Chris Leslie joins the bailiffs

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Sitting on the front bench, Tony Blair surveyed the massed ranks of his parliamentary intake and then lent over to Gordon Brown.

"It’s weird,” he said "but there’s a guy back there who’s the splitting image of the boy who does your photocopying." 

"That is him,” Brown replied. “He’s your new MP for Shipley."

That boy was Chris Leslie. So good was his photocopying that he was parachuted into the safe seat of Nottingham East after he lost Shipley and eventually became Ed Miliband's shadow chancellor.

Then he left Labour to join The Independent Group and scorned any thought of an electoral pact with the Greens or Liberal Democrats:

He said a tie-up with other pro-EU parties "wasn't ever on the agenda", adding: "I don't think it will ever be likely because we are starting something new. We are not joining the Liberal Democrats or the Green Party."

Instead, Mr Leslie urged Lib Dem members to switch allegiance and join Change UK, saying the "emergency situation" of Brexit required "a completely fresh overhaul of the centre-ground".

As it turned out, neither Leslie nor his new party, with its ever-changing name, proved attractive to Nottingham East's voters. In last year's general election he finished fourth with 3.6 per cent of the vote.

Now he has emerged as the new chief executive of the trade body for the debt collection industry, the Credit Services Association.

Brynley Heaven, who once wrote a guest post for Liberal England, comments on Twitter:

for a brief period, Chris Leslie was always in the media invited into studios to explain how cuts were unavoidable, Keynes was impossible and misery was the right medicine for the precarious and the poor. Now he has an exciting & poetic opportunity to see some of ideas bear fruit

— Brynley Heaven (@BrynleyHeaven) July 19, 2020

Looking back at Change UK a year on

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As Tim Adams reminds us in the Observe, a year ago Britain boasted a new centre party.

It kept changing its name, but it will probably go down in history as Change UK - if history bothers to remember it at all.

The group was launched in February 2019, when seven MPs left the Labour Party and I wrote:

It is hard to see much hope in the statement of values their Independent Group has published. It is hard to imagine anyone reading it and thinking: "At last someone has put into words what I have been feeling all these years." 

Rather than the launch of a new movement, I see seven individuals who have succumbed to the hard left's perennial tactic of making life so unpleasant for those who oppose them that they eventually walk away from the fight.

The Tories who joined shortly afterwards seemed to be having more fun, but I think I was right.

Perhaps because they had made their careers in the Labour Party, which had plenty of safe seats, the seven did not appear to have the stomach for a fight.

If you doubt me, read Gavin Shuker's explanation of why the new party declined to join others in endorsing a single Remain candidate in the June 2019 Peterborough by-election:

"We all agreed to stand down any candidates we might field in favour of a genuinely independent, pro-People’s Vote and pro-Remain candidate who had expressed an interest and intention to stand. 

"However, senior Labour figures, including senior figures campaigning for a People’s Vote, made it clear that they would strenuously disrupt the campaign and obstruct an independent Candidate, driven by fears that it would harm their party in Peterborough." 

But there was one thing the new party could have done to make an impact.

Its statement of values, as far as I can recall (the link in my original post no longer works), assumed that Brexit was bound to take place and made vague statements about what the world should look like afterwards.

But what Change UK should have done was call itself Remain or The Remain Party.

That would have given them a clear identity and quite possibly put them ahead of the Liberal Democrats in the opinion polls.

I don't think it would have brought them any seats in the December 2019 general election, but it would have caused us huge problems.

The moral is that a new centre party needs a clear appeal to the voters and to offer something the Lib Dems don't. Change UK failed to do either.

On becoming exasperated with Heidi Allen

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So the Tiggers have changed their name again - they are now The Independents - and will be less of a party in future.

But there was another, less amusing, development involving Heidi Allen yesterday. She also announced the launch of Unite to Remain.

