It's the summer of 2014 and British politics is bursting at the seams. For years, Prime Minister David Cameron has been battling both externally against Labour leader Ed Miliband and internally as Eurosceptic Tory MPs seek to radically change how the party approaches the EU. Nigel Farage’s UKIP, pushing the Tories from the right, is sitting at 14% of the polls and on the verge of displacing the Lib Dems as the third party of British politics. Yet they still need an electoral victory.
This would come on the 28th August at a UKIP press event which is ready to reveal a new donor to fill the party's coffers. There is surprise when no donor walks out onto the stage. No, instead Douglas Carswell, MP for Clacton, approaches the podium. He's not exactly a big spender, and he's a Tory, so his presence at this event is certainly unexpected. Stepping up to the microphones he opens with the line "I'm today leaving the Conservative Party and joining UKIP". He is met by an excited applause from the audience. With those rather softly spoken words, British politics was set alight.
Douglas Carswell is the epitome of the Eurosceptic Conservative MP so it should have come as no surprise that out of all the MPs to defect to the United Kingdom Independence Party that it would be him. Still, the timing caught the Tories totally off guard. It was made even worse as Carswell was against the idea of MPs changing parties without consequences and so he declared his intent to step down as an MP and to recontest the ensuing by-election for his new party. This meant that the Conservatives would have a colossal fight on their hands to keep the seat blue or face further embarrassment. For UKIP, defeat could prove lethal after multiple close calls in by-elections, but victory meant even more momentum.
Not everyone in the local UKIP Party was happy, though. Spare a thought for Roger Lord, the UKIP Parliamentary candidate selected earlier in July. He was not told about Carswell's imminent defection so was genuinely surprised that he was about to lose his big break in politics. After this internal defeat at the selection for the UKIP candidate he later resigned from his county council seat and endorsed, of all parties, the Liberal Democrats.
Let's fast forward to the 9th October 2014. It's David Cameron's birthday and polls have just closed in the Clacton by-election. It’s the worst gift imaginable for David Cameron as the early rumour mill forecasts triumph for Carswell. In the early hours of the next day, the vote is about to be declared. The tension in Clacton's town hall is palpable. The stage of candidates is a true line up. You have the rather boring candidates that you always get in this proper world of politics:
Douglas Carswell, the UKIP candidate.
Giles Watling, the Conservative Party candidate, an actor, and Tendring District councillor.
Tim Young, the Labour Pary candidate, a Colchester councillor.
Andy Graham, the Liberal Democrat candidate, a former mayor of Bishop's Stortford.
Bruce Sizer, an independent candidate who focused entirely on the issue of health and cancer care.
But don't fret, there was some real excitement:
Chris Southall, the Green Party candidate, who had played a role in a UFO hoax in 1967. Chris was an apprentice at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough where he helped organise the creation of UFOs.
Alan "Howling Laud" Hope, the leader of the Monster Raving Looney Party and a fan of big rosettes.
Charlotte Rose, another independent candidate, who stood on a platform of sexual freedom. She had won the 2013 "Sex Worker of the Year" award and had been a passionate advocate for the decriminialisation of brothels.
How did they all fare? Here’s how:
A decisive victory for UKIP who took huge sums of votes from the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats. The 59.7% increase in the percentage achieved by UKIP compared to the last general election (where they didn't stand a candidate) is the greatest in British political history, with the swing itself only 0.1% behind the record in the 1983 Bermondsey by-election. Sadly, my new political icon, Charlotte Rose, only got 56 votes. With such a resounding success for UKIP, and a humiliating defeat for the Conservatives, what happened to get us here?
There is a lot that points towards Carswell's own personal brand as an MP being a major factor in his victory. Some of his personal achievements that his campaign highlighted was his role in trying to re-open the local maternity unit at Clacton's hospital, spearheading the renewing of Holland-On-Sea's beaches and his opposition to 12,000 new homes that the local council had wanted to build.
