We’re a bit out of town and nobody has knocked on our door although we’ve been inundated with election literature, including several copies of The North Yorkshire Chronicle. This on the surface looks like a free newspaper but is in fact Tory election literature although you’d be hard pushed to find the word Conservative in it. I’m sure you’ve seen copies.
Tory candidate Claire Holmes’ election leaflet isn’t even blue and doesn’t show the Tory logo. It’s like watching one of those adverts where you don’t know until the last second what’s being advertised. The party seems intent on distancing itself from itself. It’s a novel approach but with their record who can blame them? Her central pitch is don’t let Labour spoil things, as if life here is some sort of delicately poised Utopia in danger of being shattered by an opposition candidate who'll be powerless even if he wins.
It makes no sense, unless of course, you accept the Tories are deeply ashamed and embarrassed about the state of the country after thirteen years in government, seven of which have been spent arguing over the meaning of Brexit and trying to implement it instead of improving things. It's impossible to defend their record and so they haven't bothered.
Last night, we had a ‘phone call from Jamie. He was from the Conservatives he said, but didn’t get much further because I told him I would rather plunge my head into boiling hot acid than vote for his party, before slamming the receiver down. And I’m not a raging left-wing activist either. I admit I’ve voted Conservative most of my life.
They have torn their own party to pieces and, over the last seven years, they’ve done the same to the country, all because of Brexit. It’s not even as though it’s even a moderately successful policy. More and more voters have come to the conclusion it was a mistake to leave. The latest YouGov polling shows a record high for the people who would now vote to remain in the EU if the 2016 referendum was rerun.
YouGov this month found 55% would now vote to remain compared to 31% who would vote to leave. When don't knows and would not votes are removed (14% in total) the figures are 63% to 37%. This is a massive turnaround from the 48-52 result seven years ago.
No political party can survive its main ideology and flagship policy offering being seen as a mistake by a substantial majority of the electorate in a modern democracy. How could it ever be otherwise? The Conservatives would do well to think about it if they ever want to return to power.
By elections are never easy for the governing party but in all three taking place today they are in deep trouble. In Selby, Adams quit because he didn’t get his peerage, while in Frome the MP David Warburton resigned after being accused of drug taking and sexual misconduct (he denies all the charges). Both seats have circa 20k majorities but look vulnerable to Labour and the LibDems respectively. Uxbridge, Johnson’s old seat, is the worst. Johnson stepped down after becoming the first and only former prime minister to have ever been found guilty of misleading parliament, by parliament. That has a majority of less than 8k and is a foregone conclusion.
I see reports of gloomy Tory MPs being quoted as believing they will lose all three by-elections because of "long Boris." You never know of course, if they’re rolling the pitch and forecasting a terrible outcome so they can claim victory when it turns out to be merely awful. However, I think they’re genuine this time. Things are that bad and the party is in for such a hammering today that it will go down in history as the day that marks the beginning of the end of the ‘natural party of government’ as they like to think of themselves.
To attribute it all to Boris is to misread the mood of the country. Johnson was part of the problem but by no means all. Brexit is the rotten core.
Anyway, off we will trot later down to the Methodist church in our village and vote Labour. I know there are better candidates for The Greens and LibDems but they have no chance of winning here today, unfortunately. We have a duty to pass judgement on behalf of all the other constituencies where there isn't a by-election. A message needs sending that we that we have simply had enough.
John Grogan, Selby's last and only Labour MP has an article in Yorkshire Bylines where he looks back at the history of this constituency, which remained Tory even in the 1945 general election when Attlee swept the board. It has essentially always been a very safe Tory seat apart from 1997-2010 so its loss will send a shock wave through Central Office.
Nigel Adams had a majority of 20,137 in 2019. When Grogan won in 1997 the Tory MP Michael Allison had a 9,500 majority, less than half of Adams. There was a swing of 11% to Labour and Grogan took the seat by 3,800 votes. If Kier Mather wins today - and polls suggest he will - the swing will need to be off the scale.
It will trigger a political earthquake for the Conservatives. Hardly any seat in the country would be considered safe for them next year.
Let's do it.