According to The New European:

The independent MP for South Cambridgeshire, who will lead the initiative, said the group will follow the blueprint of what is happening in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, where both Plaid Cymru and the Greens have agreed to stand aside in order to support the Liberal Democrat candidate, who is seen as having the best chance of defeating the Conservatives and bringing a seat to the Remain cause.

But the parties listed here are getting on very well with no help from Heidi Allen.

And when the Tiggers did involve themselves involved in a by-election - in Peterborough - it all turned shambolic.

Who can forget Gavin Shuker's explanation of why there was not a single Remain candidate?

He said:

"We all agreed to stand down any candidates we might field in favour of a genuinely independent, pro-'people's vote' and pro-remain candidate who had expressed an interest and intention to stand. 

"However, senior Labour figures, including senior figures campaigning for a people’s vote, made it clear they would strenuously disrupt the campaign and obstruct an independent candidate, driven by fears that it would harm their party in Peterborough."

If there is a vacancy for a group like Unite to Remain it is for one that can bring in the SNP and parts of the Labour Party. And for that task you do not want a recent Conservative MP.

Even then there are problems. The Scottish Liberal Democrats have clearly concluded that there way back to significance is to unite the Unionist vote in the seats we held until 2015. Working with the SNP will not be easy for them.

I agree with Nick Tyrone: the Tiggers should accept the way the tide is running and join the Lib Dems.

Heidi Allen should be aware that if she continues down her present path, she may well find South Cambridgeshire Lib Dems putting up against her at the next general election out of sheer exasperation.

The Tiggers change their name again: Welcome to The Independent Group for Change

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First it was The Independent Group. Then it was Change UK. Then it was Change UK - The Independent Group. Then it was ForChange_Now.

Today it became The Independent Group for Change.

The Tiggers, as I shall always think of them, have been forced into this latest change of name following complaints from the owners of the Change.org petition site.

They had hoped to register with the Electoral Commission as Change UK, but the Shropshire Star (who else?) explains that a statement from them sets out how:

Lawyers from Change.org disputed the group’s right to register as "Change UK" with the Electoral Commission ahead of the European elections. 

They explained how “under threat of legal action” by Change.org, which could have seen “each MP being sued personally” and with no time left to register a new party name, Change UK “felt we had no option but to sign a legal agreement” to ditch the name following the election. 

They added: “We are now legally obliged to make a formal application to the Electoral Commission, to amend our name by 15th June, so today we are applying to register ourselves as ‘The Independent Group for Change’ and will await the Electoral Commission’s decision.

This 'new party' business is harder than it looks.

Change UK spent £1300 on Facebook ads saying it was campaigning to remain in the UK

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There are welcome signs that the experience of the European election has unbounced the Tiggers.

Change UK are now making noises about the importance of cooperation, and I look forward to working with them and, I suspect, eventually absorbing them. We shall acquire some good and interesting people in the process.

But while we can still laugh at them, let me repeat this story from the Guardian:

Change UK has run a last-minute Facebook advertising campaign to try to shore up its support amid dismal poll ratings for the European elections, but most other parties have mostly avoided large spending on online campaigning. 

The upstart pro-EU political party, formerly known as the Independent Group, spent £87,000 on Facebook adverts in the seven days up to Wednesday, becoming the biggest single political advertiser on the social networking site, following predictions it could fail to elect a single MEP and faced with the potential resignation of the party’s interim leader, Heidi Allen. 

Not all Change UK’s adverts have hit the spot. In one example highlighted by iNews, the party spent at least £1,300 promoting Facebook adverts saying it was campaigning to “remain in the UK”.

Six of the Best 866

"Time and again, right from the beginning, they have made such basic errors in their thinking, their planning and their execution that if they’re to be remembered by history at all, it will be as an object lesson in how not to launch a political party." David Herdson is damning on the many failures of Change UK.

Mark Paine is one person who was originally attracted by Change UK but soon decided to come home to the Liberal Democrats.

