Hello!
WHOLE NEW WORLD: Welcome to a very new format for By-election Bonanza. From now until a couple of weeks after the North Shropshire by-election I’m going to place a break on the regular bi-monthly Wednesday emails and instead replace them with a weekly overview of the 2021 North Shropshire by-election that’ll be published every Friday. This new format will be called ‘A WEEK IS A LONG TIME IN BY-ELECTIONS’ and will act as a summary of how the contest is shaping out with interviews, factoids and rumours providing a hub of insights (hopefully)
BUT WHY?: I want to try out something that I had always planned from the start. One of my journalist heroes is Vincent Hanna, the BBC king of by-elections whose coverage for Newsnight has inspired me on the importance of journalism in how we on the outside of constituency campaigns view them and their results. I initially wanted this newsletter to allow me to go out across the country and see what it’s like recording vox pops and interviewing those responsible for running campaigns so this seems like the perfect opportunity to do exactly that. Additionally, I’ve always found it very difficult to keep up with all the different threads of conversation and news that I try to cultivate on my Twitter feed so this project attempts to help collect everything together with one nice bow on top.
Sleazeville
RESIGNATION: This by-election has been called because of Owen Paterson’s resignation. The disgraced former Cabinet Minister, when presented with the findings of the Standards Commissioner and the Standards Committee that he had broken the rules due to his lobbying, rejected them and instead led a campaign to paint the entire process as biased. He found himself backed by the leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and a corps of Tory MPs who boosted his message far and wide before the vote on whether to accept the reports' findings or not.
DOWN LIKE A LEADSOM BALLOON: The Tory MP for South Northamptonshire, Andrea Leadsom, drew herself into his scandal by putting forward an amendment that would have destroyed and rebuilt the entire standards system in a way that guaranteed a Conservative majority, essentially destroying any form of credibility. This too found support with Jacob Rees-Mogg and swathes of Conservative MPs. Both votes were whipped and passed.
U-TURN: Yet for some reason, possibly because some right-wing newspapers called the Tories out which always upsets Boris Johnson, the decision was u-turned and hours later Paterson resigned.
NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS: The by-election will be held on Thursday 16 December after the Chief Whip issued the writ for the vacant seat, giving just 34 days for the opposition political parties to try and decimate a majority in the tens of thousands. Activists set to descend upon the streets better pack some gloves and a scarf.
Shropwhere?
RURAL BLISS: North Shropshire is located across the north of Shropshire in the West Midlands, reaching right from the east of the county to the west. It is very rural with a few population centres, primarily market towns. The main ones are Oswestry (with a population of 17,105), Whitchurch (9,781) and Market Drayton (11,773) although there are a few smaller ones like Wem and Ellesmere. The rest of the population can be found in villages all across the constituency, here are a few of my favourite names:
Cockshutt (with the combined parish council Cockshutt-cum-Petton)
Ireland’s Cross
Welsh End
Sutton (upon Tern)
PLAID CYMRU SURGE: One feature you may notice with the west of the constituency is the number of villages with Welsh-sounding names and this is because much of Shropshire used to be on the English-Welsh borderlands when the two countries were separated with various towns and villages constantly changing hands until the late Middle Ages. This still has an effect on names with places around Oswestry named Gobowen and Trefonen. This incredible interview from 1972 shows the reaction from people on whether they considered themselves English or Welsh which you can watch here. One activist who canvassed in the constituency says they came across a voter who said they were a “welsh nationalist” in Whitchurch.
A SEA OF BLUE: Politically, the constituency is strongly Conservative, and has always had a Conservative MP with the Tories receiving more than 50% of the vote in almost every General Election since the seat was created in 1983. There was a period between 1997 and 2005 in which the Conservatives fell below 50% but they still held it. Labour is traditionally the main challenger at the parliamentary level with them in 2nd throughout the seat’s history except for in 2010, 1992, 1987 and 1983 where it was instead the Liberal Democrats and their predecessor. So far the closest electoral contest in the constituency was 1997 where the future MP for Wrexham, Ian Lucas, missed out by 2,195 votes on becoming the seat's only non-Conservative MP.
WITH AN ISLAND OR TWO: Locally, besides the Conservative Party, the 2nd largest party in council seats are the Greens who hold Oswestry South and Oswestry West. Oswestry’ town council is composed of 12 Greens and 6 Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats have some strength at the local level, having nearly won 5 council seats in May’s local elections: the Meres by 23 votes, Whittington by 34 votes, Wem by 39 votes, Whitchurch North by 52 votes and Ruyton & Baschurch by 90 votes.