There are of course the various gaffes that always plague candidates in parliamentary by-elections but none really stuck, even if they did help the UKIP narrative of the Tories being out of touch,. Matthew Parris, a former Conservative Party MP, decided to write a Times Column explaining why the Conservatives should "turn their back on Clacton". The classist piece saw Parris claim that "Clacton is going nowhere. Its voters are going nowhere, it's rather sad and there's nothing more to say." Another gaffe was the local Conservative Party's surveys asking voters about their "local" tube service. The nearest Underground station was 60 miles away. The Conservatives insisted this was a valid issue, based on the thousands of journeys made between Clacton and London, but UKIP painted it as a gaffe.
Perhaps more embarrassing was the role of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. Two Tory MPs had, unsuccessfully, called for Johnson to stand as the candidate, hoping his charisma would save the day. He wisely declined, but did campaign for Watling. Two days before the by- election, however, he made the mistake of forgetting Watling’s name in a radio interview. Whoops.
Now let's look at what UKIP did right. They gave away themed rock. Now how could you even compete with that?
Besides the use of sweets UKIP had momentum built around their campaign by showing that there was public, and vocal, support for their candidate. Carswell's personal support was an essential ingredient here, as it has often been for third-party candidates, helping draw volunteer numbers and public audiences far beyond what most candidates could achieve. 700 people attended a joint Carswell-Farage meeting, pretty phenomenal numbers for political engagement. The visibility of support for Carswell was crucial to combat the main message of the Conservatives in this by-election: 'A vote for UKIP is a vote for Ed Miliband'. Essentially, they hoped that voters would assume Labour had a chance of winning as UKIP and the Tories split the vote from one another, and so they'd choose the party with the already clear and established support. However, because it was clear UKIP was certainly ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives, this message failed to land.
UKIP on the other hand positioned themselves as the party that could talk about things none of the others would possibly dare. They presented Carswell as an outspoken local champion, fighting to bring immigration down, challenging both Labour and the Tories on local and national issues alike. Carswell's position against increasing foreign aid and for cutting taxes was supposed to stress his "outspoken" credentials, braver in his right-wing positioning than the Tories dared be and more effective on local bread-and-butter issues to boot.
Carswell’s big victory thus was hardly surprising. The Tories suffered a few embarrassing gaffes and UKIP largely dodged any real hurdles, but even without this, the fundamentals of the campaign were all in Carswell’s favour. The narrative of a local champion shaking up Westminster was an effective one. With his resounding victory, UKIP received far more momentum than they would have from just the defection alone.
Clacton is easily the most important by-election in the last decade. In the short term it proved that UKIP was a credible force in British politics and allowed them to build upon their future success in the Rochester and Strood by-election a month later to consolidate their position in the national conversation, something that all 3rd parties need to break. In turn, this short-term success brought political pressure on the Conservatives from the right, which forced David Cameron into making an EU referendum a major part of the 2015 Conservative campaign in an attempt to appease those possible UKIP voters. While this ultimately succeeded for the Conservatives, handing them a majority government for the first time in more than 20 years, it opened a new chapter in British politics, one of uncertainty. The Brexit referendum, and all that transpired from it, might not have happened in the same way without Clacton and that's the real wonder of the British by-election. We’re beholden to what goes on in a little microcosm of the wider battle that the country faces. Small local battles have national repercussions.
Carswell would go on to win the seat again in the 2015 General Election, the only UKIP candidate to do so despite them receiving 12% of the vote nationally, before retiring from front-line politics in 2017. It was “third time’s the charm” for Watling, who after falling short in both 2014 and 2015, has held the seat since 2017. His current majority is 56.8%. As for Clacton UKIP, once a bastion of the party, they're essentially dead. Despite nearly becoming the largest party on Tendring District Council in 2015, short by just one councillor, the party is now irrelevant in the area with most either having lost their seats or defecting to the Conservatives. This reflects the story of UKIP following 2015 as the commitment to an EU referendum meant they lost their purpose, even in their heartlands.
"A week is a long time in politics" after all, and a few years is even bloody longer.
Thank you so much for reading By-election Bonanza, I've been Adam Lawless, and I'll see you in 2 weeks where we'll be exploring someone with a Suspicious Mind. A special thanks to the editor for today’s piece, Gianni Sarra (follow him on Twitter at @GianniRSarra)
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P.S. I've just got to highlight this absolute gem of a leaflet from Carswell in the 2015 General Election in Clacton.
Bossman Carswell.