Politics: writing on the (blue) wall?

19/06/2021

In 2019, 30,850 people voted for the now deceased Cheryl Gillan, then Tory candidate for the safe seat Chesham and Amersham, where she had been the incumbent MP since 1992. Exactly 14,627 people were recorded as voting for Lib-Dem challenger Dan Gallagher, placing him a poor second. Labour came third with 7,166 votes.

For the record, 55,978 people voted, representing a relatively high turnout of 76.8 percent. With Gillan taking 55.4 percent of the vote, that means she was returned to Westminster by a mere 42.5 percent of the electorate – a minority but not as bad as some seats.

Now, for the by-election just reported, businessman Peter Fleet moved into the Tory slot, defending Gillan's 16,223 majority against Lib-Dem challenger Sarah Green, a fluent Welsh-speaker parachuted in from Wales. As an aspirant MP, her great claim to fame was to contest Arfon at the 2010 general election, finishing fourth behind Plaid Cymru, Labour and the Conservatives.

As Lib-Dem chairman Mark Pack somewhat sardonically remarked yesterday, Green's chances were not rated particularly highly in some quarters. The all-knowing Spectator, for instance, decided that the Lib-Dems would lose, "most likely fairly badly".

Earlier in the week, "waspish writer" Nick Tyrone had written for the magazine under the title, "The Lib-Dems are utterly lost", thanking God that the by-election had almost arrived.

"Hopefully", he opined, "then we can stop hearing any rubbish about how the Lib-Dems are set to tear down the Conservatives' 'blue wall' in the home counties". "As the campaign has demonstrated", he informed his devoted reader, "the Lib-Dems are miles away from being able to cause such an upset".

That must certainly have seemed the case after a surprise visit from The Great Leader on 7 June. As he walked up and down Chesham High Street handing out election material to shop owners and residents, people were shouting, "you're doing a great job, prime minister".

However, the day before the poll things looked a little different. Media sources such as the Evening Standard were reporting Lib-Dem claims that the election was "neck and neck", with party representatives insisting that it could "go down to the wire".

On the day, as we now know, 21,517 people voted for Sarah Green and only 13,489 opted for Peter Fleet, giving the Lib-Dem candidate an unexpected majority of 8,028. From the look of it, not even the Lib-Dems anticipated such a handsome win.

The one party which was not surprised at its own showing, it seems, was Labour. Shortly after Johnson's expedition to Chesham High Street, Starmer's spokesman praised the party's "fantastic candidate", but conceded, "it's obviously a very difficult contest for the Labour party".

Asked who the candidate was, there was an awkward pause: "…I will get you that name and send you details after", the spokesman said. On Thursday, this unknown candidate polled 622 votes, down from 7,166 in 2019.

That is worse showing than the National Front in 1979, and on a par with Ukip's first outing in 1997, when the insurgent polled 618 votes (as against the Referendum Party, which took 2,528 votes).

Looking at the current figures, we see that the Lib-Dems gained the seat on a swing of just over 30 percent. The Tories, on the other hand, experience a negative swing of 19.9 percent and Labour (which came fourth after the Greens), swung -11.2 percent.

On the basis of these swings, it is tempting to combine the negatives, coming to just over -30, and compare with the Lib-Dem swing which, conveniently, comes in at just over plus 30. From this, one might assume that the commination of disaffected Tory and Labour voters gave Sarah Green her victory.

However, there is another way of looking at things. In the 2019 general election, the turnout was 76.8 percent. This time round, it was 52.1 percent – relatively high for a by-election. But this means that, while in 2019, about 17,000 people stayed at home, on Thursday, that number swelled to 35,000 – an extra 18,000 abstainers.

A tenable scenario, therefore, is that nearly 7,000 labour voters stayed at home, as did around 11,000 Tory voters. With Peter Fleet losing about 17,000 votes, that left about 6,000 transferring to the Lib-Dems with the small balance coming from the reduction in the number voting for the Greens.

Is this sounds all a little too pat, it might be recalled that the reverse effect was seen at Hartlepool in May. There, the Lib-Dem vote collapsed, Labour stayed at home and, on a heavily reduced turnout, the Tories won the seat.

Transposing this to Chesham and Amersham, we again have Labour voters staying at home, with many Tories doing likewise. And, as the Tories decline, the Lib-Dems prosper, their party being the natural repository for disaffected Tory voters. They will not vote Labour, but they are prepared to vote Lib-Dem as a protest vote in by-elections.

In this scenario, the by-election is bad news for both the main parties. It would confirm Labour's stay-at-home trend, but also point to a potential Lib-Dem resurgence which could heavily erode Tory majorities at the next general election. But, whether that would make any difference is anyone's guess. It could be that Tory losses to the Lib-Dems are balanced by the Labour abstainers, maintaining the status quo.

The ambitions of Lib-Dem leader, to breach the Tory "blue wall" (pictured) may, therefore, may be unrealised, although the forthcoming Batley and Spen may give further clues as to which way the electoral wind is blowing.

This seat was a Tory target in the 2019 general, and they had hopes of winning it. Incumbent Tracy Brabin, after winning following the murder of Jo Cox, had re-taken the seat in the 2017 election with a comfortable 29,844 votes against the Conservative's 20,833. But she did not repeat that performance in 2019, her vote dropping to 22,594 while the Tories held on to 19,069 votes.

Now, there is a real chance that the seat could fall to the Tories, except that the situation is even more complex than usual. Jo Cox's sister, Kim Leadbetter standing for Labour, is apparently chasing after the Kashmiri Moslem vote, making pitches on both Kashmir and Palestine.

However, Batley is not inner-city Bradford. The Kashmiri population is sizeable, at about 20 percent, but it is not a majority. And in 2019, there was the intervention of a newly formed independent party, with the unlikely name of the Heavy Woollen District Independents.

Led by Aleksandar Lukic, who was the chairman for UKIP's Dewsbury, Batley and Spen branch until 2017, it fronted Paul Halloran who took 6,432 votes, eroding the votes of both parties but possibly saving Brabin from electoral annihilation – aided, perhaps, by the Brexit Party which polled 1,678 votes.

Some of that vote, this time, could go to a plethora of minority parties and independents, while there is another factor at play, in the form of George Galloway. He won the strongly Moslem Bradford West by-election in 2012, appealing to the Kashmiri population, and could repeat the same trick.

Equally, it is possible that he could split the Labour vote, as the Labour-voting Kashmiris have been none too happy with Starmer. It all depends on which way the imams jump. It is here, therefore, that the Lib-Dems could be decisive. While the Tories could slip between the cracks, resurgent Lib-Dems could siphon off enough votes to rob them of their victory.

The perverse thing is that this seat will not be entirely fought on local issues, but heavily influenced by the politics of the Middle East and Pakistan. That may muddy the waters for the Lib-Dems, who are said to have scored heavily on local issues in Chesham and Amersham.

But, if the Lib-Dems are back in the game, even (or especially) in Batley and Spen, we should see some signs of it. Then, it is just possible that the writing is on the wall for Johnson, regardless of its colour.

Also published on Turbulent Times.