UK parliamentary by-elections 2014

[YL]

The BBC are reporting that this will be held on Thursday 13 February, which seems very soon but is not very surprising given the tight Labour selection schedule.

Update 21 Jan: the writ has indeed been moved for that date.

[YL]

2012 local election results by ward:

Manchester wards
Baguley: Lab 63%, UKIP 12%, Con 11%, TUSC 5%, LD 4%, Green 4%
Brooklands (Manc.): Lab 65%, Con 18%, UKIP 9%, Green 5%, LD 4%
Northenden: Lab 64%, LD 13%, Con 8%, UKIP 8%, Green 7%
Sharston: Lab 70%, UKIP 10%, Con 9%, LD 4%, Green 4%, TUSC 3%
Woodhouse Park: Lab 71%, UKIP 14%, Con 7%, Green 6%, LD 3%

Trafford wards
Brooklands (Traff.): Con 48%, LD 33%, Green 8%, LD 6%, Ind 4%
Priory: Lab 52%, Con 31%, LD 9%, Green 8%
Sale Moor: Lab 49%, Con 37%, Green 7%, LD 6%

Manchester component (i.e. "Wythenshawe") overall: Lab 66%, Con 11%, UKIP 10%, LD 6%, Green 5%, TUSC (two wards only) 1.5%
Trafford component (i.e. "Sale East") overall: Lab 44%, Con 39%, Green 8%, LD 7%, Ind (one ward only) 1.4%

Across the consitituency as a whole I get Lab 58%, Con 22%, LD 7%, Green 6%, UKIP 6%, TUSC 0.9%, Ind 0.5%.  But note that UKIP had no candidates in the Trafford wards.

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http://labourlist.org/2014/01/wythenshawe-and-sale-east-whos-in-the-running-to-be-labours-candidate/

Though a bit of a howler there: John Battle was a Leeds MP.

And now the shortlist: http://labourlist.org/2014/01/wythenshawe-and-sale-east-the-shortlist/ (still without mentioning Leeds)

UKIP have selected their candidate, someone called John Bickley who apparently used to be a Labour supporter.

[YL]

I don't think they've ever run as an 'old style Labour Party' (whatever that would even mean) anywhere. They do have a couple of left-wing cranks in some areas, but that's not the same thing...

I assume he's referring to the sort of voters UKIP are trying to appeal to, rather than actual policies.

In my experience it's a myth that the Lib Dems did that.  Given how much their campaigning focuses on getting tactical votes from supporters of parties who Can't Win Here, appearing to be too much like the party they're trying to beat would be counterproductive.

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The task of trying to save the Lib Dem deposit has gone to Mary di Mauro, who represents Northenden ward (in the constituency) on Manchester City Council (term finishes 2014).  As mentioned above the Lib Dems only got 13% in that ward in 2012, and she's the only Lib Dem councillor left in the constituency.

Meanwhile someone whose real name is presumably not "Captain Chaplington-Smythe" is going to stand for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party under that name.

[YL]

Candidate list now available via http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/362/elections_and_voting/4981/your_next_election

There are no candidates other than those already mentioned in the thread.  So:

John Bickley (UKIP)
Captain Chaplington-Smythe (OMRLP)
Daniel Critchlow (Con)
Mary di Mauro (Lib Dem)
Mike Kane (Lab)
Eddy O'Sullivan (BNP)
Nigel Woodcock (Green)

The Loony, Lib Dem and Labour candidates have Northenden addresses so presumably live in the constituency; the other four live in other constituencies, though none very far away.

[YL]

This is tomorrow.  Given the weather and the lack of any doubt as to the result, expect a low turnout.

There seems to have been a fair amount of UKIP expectation management, including some rather ridiculous moaning about postal votes.  Some of the flavour can be gleaned from an article on the Telegraph website about UKIP and the by-election.  So perhaps the Ashcroft poll may be in the right ballpark.

I'll be impressed if Labour really do get 61%, though.

