UK Conservatives lose 2 elections in blow to Boris Johnson

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a double blow as voters rejected his Conservative Party in two special elections dominated by questions about his leadership and ethics.

The party’s chairman quit after the results early Friday, saying the party “cannot carry on with business as usual.”

The centrist Liberal Democrats overturned a big Conservative majority to win the rural southwest England seat of Tiverton and Honiton, while the main opposition Labour Party reclaimed Wakefield in northern England from Johnson’s Tories.

The contests, triggered by the resignations of Conservative lawmakers hit by sex scandals, offered voters the chance to give their verdict on the prime minister just weeks after 41% of his own MPs voted to oust him.



Labour candidate Simon Lightwood speaks to media, after winning the Wakefield by-election, following the by-election count at Thornes Park Stadium in Wakefield, West Yorkshire Friday, June 24, 2022. The by-election was triggered by the resignation of Imran Ahmad Khan following his conviction for sexual assault. (Danny Lawson/PA via AP)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/boris-johnson-elections-london-special-england-8d891f2527df74848d15c7deba8cd55a

[OnDoutside]

1. The key is Labour and the Lib Dems agreeing not to put up

candidates who would take votes away from each other, thus splitting the opposition vote.

If they can continue this agreement into the next General Election, it promises to give a chance of a Labour / Lib Dem coalition government. The follow on from this is that it might finally bring about a change in the UK electoral system from the undemocratic First Past the Post, to Proportional Representation, which help move politics back toward the centre.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Very hard to get them to agree to not put up candidates at all where they'd lose

because both parties like to be seen as 'available everywhere'. In practice (eg at these 2 by-elections), they often make a minimal effort at campaigning (both lost their deposit in the 'non-viable' seat), and that can work. And, annoyingly, there is still a cultural "formal election agreements are not the done thing" feeling by some Britons, which can hurt such arrangements.

[Borderer]

3. The Lib Dems role as a centre party means they need to appeal to both sides' voters.

So if they co-ordinated with Labour (which Labour would not want), then the appeal of the Lib Dems to disenchanted Tories would be diminished and the likelihood of depriving the Tories of some of their heartland seats would be reduced. Similarly, when the Lib Dems under Nick Clegg formed a coalition government with David Cameron's Tories, that resulted in a total collapse of the Lib Dem's left-leaning vote and a subsequent electoral wipeout from which they are only now beginning to recover. This is why the Lib Dems have to sit on the fence at general elections and maintain the position that they are hoping for a hung parliament but have no view on who they would prefer to form a coalition with. Hence also their enthusiasm for proportional representation.

There is a common assumption that most people who vote Lib Dem would prefer a Labour government to a Conservative one, but that is not necessarily the case, and certainly not in some of the seats in the south of England.

[OnDoutside]

5. To be fair, the Lib Dems got blown out of it because they said that

they wouldn't go into government with Cameron, and then did. A massive mistake for everyone.

[mwooldri]

8. Good thing is we can blame Cleggo.

He's gone on to work at Meta aka Faceplant. The LD's broke a lot of promises around 2010. Darned Orange Book...

[OnDoutside]

9. True, as long as they can put it right this time.

[Borderer]

11. I don't think the Lib Dems said they wouldn't go into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010.

They made an injudiciously absolute pledge about abolition of university tuition fees being non-negotiable, which was subsequently negotiated away in the coalition talks with the Tories, but they never said they wouldn't form such a coalition.

I don't blame them for the "fence sitting" - it is pretty much essential for them in the first past the post system. If the Lib Dems went into an election saying "we will never enter into a coalition with the Conservatives" then that would be an absolute gift to the Tories, who would portray a vote for Lib Dems as being the same as a vote for Labour, which would shore up the Tory vote in Tory/Lib Dem marginals whilst weakening the Labour vote in Labour/Tory marginals. Similarly (much as I think Nick Clegg was personally a soft Tory rather than a progressive), I don't blame them for forming the coalition in 2010 as they were in an invidious position after the election because the math didn't add up for anything but a coalition with the Tories, siding with an unpopular Labour PM to keep him in power after Labour came second in the election would not have gone down well with half of their supporters, and it was a time of economic emergency when an unstable minority government would not have been desirable. Their presence in the coalition took the edge off what would doubtless have been an even worse government if the Conservatives had been left to their own devices, and it avoided the risk of an early general election in which the Tories might have won a majority.

The mistake the Lib Dems made in 2010 (other than that unwise pledge) was to gamble too much on a proportional representation referendum going their way without securing enough control over it. When the referendum was held early in the parliament and was lost badly due to both the larger parties being opposed to PR, the Lib Dems seemed to enter a state of despair for the next four years. They were then locked into a coalition in which they were the whipping boys for both the Tories (blaming them for blocking "necessary" right wing policies) and Labour (blaming them for propping up a Tory government), and inevitably their support drifted away.

[OnDoutside]

4. The resistance in the past, particularly from Labour, was largely due to

a lack of good experience with coalition governments, and being always hopeful that they'd get a single party majority. Since the SNP have hoovered up seats in Scotland, I think that there seems to be an increasing awareness that Labour's best hope is PR, to at least keep the Tories out of government.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Lisa Nandy on The World At One was still saying "election deals are wrong"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0018h19 aroudn 30 minutes

"Do you see a future in kicking back a little bit in places where Liberal Democrats are number two?"
"I believe where progressives exist in political parties we should work together on shared agendas. I've never believed you should do that by stitching up elections ... come the next election, we are determined there's going to be a majority Labour government"

[OnDoutside]

7. MPs are the last to jump, and to be fair it was a nothing statement

from her. Of course Labour should go into a General Election fighting to win an overall majority but there are plenty of seats where it makes zero sense for Labour to run a candidate, as it lets the Tory in, and vice versa with the Lib Dems.

The positive news is that there is a majority of Union membership who are now in favour of, or open to, PR. Once the big unions start voting to back PR, Labour MPs will follow. Having voted in multi seat PR constituencies for the last almost 40 years here in Ireland, it has largely led to consensus politics. Our only danger now is the young people voting for Sinn Fein who are lying their socks off to get power.

[IronLionZion]

10. I wish US conservatives would lose more elections

[BradAllison]

12. Brit Trump is almost gone

Unfortunately Labour is still recovering from that dummy Corbyn.