"Children, vulnerable people and general members of the public can suffer long-term effects from participation in these kinds of reality show, and broadcasts can have serious unintended consequences not only for them but also for family, friends and work colleagues too." The psychologist John Oates on the dangers of reality television and the responsibilities of production companies.

Barbara Rich makes the case for keeping Mr Justice Byrne's annotated copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover in Britain. The annotations were made by his wife, Lady Dorothy, who sat beside him throughout the trial.

Simon Matthews has been to see Red Joan

A City relic is traced in deepest Hampshire by A London Inheritance.

So Tiggers can change their stripes - at least in Scotland

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David Macdonald, an entrepreneur and independent councillor in East Renfrewshire, was at the top of Change UK's list for Scotland in next week's European elections.

Today, standing alongside the Scottish Liberal Democrats' leader Willie Rennie, he urged Scots to vote Lib Dem instead to avoid splitting the Remain vote.

Change UK,or The Tiggers as I shall always think of them, have already lost their top candidate for Scotland once after someone looked at the tweets Joseph Russo had been sending.

It all adds to the impression that this new party is proving a flop. But I did enjoy Chuka Umunna's headmasterly disapproval of someone changing parties:

“He has let down his fellow candidates and activists."

The Tiggers' week from hell arrives in Peterborough

Whatever did for the idea of a single Remain candidate in the Peterborough by-election - Patrick Maguire of the New Statesman thinks he knows - we can agree that this statement from the Tiggers' Gavin Shuker is remarkable:

"Change UK, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats and Renew have been working hard these last few days on a joint approach to the Peterborough by-election, recognising that we need to put the country’s interests first, securing a People’s Vote and remaining in the European Union. 

"We all agreed to stand down any candidates we might field in favour of a genuinely independent, pro-People’s Vote and pro-Remain candidate who had expressed an interest and intention to stand. 

"However, senior Labour figures, including senior figures campaigning for a People’s Vote, made it clear that they would strenuously disrupt the campaign and obstruct an independent Candidate, driven by fears that it would harm their party in Peterborough." 

Did the Tiggers really think the Labour Party would accede to the loss of one of its seats without a battle?

At least the Liberal Democrats and Greens got their nomination papers in after the breakdown of negotiations and will each have a candidate in the by-election. The Tiggers will not.

Perhaps they were afraid that would upset Labour too?

The Tiggers have lost control of their own Twitter account

My thesis that the smoothness of The Independent Group's political careers up till now has given them an exaggerated sense of their own competence received further backing today.

Alex Wickham broke the story on Twitter this afternoon, and the Spectator's Steerpike has it all in one place:

Following the political party’s decision to change its name from the Independent Group to Change UK, it decided to update its Twitter handle today: from @TheIndGroup to the rather strange @ForChange_Now. Unfortunately, it seems the breakaway MPs didn’t realise that someone might take over their old account handle once it had been vacated. 

And, in a matter of minutes, the @TheIndGroup account was hijacked by an individual campaigning for a hard Brexit. .... 

Even more unfortunately, anyone Googling the Independent Group to find out more about the newly formed party, will instead by directed to the hard Brexit account. And the party managed to lose its Twitter ‘blue tick’ which verifies that a user is genuine.

And here's Sparks:

The Tiggers - Change UK - are not that into change

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The SDP spent its early days talking about "breaking the mould". In retrospect, though, it looks more like a last attempt to preserve the mould of postwar politics.

There is nothing discreditable in that: we all feel at home with the assumptions we grew up with and in many ways the postwar settlement was preferable to what replaced it.

But it does remind us that the way people present themselves may not be the way an objective observer sees them.

So I wonder if the Tiggers, in half-rebranding themselves as Change UK, are really about change.

We still have little idea of what they want to change, while it is clear that its MPs are desperate to avoid change. They want to stay at Westminster and retain their importance.

There is nothing wrong with that either, and the way that both their parties have changed in recent years is very much for the worse.

But the way the Tiggers look likely to get in the way of the Greens and Liberal Democrat resurgence at the Euro elections does remind us that change isn't really what they are about.