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The weather is better today (well, 30 or so miles east of the constituency, anyway).  I suspect the after-effects of the storm will still depress turnout a bit, though, and it wouldn't have been high anyway.

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Patrick Mercer (Newark) has just announced that he's resigning his seat.  The BBC are speculating about Farage standing.

2010 result:
Patrick Mercer (Con) 53.9%
Ian Campbell (Lab) 22.3%
Pauline Jenkins (LD) 20.0%
Tom Irvine (UKIP) 3.8%

Labour won the seat in 1997, but lost it in 2001 in rather unfortunate circumstances, and AIUI the 2010 boundary changes made it harder for them to win.

Moderators: feel free to merge this with the Wythenshawe thread under a new title if you want to keep them together.

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If Farage does stand here it would be the seventh different constituency he's stood in.  He hasn't stood more than once in the same place.

(If I had to guess, I'd say he won't.)

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Farage isn't standing.

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Unsurprisingly, the Nottinghamshire-based joke candidate David Bishop of the Church of the Militant Elvis aka Bus Pass Elvis (who recently beat the Lib Dems in a Nottingham council by-election) says he's going to stand.

Also, UKIP have confirmed that Roger Helmer MEP will be their candidate.  He's been an MEP for the East Midlands since 1999, originally as a Tory before defecting to UKIP in 2012.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Helmer#Views makes for interesting reading:

- He once said that in date rape "the victim surely shares a part of the responsibility, if only for establishing reasonable expectations in her boyfriend's mind".

- He said that homophobia "does not exist", the word merely being "a propaganda device designed to denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions".

- He suggested that the Church of England had "abandoned religious faith entirely and taken up the religion of climate alarmism instead".  As for the Catholic Church, he said "it would be perfectly fair to describe it as systemically paedophile".

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Dick Rogers for Common Good

According to Wikipedia, they once got 313% of the vote in a Birmingham council election.  The rest of their electoral record is less impressive...

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So Labour are only going to run a skeleton campaign for this one (cash-strapped), and running a 25 year old student politician type as candidate. This is probably going to step up to be a Tory vs. Helmer affair.

Ugh, imagine if we had a two round voting system and had to choose between Helmer and the government.

I'd either hold my nose and vote for the Government (if the Government candidate was a Lib Dem or relatively sane sort of Tory) or spoil my ballot.

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One danger for the Lib Dems, deposit-wise, is that if this becomes perceived as a Con/UKIP contest (which seems likely) then the more Coalition-tolerant part of their 2010 vote may be squeezed by the Tories.

I think on balance I'd expect them to hold it -- they had over 20% here in 2010, and while that was true in Wythenshawe & Sale East too, Newark isn't very like Wythenshawe -- but I wouldn't be that surprised if they didn't.

[YL]

Survation poll for the Scum: Con 36, UKIP 28, Labour 27, LDem 5

Take with appropriately vast quantities of salt.

That's better for Labour than I was expecting.  (Salt taken, mind.)

By-election polls in this parliament have had a bit of a habit of underestimating UKIP, but the timing of this poll might mean otherwise.

[YL]

Anything but a Tory hold will start alarm bells on the backbenchers, surely. This is a safe seat...

It would be the first Tory hold in a by-election while in government since 1989. Actually holding it is more out of the ordinary.

If you look a bit further back it starts to look like it was the 1989-97 period which was out of the ordinary, and also the safe seats which were lost in by-elections in that period were generally lost to a certain party with a yellow bird logo which for some reason isn't doing very well at the moment.

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There are many threads available to discuss the merits of the Cameron ministry and Nick Clegg, but only one to discuss the Newark by-election. Shoo!

Let's discuss it then...

In spite of the Survation poll showing Labour only just behind UKIP, it seems to have been perceived as a blue/purple battle.  There are some suggestions that some Labour supporters may even be voting tactically, though I doubt there can be that many (and not all of them in the same direction...).  I expect a Tory hold.

