Why the Barnsley Central by-election was bad for everyone

If you read the day's blog posts, whenever a political event takes place it turns out to have been good for everyone. Let me try to prove the opposite: that the result of the Barnsley Central by-election was bad for all three parties.

Why it was bad for the Liberal Democrats

Sixth place in a Westminster by-election is not unprecedented for the Liberal Democrats. Discussing the Barnsley result on Twitter this morning, I was reminded by Ruaraidh Dobson that we finished sixth as recently as November 2009 in the Glasgow North East by-election.

Of course, sixth place in a seat where we finished second at the last general election is a different matter. But another tweet from Meral Ece put even this into perspective. She gave the votes cast in Barnsley at the 2009 Euro elections:

Labour 12594
UKIP 9544
BNP 8543
Tories 8045
Lib Dems 4434

In the light of that, and the absence of any attempt to encourage Lib Dem workers to go to Barnsley, the by-election result is not such a surprise.

The result reveals how much we are dependent upon favourable national publicity, hard work locally or both to get a decent result. This is not an encouraging conclusion for an ambitious Liberal Democrat, but it does suggest that our poor performance in Barnsley had less to do with the Coalition than many have assumed.

Add in the unpopularity of governing parties, which we used to take as a given but was perhaps forgotten as a result of Tony Blair's long honeymoon, and the result is almost as expected.

Why it was bad for Labour

This, I will admit, is a harder case to argue, but here I plead in aid Julian Astle (to whom I shall return one day soon). He wrote on his Daily Telegraph blog:

The people of Barnsley were answering two questions when they cast their ballots yesterday. First, and most obviously, whether they like or dislike the coalition government (made up of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, two parties they didn’t support in significant numbers even when in opposition). Second, whether they like or dislike what that government is currently doing (raising their taxes and cutting their benefits and services in the name of deficit reduction). Unsurprisingly, they decided they disliked both and voted accordingly.

But, as Julian argues, it is not the voters in safe Labour seats like Barnsley that decide general elections. So it is the Labour leadership who need to

look behind their 60 per cent vote share and ask whether it really tells them anything at all about how they, rather than the government, are doing, or indeed, what the people of the United Kingdom, rather than Barnsley, are thinking.

The correct conclusion is surely that it tells them very little, but the wider Labour Party may need some convincing of this.

Why it was bad for the Conservatives

A substantial section of David Cameron's party has never warmed to his leadership and remains convinced that the Tories would have won the last election with a more right-wing programme. To them, the Coalition with the Liberal Democrats is a humiliation. In their hearts they want to restore IDS or Michael Howard as leader, pull out of Europe and resume birching people.

Such Conservatives will have had their beliefs strengthened by seeing their party finish behind UKIP at Barnsley. The whispering against David Cameron will continue, and I suspect that he may be at least as vulnerable to a party revolution as Nick Clegg.

However, it is George Osborne who is likely to benefit from such a coup rather than IDS or Michael Howard.

Why it was bad for everyone

David Aaronovitch tweeted this morning:

The significance of Barnsley isn't the Libdem result (it HAS happened before) but that voters won't punish corruption, as we once expected.

Maybe, but I suspect that the electorate has come to the conclusion that the parties are all as bad as each other. Unfair, perhaps, but there it is.

Besides, as Eric Illsley has already proved, Labour can put up a donkey in Barnsley and still win.