It's hard to see the Tigger MPs embracing the Extinction Rebellion protests, for instance, and equally hard to know what it is they want to change other than having themselves back at the centre of things.

Deep down, what they really want is for the past few years not to have happened and for everything to be what it was half a dozen years ago.

Sadly, that is not possible.

In which the Tiggers unbounce themselves

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"In fact," said Rabbit, coming to the end of it at last, "Tigger's getting so Bouncy nowadays that it's time we taught him a lesson. Don't you think so, Piglet?" 

Piglet said that Tigger was very Bouncy, and that if they could think of a way of unbouncing him, it would be a Very Good Idea. "Just what I feel," said Rabbit.

It was expected that the Independent Group would be very pleased with itself. You must get quite an adrenaline rush from launching a new party.

But it soon began to grate and I wondered would could be done to unbounce them..

Here's Rabbit's solution:

"Well, I've got an idea," said Rabbit, "and here it is. We take Tigger for a long explore, somewhere where he's never been, and we lose him there, and next morning we find him again, and-mark my words-he'll be a different Tigger altogether." 

"Why?" said Pooh. 

"Because he'll be a Humble Tigger. Because he'll be a Sad Tigger, a Melancholy Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an Oh-Rabbit-I-am-glad-to-see-you Tigger. That's why."

If you had a well-spent childhood you will know that Rabbit's plan did not work quite as he hoped.

So it is just as well that the Tiggers have spent the week unbouncing themselves.

When the Independent Group was launched I wrote:

I have no idea what will happen next, but I have a feeling it will be more fun than the last few years have been,

But it has been getting less fun ever since. 

There has been their refusal to contemplate any sort of alliance for the European parliament. If you read my blog post about their launch you will see that has not surprised me, but it has certainly put off a lot of people and diminished any sense that the Tigger MPs are not like other politicians.

There has been the problems with their candidate selection for those elections. Did they not foresee there might be problems over social media activity and do some vetting?

Then there has been the policy vacuum beyond a notable vapid initial statement and a notably silly pamphlet from Chuka Umunna. Does he really think bringing back national service is the way to win over the young voters the new party must attact?

And now there is the party's acting leader Heidi Allen announcing she has sympathy for the view that a the option of no deal should be offered in any referendum because to some people it represents a "clean Brexit".

The overwhelming impression the Tiggers give is one of amateurism. Everything had been done in a hurry and nothing has been done very well. 

But then I suppose if you are parachuted into a safe seat, as so many Tigger MPs were, you are likely to acquire an exaggerated sense of your own skill as a politician.

By contrast, Liberal Democrat MP have to work hard - ridiculously hard - and be good politicians to get elected to the Commons.

The feeling that the Indpendent Group may be a bubble with a short life is growing stronger by the day.

Good media coverage for Lib Dem Euro campaign launch

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If the Liberal Democrat press people could have dictated the start of an article about today's launch it would have read something like this:

The Liberal Democrats launched their European election campaign on Friday in east London with a simple message, Stop Brexit, but expressed disappointment that there was not a single pro-Europe grouping. 

The "unapologetically pro-European party" slate of 70 candidates includes local councillors, a chartered engineer, a former journalist, and those who are new to politics. 

The party leader, Vince Cable, said it was a pity that Change UK, which launched its European election campaign last week as the anti-Brexit party, had ignored the Lib Dems’ offer to stand on a united slate. "We should be standing together," he said. “The millions of people who want to remain would expect us to stand together. 

"The Liberal Democrats made it clear we were happy to work with others but it wasn’t reciprocated." He said the Lib Dems were the more established party and expected to benefit from anti-Brexit sentiment.

That is from the Guardian and BBC News took a similar line. Stephen Bush in the New Statesman was notably enthusiastic too.

Somewhere behind this good coverage, I suspect, is a sense of disappointment with the Tiggers, Change UK or whatever they are currently calling themselves. They have badly overplayed a weak hand and lost sympathy as a result.