There's a hospital independent (Paul Baggaley, a Newark town councillor) standing; if anyone other than the Lib Dems comes fourth I'd think he's the most likely.

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Apparently there's a poll carried out by Loughborough University students showing UKIP narrowly ahead.  Without further details I'd take this with a bigger pinch of salt needed than usual, but we'll see.

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Looking at the European election results in the area:

The constituency contains parts of three local government areas.  Most is in Newark & Sherwood, but the Bingham area in the south is in Rushcliffe, and a rural area in the north around is in Bassetlaw.

UKIP carried Newark & Sherwood district by 32.4% to the Tories' 31.2% and Labour's 21.4%, but it should be noted that the district also contains a substantial part of Sherwood constituency, and it is pretty clear that the part of the district in Sherwood (much of which is coalfield) is substantially worse for the Tories than that in Newark constituency.

The parts in the other two districts are both fairly small.  The Tories carried Rushcliffe fairly comfortably (the rest of the district forms Ken Clarke's constituency, of course) and Labour carried Bassetlaw narrowly over UKIP with the Tories some way behind, but the bit in this constituency is not where the Labour strength is in Bassetlaw.

Putting that together, I think the Tories carried this constituency in the Euros.

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I don't think this was an ideal seat for UKIP, but they were clearly trying to win and only getting 25% must be disappointing for them.  Even if it's true that other parties' supporters ganged up on them by tactically supporting the Tories (which does look plausible from the figures) they didn't get enough votes for that to have been needed.  In a General Election people might feel differently of course, but could something similar happen then in a UKIP target seat?

According to the Guardian UKIP and the Lib Dems are wondering aloud whether the Tories spent more than allowed on their campaign.

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Will there even be a by-election, though?  I suspect that if the seat becomes vacant too late for one before Christmas, it'll just be left vacant.

Quite a bit of that area is effectively Cambridge suburbs and exurbs, not what I'd have thought of as prime Kipper territory.  It's not the real Fens.

[YL]

Looks like we have a Clacton by-election, with Douglas Carswell (elected as Conservative) formally resigning to defend his seat in his new UKIP colours:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28967904

[YL]

So how does that work? Can his seat legally stay empty for almost one year?

In principle, yes, but it's not very likely.

The first thing that needs to happen is for Carswell to be appointed Steward of the Manor of Northstead (which is the formal way he resigns his seat).  One of Harry's rumours above is that the Chancellor might refuse to do this; as MPs cannot actually resign (but have to be appointed to either that office or the Chiltern Hundreds) this would block the by-election, but it would unprecedented in modern times (not to say rather petty) for the Chancellor to refuse.

Then an MP needs to move the writ in the Commons to formally call the by-election.  Normally this is done by the defending party.  In this case I don't know whether that's considered to be the Conservatives or UKIP, but as the latter have no other MPs if it's them someone else will have to do it, as happens for Sinn Féin and independent vacancies.  (Anyway, another party can move it: the Lib Dems moved the writ for Oldham East & Saddleworth earlier in this parliament, where Labour were defending.)  There are cases where a party who didn't want a by-election wait a long time to move the writ, but the recent trend has been to move it quickly.  It would also be possible in principle for MPs to vote down the writ, as suggested by another one of Harry's rumours, but again this would be unprecedented in modern times.

All that said, I expect that Carswell will be appointed Steward of the Manor of Northstead within a few days, someone (probably a Tory) will move the writ within the next couple of weeks, and there will be a by-election in October.

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According to UKIPologists Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford (not that one), Clacton has the most UKIP-friendly demographics of any seat in the entire country.

In fact, Goodwin made a blog post in May where he says Carswell asked him where Clacton was on the list.  I wonder what Carswell was actually thinking about at the time...

[YL]

The latest rumours swirling around Westminster are:

Coalition MP's are being whipped to reject the writ being moved
Chancellor to oppose signing the stewardship document that allows an MP to resign
Writ to be moved so that the by-election happens during the Liberal Democrat conference

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed John Douglas Wilson Carswell to be Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead."