Today's newspapers are full of stories that Andrew Mitchell is to be compensated for being traduced over plebgate (or "gategate", as I prefer to think of it) by being appointed as Britain's next European commissioner.
Our current commissioner, you will instantly recall, is Baroness Ashton. By my calculations, her term of office ends in December 2014. As the next general election will probably not take place until May 2015, that implies there will be a by-election in Mitchell's Sutton Coldfield constituency.
Sutton Coldfield, which contains some of Birmingham's most select suburbs, has always been a safe Tory seat. At one time it was a Liberal second place and there were a fair number of Liberal councillors too.
All that was lost, however, when the 'Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield' was amalgamated into Birmingham in 1974 - something that still rankled when I lived there in the early 1980s - and in recent elections it has been Labour that has come second.
The short answer to the question "Will there be a Sutton Coldfield by-election?" is "No", and the long answer "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo"
ReplyDeleteCreating a by-election in a "historically Conservative verses UKIP conservative" constituency six months before a tight general election would be a complete howler beyond anything Cameron's done so far.
I suspect - but don't like - the next comissioner will have to be a Peer.