In particular, the professionalism of today Lib Dem Euro campaign launch is a telling contrast with the Tiggers' efforts to date.

The Greens are fighting fewer wards than four year ago

There is an interesting point in a post by Mark Pack on the number of wards the Liberal Democrats are fighting in next month's local elections.

It is that the Greens are fighting fewer wards than they did four years ago. In 2015 they put up candidates in 38 per cent of wards being contested. This time round the figure is 30 per cent.

I report this not to gloat - I feel warmer to the Greens than I do to the Tiggers, Change UK or whatever they call themselves - but to suggest it is another reason why a unified Remain list did not appear in the European elections.

There are few parliamentary seats where the Greens are in with any chance of a gain, and if they are slipping back in local government then, in England, that leaves only the European elections.

It may well be that those elections suit the Greens best. Their broad approach is appealing to many and it is not exposed to the detailed criticism that can lessen that appeal. To give one example, how does their opposition to austerity square with their belief that we consume too much?

So just as the Tiggers have do do well in the Europeans elections to gain any sense of momentum, those elections offer the Greens' their best chance of electoral advance or good publicity.

Perhaps it is the Liberal Democrats who have led calls for a joint Remain list for the European elections because they do not represent such an opportunity for us.

While some gains in them would be good, what we really want are good local election results next month with some promising parliamentary by-elections to follow.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Lucretia Berger and Anna Soubrette

I am afraid the old brute is not at all impressed by Britain's newest political party, I would not advise them to put up in the Bonkers Hall ward just yet.

Friday

Last time I called in at the Lib Dem Whip’s office at the Commons, I found several of our MPs dressed in rucksacks and hiking boots. When I asked what they were up to, I was told they were off to deliver leaflets for something called ‘The Independent Group’.

So I made it my business to look into it. I discovered from someone in the Lobby that this group’s members include Lucretia Berger and Anna Soubrette. “Do you know Mike Gapes?” asked the journalist. “Yes,” I replied, “I am afraid he does.”

I was told, however, that the shaker and mover behind the group is one Chucky Umami, so I curled up with a pamphlet he has just published. It soon transpired that he is one of these hearty public school types who want to send the nation’s youth off to camp. Sleeping under canvass; washing up in a bucket of cold water; doing PT with your shirt off… You know the type.

By the time I had finished reading, it I was clear that the man is worse than that. He wants to haul in the country every teenager off to the Jack Straw Memorial Reform School, Dungeness. Why in Gladstone’s name are our people delivering for him?

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week....

• Suspended by the bigwigs
• Mike and Bernie Sanders
• Remembering my horse trials
• What are you doing with yourself these days?

Why there should be a single Remain list for the Euro elections - and why it won't happen

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When Labour was obliged to introduce proportional representation for elections to the European parliament, Jack Straw chose the most unattractive system he could find. He did not want the idea catching on and fuelling demands for PR in Westminster elections.

He chose the D’Hondt method because it denies voters the ability to choose between different candidates from the same party and, crucially for the argument of this post, does not allow votes to be transferred between parties.

A tweet from Nick Reeves explains the implications of this for the Liberal Democrats:

D'Hondt is roughly proportional, but in a 6 seat constituency if a party gets 20% it should get an MEP elected, if its gets 10% it almost certainly won't. Now imagine three Remain parties all getting around 8-12%

— Nick Reeves #FinalSayForAll #FBPE (@nickreeves9876) April 13, 2019

I am a Tigger sceptic, but if we want to maximise the number of pro-EU MEPs elected then we need to have a joint list with the Independent G and to bring in the Greens in too.

Parties can’t deliver their voters en bloc – and I can imagine some Greens declining to vote for a list that features Tiggers who used to be Conservatives – but I expect such a list would largely unite Remain voters.

But it’s not going to happen.

There Euro elections represent the Tiggers one chance of establishing themselves as a national force and being treated as such by the media.

In their ideal world, remember, they would not form a pact with the Liberal Democrats but replace us.

I don’t expect the Tiggers to do particualarly well in the Euro elections, but they certainly have to give them a go.

Sadly, I do expect them to do well enough to make it harder for Lib Dem and Green candidates to get elected.

My first acquaintance with Social Democrats

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As I warned might be the case, The Independent Group is looking to replace the Liberal Democrats rather than do a deal with us.

Which means there may not be much of a market for memories of the early days of the Alliance.

Still, here are my recollections of the first time I met the SDP.

The first parliamentary by-election I worked in was Birmingham Northfield in October 1982. Until a few months before I had been working in the city, but by then I was back in Market Harborough between jobs so I had time on my hands

I travelled to Birmingham and ended up at the house of Roy Lewthwaite, who had been the Liberal candidate for the seat in 1979, somewhere out near Bromsgrove.

The job to be done was stuffing personalised letters into envelopes and a party agent kept us going for hours with tales of rough politics in Dorset.

When I say "us", I mean a roomful of Liberals. Next door there was a room of Social Democrats.

It happened that the letters did not fit the envelopes very well. I think one was an International size and the other an Imperial.

Someone, I fear it may have been me, made the joke about having Liberal letters and Social Democrat envelopes. At which someone came in to ask us not to make jokes like that because “it might upset the Social Democrats”..

There was a young SDP member who was friendly, When one of the Liberals said he came from Southampton, the young Social Democrat asked if he knew Bob Mitchell. Mitchell had been elected as Labour MP for Southampton Itchen and then joined the SDP.

"Yes," came the reply, "I fought him at the last election."

A little research shows that the Liberal in question was John Pindar, who is still around in the Liberal Democrats today.

David Boyle: The Lib Dems should act decisively and join The Independent Group now

My old friend David Boyle has stirred things up with an article on the Guardian website this morning:

So this is what I believe Vince Cable should do. As soon as possible, the Lib Dems should join the Independent Group in parliament. I suggest this partly for the good of the independents. 

Joining the 11 Lib Dems (plus Stephen Lloyd, who resigned the whip recently, but who would surely then follow suit) would double their size and give them momentum. The new group would then be almost two-thirds of the way to becoming the third largest party (currently the SNP with 35 seats), and closer to the public funding attached for policymaking. 

I am not suggesting that there should cease to be a Lib Dem group. I see no reason why they should not be a party in their own right, as the Co-operative party manages to be within Labour.

Debate has been raging in the comments on a post on Liberal Democrat Voice ever since.

Last time I met David we reminisced about the sense of being a moral crusade that the Lib Dems had in the 1990s under Paddy Ashdown.

But I suspect that, like me, he fell in love with the Liberal Party and has always seen the Lib Dems as a something of a flag of convenience.

Certainly, for myself, I am surprised whenever someone replies to one of my regular complaints that the Lib Dems have no philosophy by quoting the preamble to our constitution as though it is a knockdown argument.

To me that preamble has always read like what it was: something put together in a hurry in an attempt to please two very different parties that were merging. How you apply it to an issue to find the principled Lib Dem view, I have no idea.

But wouldn't the distinctiveness of the Lib Dems be lost if we threw in out lot with The Independent Group?

David's reply to that is:

The truth is – though it breaks my heart to say so – the Lib Dems these days have no obvious distinctiveness to lose, and must face up to that.

If that sounds harsh, I find I wrote something similar the other day:

Commentators used to accuse the Liberal Party of living off the intellectual capital of the Grimond years. Sometimes I wonder if the Lib Dems have any intellectual capital at all.

But I won't be supporting David's call. In part because I am not sure the TIGgers will last: in part because I am not sure they will allow us to join. But mostly because I am far from convinced that they offer much of a way forward.

As I wrote in the same post:

Just for starters, we need to rebuild local democracy and our public services, reform our democracy and put the environment at the heart of our politics. 

Is this really the group do it?

You could, or course, ask the same thing of the Lib Dems.