WHAT ABOUT THE DATA: In the 2019 General Election the results were Conservative: 62.7%, Labour: 22.1%, Liberal Democrat: 10.0%, Green: 3.2% and Shropshire Party: 2.0%.
Ben Walker from Britain Elects puts the top vote of the constituency in the May 2021 local elections at:
WINNING HERE?: A Lib Dem bar chart is already in trouble for using total vote rather than top vote in measuring the success of each of the different parties in May’s local elections, something that Ben Walker describes as “patently misleading”. Essentially this means that rather than using the top placed candidate of each party in multi-member wards like Walker has, they have instead used the total votes cast. One Liberal Democrat told me that “In this context it’s meaningless” as the message that they’re still second isn’t lost, it’s an issue of preference. Here’s the graph:
NOT BREXIT AGAIN: The constituency voted to leave the EU by a margin of 60-40. Some other demographic information is that it’s 98% white, 70% of households own their own home and 47% of the population are over 45.
Choose your challenger!
THE FIGHT FOR 2ND: Due to the significant fight required to overcome the current Conservative majority of 22,949 votes, every opposition party will want to be the one who can say “Vote for me to beat the Tories.” While this claim is usually quite simple it all depends on the speed in which you can get it out.
LABOUR’S CASE: The Labour Party has the fortune of having got 22.1% of the vote in the 2019 General Election, receiving almost twice as many votes compared to the 3rd place Liberal Democrats. This alone will assist their ability to communicate to voters that a vote anywhere else but Labour is a waste while the other parties clamber to take their spot.
LIB DEM’S CASE: As stated, the Liberal Democrats are the 3rd placed party in the constituency but this hasn’t stopped their dedication to fight and try to sell themselves as the opposition party. Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, visited the constituency on Monday clearly showing their desire to get an established presence. First, they point to local election results where the party came 2nd and that they were just a few hundred votes off a number of council seats which would’ve added a few splashes of yellow to the map. This however has been countered with many saying that how people vote in local elections is very different to how they may actually vote at the Westminster level and that their low turnout gives a false impression of support. Liberal Democrats reaffirm that by-elections usually have low turnout and therefore it shows they have the voters to mobilise. Additionally, they make the case that to win the constituency they need to gain disaffected Conservatives who may never vote Labour but are more willing for the centrist Liberal Democrats. They already have activists out delivering the leaflets across the constituency so we shall see if their message lands.
SOMETHING SNEAKY: Despite Labour’s strong position, Michael Crick from the Mail+ reports that the Liberal Democrats and Labour seem to have an unofficial pact to try and maximise their threat against the Conservatives by having the Lib Dems keep to North Shropshire while putting minimum resources into Old Bexley and Sidcup which is also having a by-election and vice-versa with Labour. “The parties deny it, of course – they have to – but the signs are there. For example, the Lib Dems are giving their candidate in Old Bexley very little attention on social media, whereas their campaign in North Shropshire already has loads. And Labour has been slow to get its campaign going in North Shropshire, where Lib Dems began leafletting last weekend.” says Michael.
VOX POP TIME: In this same report from Michael Crick, he asks 2 people their view on who the major challenger is in the seat. 100% said the Liberal Democrats. Expect to see this on the next barchart.
GREEN’S CASE: The 4th placed party but growing in the national polls to a height of 11% (ahead of the Liberal Democrats), the Green Party are yet to have their breakout moment in British politics like UKIP had with the Clacton by-election that could prove the party can win at Westminster outside of Brighton. I've seen one Green councillor make the claim that the Greens should be the main opposition party because in May 2021, only the Green Party made gains within the borders of the constituency while Labour sat on 0 and the Liberal Democrats lost their only seat. How you convert this into a bar chart will be a test of their graphical design department.
BELL-KO EXPERIMENT: There existed an idea for a very short amount of time for the anti-Conservative parties to unite under a single anti-sleaze candidate who would run as an independent. This was based upon Martin Bell’s run against Neil Hamilton in the 1997 General Election following Hamilton's high profile sleaze. That idea died very quickly as the parties were unable to get around the “practical difficulties” of who to choose, along with a number of issues that I’ve touched upon in a Twitter thread here:
These are just a few of my favourite proposed anti-sleaze candidates that I could find over Twitter:
Rory Stewart
Dominic Grieve
John Bercow
Deborah Meaden
Martin Bell has said on the issue that opposition parties in the North Shropshire "might look back at the end and think maybe we should have tried something else." He added that sleaze was an issue that "really cuts through to people in a way that others don't."
