, Selby and Ainsty near Leeds in North Yorkshire, and Somerton and Frome in Somerset were all up for grabs, and all due to resignation of Conservative MPs.
Uxbridge and South Ruislip was triggered by the resignation of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose exploits have already been covered to death on this blog. Selby and Ainsty was due to Johnson sycophant Nigel Adams’s resignation, a tantrum the MP threw in protestation of his lack of a peerage in Johnson’s honours list.
The third is the Somerset seat of former Tory MP David Warburton, who resigned last month. Warburton fell afoul of those most pertinacious Conservative vices of cocaine use, repeated sexual harassment, and not declaring 6-figure donations from Russian businessmen. The party whip was withdrawn in April 2022 following an independent investigation into harassment allegations. As of April 2023, Warburton had not been present in Parliament for over a year, and held no constituency surgeries since his suspension. An exemplary Tory MP, if I ever saw one.
What was projected to be a complete blowout for the Tories turned out to be only a partial blowout as they clung onto Uxbridge with bloody fingernails. Johnson’s margin of 7,210 votes was decimated to just 495 by the new Tory MP, Steve Tuckwell, who ran a single-issue campaign against the expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ).
ULEZ was originally championed by the aforementioned Johnson whilst it was Mayor of London, introducing charges for drivers of the most polluting vehicles in central London based on EU emissions standards. The current Mayor, Sadiq Khan, took up this policy and expanded it to cover all of inner London, from Wandsworth to Greenwich.
The current plans to expand ULEZ to cover all of Greater London have caused considerable controversy. ULEZ charges non-compliant vehicles £12.50 per day, which, in the throes of a cost of living crisis, would undoubtably cause further hardship to already struggling Londoners.
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer has acknowledged that ULEZ was the party’s downfall in Uxbridge, calling on Sadiq Khan to “reflect” on the policy expansion. This has served to deepen divisions in the Labour party at the very time that unity is needed above all else.
Khan is legally obligated to reduce air pollution levels in London, just as the Government is on a national basis, and he has become somewhat of a new poster boy for the Labour left. Starmer’s comment was not meant as an attack, merely an observation of the reason Labour lost a seat they should have run away with, but those lingering Corbynistas who will never stop hating his guts will inevitably see it as such.
Financial disincentives are normally a sure-fire way of enforcing a policy, and in normal circumstances the ULEZ expansion would not have kicked up this much fuss, but we are not in normal circumstances.
I usually take a very hard line on climate issues and am of the opinion that compared to all-encompassing, calamitous environmental destruction, money should be no object. However, looking at the anaemic effectiveness of ULEZ bringing down pollution levels in London by itself, and the enormous strength of feeling those in Uxbridge have expressed about the policy, Labour has to re-examine the way we go about de-carbonising as people’s pockets get lighter.
ULEZ is only effective when looked at as part of a wider anti-pollution strategy, and in order to secure a large enough majority to effect real and lasting climate action, certain concessions must be made.
However loudly Rishi Sunak might declare victory in these by-elections due to Uxbridge, the other 2 results indicate that he is telling porkies. Huge majorities are now enjoyed by the new Members for Somerton and Frome and Selby and Ainsty, with significant evidence of anti-Tory tactical voting in both cases.
The biggest victory of the night went to the Liberal Democrats, who ran away with Somerton and Frome with an astounding victory. New Lib Dem MP Sarah Dyke (whose inclusion interestingly means that 27% of Lib Dem MPs now are named Sarah) overturned a huge Tory majority of 19,213 votes to make her own similarly impressive 11,008 margin.
With this victory, the Lib Dems look set to reclaim their former West Country heartland at the next general election. Other recent by-election victories for England’s 3rd party in the rural seats of Chesham and Amersham, North Shropshire, and Tiverton and Honiton show that the countryside is no longer a safe haven for the Conservatives. They will face a war on two fronts, against the Lib Dems in the country, and against Labour in the towns and cities.
Speaking of, the other loss for the Tories came at the hands of 25 year-old Keir Mather, who won his seat of Selby and Ainsty with a decently comfortable margin of 4,161 votes. The most impressive aspect of this victory was the mountain climbed by Mather and Labour activists, overturning Nigel Adams’s whopping 20,137 majority with a little breathing room to boot.
This figure marks the largest swing from Conservative to Labour in by-election history. If this swing was replicated on national basis for all sitting Tory MPs, there would be fewer than 20 Conservatives in the House of Commons. This obviously won’t happen (as much as I might like it to), but any Tory who still can’t see the writing on the wall at this point is just plain blind.
Mather becomes the youngest MP in the House of Commons, an institution in desperate need of more youthful voices as the average age of MPs exceeds the national average by about 10 years. His age was used against him in the campaigns of his opponents, but the strength of feeling against the Conservatives in this rural, traditionally Conservative area was such that their attacks became the proverbial water off a duck’s back.
Sitting Governments always get a kicking in by-elections, so take this with a pinch of salt, but the fact that not just the Lib Dems, but Labour are winning and winning big in traditional Tory heartland like Selby and Ainsty is a grim portent for the Government at the next general election. The red wall did not originally extend to Selby, but with this stonking great W, perhaps we can expect to see the seats turn red from coast to coast, from the docklands of Merseyside to the rolling dales of North Yorkshire.
The other by-election everyone was expecting but has not yet materialised is that of Mid Bedfordshire, the seat of would-be former MP Nadine Dorries. Dorries stated her intention to resign as an MP “with immediate effect” on the 6th of June. It is now…not the 6th of June, and Dorries still sits as the MP for Mid Bedfordshire.
She has since clarified her actions, saying she has postponed her resignation until she is has completed her crusade for a peerage. She has submitted a right of access request to the House of Lords Appointment Committee for all unredacted “WhatsApps, text messages, all emails and minutes of meetings” relating to HOLAC’s decision to deny her a seat for life in the upper chamber. To be fair to Dorries, she has spent much more time in frontline politics than others on Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list, like his 30-year old daugh…I mean…staffer Charlotte Owens (don’t sue).
Calling Dorries a “sitting MP” is pretty generous; it has been over a year since she last spoke in the House of Commons, and has only voted six times this year so far. She has spent less time in Parliament than most backbenchers, and rarely, if ever, holds constituency surgeries. She also does not list the address of a constituency office on her website.
You’d have to talk to a fair few people in Mid Bedfordshire until you came across one who could mention something, anything, that Dorries has done for her constituents recently. Her main focus, on Twitter at least, are issues relating to her former boss Mr Johnson, the promotion of her TalkTV show, and incessant self-pitying rants about her lack of peerage.
When Dorries does finally resign, her seat will become a battleground between Labour and the Lib Dems, both of whom say they have a shot at winning it. Labour have come second in Mid Beds for the last few general elections, but everyone knows the Lib Dem’s specialty is rural by-elections.
At this point, crushing Tory by-election losses shouldn’t be surprising. We’ve all seen the polls, we all see the news every day. Tory Governments have been failing and failing consistently for 13 straight years on pretty much everything; the public sector is creaking under its own weight, our international trade has tanked to its lowest level on record, and our image on the global stage is unrecognisable to what it was a decade ago. New US Presidents’ first call always used to be to the UK Prime Minister, but now the phone rings in Berlin or Brussels, not Westminster.
Conservatives have been kept in power due to one reason: Brexit. After David Cameron decided to appease the right of his party with what he thought would be an easy win referendum, those poor fools who voted Leave have given them chance after chance to clean up this mess. The British people put so much trust in them to deliver the bright sunlit meadows and soaring economics they were promised, even giving them their biggest majority in decades.
However ill-conceived the idea of Brexit may have been, the Conservatives had the chance to deliver a halfway decent settlement for this country that would allow us to retain at least some of benefits we enjoyed inside the EU. But the divisions in their party that delivered the referendum also fucked up the execution of its outcome. Perpetual warring between fiscally prudent pragmatists on the Tory left and the red-faced gammon-chomping UKIP lite on the right destroyed any chance of a reasonable outcome to Brexit, which has catalysed the depressing economic situation we find ourselves in today.
They have squandered their majority and the immense confidence placed in them by the people. It’s not a surprise they aren’t winning any elections except on single-issue campaigns (which is effectively what Brexit was; a single-issue immigration referendum). Poll after poll released in recent years show Brexit regret – Regrexit, as some outlets have coined – is steadily growing and is now no longer a minority viewpoint. Brits are also more ashamed than not about Brexit, a feeling I certainly share.
Labour’s current line of “Brexit is over, let’s make the best of this bad situation” is the wisest way forward now. Brexit has left horrific scars on the unity of this country that I fear will never fade. Dragging the issue back up, instigating another 7 years of uncertainty and vitriol as to our place in Europe will not solve the issue. Let it lie. The damage is done. Damage the Tories are reaping at the ballot box.
I apologise that this blog so often devolves into anti-Brexit remoaner rants, but its a difficult subject to avoid when discussing the reasons for our current misfortune. That the result was delivered on the back of a pack of lies makes it sting all the keener, even after all these years. I hope we can leave it in the past after the next general election. The uplands won’t be sunlit, but they’ll be better than this swamp we’re wading through.
stay safe
/e