BRING HIM BACK: Michael Crick from the Mail+ also reports that the Liberal Democrats approached Martin Bell to stand as an anti-sleaze candidate. Bell explains his reasoning for not taking the offer “I’m 83 and I walk on a stick.”
THE BOOKIES HAVE SPOKEN: The betting firms have all set their opinion down that the Liberal Democrats are second in odds of winning. These mean something apparently. (All of these are accurate as of 18:00 on 11/11/21)
LADROKES: The Conservatives are on 1/4, Liberal Democrats 9/2, Labour 10/1, Reform UK 25/1 and Greens 100/1.
SKYBET: The Conservatives are on 2/9, Liberal Democrats 4/1, Labour 9/1, Reform UK 28/1 and Greens 125/1.
WILLIAM HILL: The Conservatives are on 1/4, Liberal Democrats 7/2, Labour 10/1, Reform UK 28/1 and Greens 200/1.
SBK: The Conservatives are on 5/19, Liberal Democrats 21/5, Labour 33/2, Reform UK 24/1.
SMARKETS: The Conservatives are on 1/4, Liberal Democrats 4/1, Labour 81/5, Reform UK 25/1.
Campaign Hour
KEIR SETS HIS SIGHTS: Labour leader Keir Starmer has stated his commitment to “winning the argument” over sleaze by attempting to cause an upset victory in the by-election during an exclusive interview with the Shropshire Star which you can read here.
LABOUR LIST: According to the Shropshire Star, there seem to be 3 contenders running to be the Labour Party candidate that will be confirmed very soon. They are former Labour candidate in the constituency Graeme Currie, former MEP for Shropshire and Herefordshire David Hallam and former Telford & Wrekin Council leader Kuldip Sahota. You can read more about them here. They’ll be announcing their candidate on Sunday.
SELECTION BONANZA: According to the selection application for the Liberal Democrats, they closed off the process on the 9th and will have their selection panel on the 15th of November. The Conservatives will choose their candidate on the 13th of November. Details of candidates in this by-election (the statement of persons nominated) will be posted on the Shropshire Council website by 5pm on Thursday 19 November
FOCUS ON THE PRIZE: A “confidential” email from the Liberal Democrat CEO Mike Dixon has been sent to members and supporters of the party. It discloses that nearly 14,000 homes have received a Lib Dem leaflet, reaching about 1 out of 3 households. According to Dixon “In just two days volunteers have delivered to more doorsteps than we did in the first few weeks of our campaign in Chesham & Amersham”.
NOT IN MY BACKYARD: The email also included a number of failures from the Conservatives in the constituency, one which may upset the younger activists:
REFORM UK ENTER THE RACE: Reform UK have announced their candidate, Kirsty Walmsey. Daughter of the ex-council leader Keith Barrow, her family is a bit of a political dynasty throughout the county. A former county councillor for the Tories, she later got involved with the Brexit Party and is now standing under the turquoise banner of Reform. She is noted for describing Owen Paterson as a “man of integrity”. She provided further context to this quote on Twitter “Though I haven't spoken to Owen Paterson for over a decade, the man I knew did have integrity. It's clear that since then, something has gone very wrong.” You can read more about her here.
REFORWARD: Their campaign kicked off Tuesday this week where Kirsty was joined by Reform Party leader Richard Tice. They are standing to cut taxes for the less well off, to ensure there were no NHS waiting lists and that health care was free at the point of delivery and to ensure cheaper electricity.
JUST LIKE C&A: Richard Tice also said at the campaign launch that investment in HS2 should stop.
BUS PUN: The Reform UK campaign is utilising their standard approach of a big ol’ bus in Oswestry this week.
WHERE YOU DEAN?: Another candidate was announced this week, Russel Dean of the Party Party. He currently lives in Monaco but has pledged to move back to the UK if he wins. You can read more about him here.
May be of interest…
INTERESTING FACT OF THE WEEK: In the 2019 General Election, Robert Jones ran for the Shropshire Party in North Shropshire. He has since joined the Liberal Democrats and stood for them in the 2021 local elections, losing out on the Ruyton & Baschurch ward by 100 votes despite a swing of +35.8%. Robert ran in the same seat in the 2017 local elections for the Federalist Party, a centrist political party that wants a federal Britain.
THANK YOU: I hope you enjoyed this new format, this has been very fun to write. If you have any information that you think would work perfectly in next week’s edition please DM the By-election Bonanza Twitter Account @BBonanza_
Good stuff.