It may be that the Lib Dems' position is so precarious that we will be forced into seeking such an arrangement if the TIGgers remain on the scene for a few years,

But there is a deal of ruin in a political party and the Lib Dems are not finished quite yet.

Lib Dems fear a slump in donations

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Just to cheer you up, here is a report from Business Insider:

The Liberal Democrats are worried about a potential exodus of financial backers, after a number of donors withdrew their support to get behind the new anti-Brexit Independent Group of MPs. ... 

Following their departure, Charlie Mullins, the anti-Brexit owner of Pimlico Plumbers, confirmed that he intends to support TIG after previously donating £25,000 to the Sir Vince Cable-led Liberal Democrats in 2018. 

Multiple sources have told Business Insider that other major donors are either holding back funds from the Lib Dems, or have already walked away from the party to pump money into TIG.

There is a crumb of comfort lower down the page in the shape of the inevitable "Lib Dem insider", who claims that the party has enjoyed "a mini-surge in new members over the last week".

But the report's claim that

The Lib Dems have also been buoyed by the lack of their own MPs walking out and joining TIG.

is setting the bar a little low.

Lib Dems shouldn't assume The Independent Group wants a deal

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The important news for Liberal Democrats comes right at the end of Dan Sabbagh's Guardian article on The Independent Group:

Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said her party needed “to be working together with the Independent Group MPs but we need to find a 2019 way of doing that and I’m open-minded about how that looks”. 

But despite Lib Dem enthusiasm, TIG MPs said they wanted Lib Dem MPs to quit their party and join them. They argued that the Lib Dem brand has been tarnished by the period when the party under Nick Clegg went into coalition government with David Cameron’s Conservatives.

It seems that the second of my Five Thoughts was right. We should not assume the TIGgers are as keen on a deal with us as we are on a deal with them.

Two contrasting by-election performances by the Liberal Democrats

Oundle

There were two local by-elections yesterday and they saw contrasting performances by the Liberal Democrat candidate.

In a Northamptonshire County Council contest in Oundle we moved from third to second place in what had previously been a safe Tory ward, increasing our vote from 10 to 35 per cent of the poll.

Oundle (Northamptonshire) result:

CON: 51.3% (-14.1)
LDEM: 35.1% (+24.6)
LAB: 11.1% (-12.9)
UKIP: 2.5% (+2.5)

Conservative HOLD.

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) February 22, 2019

We may have been helped by a story that broke in the Northamptonshire Telegraph in the week of the poll:

A district councillor who missed two thirds of meetings last year is standing for this Thursday’s Northamptonshire County Council by-election for Oundle. 

Conservative Annabel de Capell Brooke wants to be elected to the county to represent the Oundle ward despite only attending nine of the 24 meetings she should have gone to at East Northamptonshire Council in 2018.

The name de Capell Brooke will be familiar to anyone who has studied political history in this part of the world. They owned Brooke House in Market Harborough in the 19th century.

There seems to be a tendency among local Tories to fall back on their great families when they are short of candidates.

At the height of the Lib Dem ascendancy here in Market Harborough they put up two Hazleriggs from distant Noseley Hall.

Their ancestor Sir Arthur Haselrig was one of the five members whose arrest Charles I sought and would have taken the radical side in the contest.

The most significant story from Oundle may be the fall in the Labour vote.

Oundle, with its public school and fine stone buildings, does not feel like the kind of town that is ever going to elect a Labour councillor. But it does lie within the Corby constituency, which is a key Tory-Labour marginal.

At the last election the Tory majority was only 2690 and it is just the sort of seat they need to win to gain a majority next time round. Instead they are going backwards.

The second by-election was in Cardiff and saw the Lib Dem vote dropped to only 2.4 per cent.

Ely (Cardiff) result:

PC: 43.1% (+17.8)
LAB: 40.4% (-7.1)
CON: 14.1% (-2.4)
LDEM: 2.4% (-6.2)

Plaid Cymru GAIN from Labour.

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) February 21, 2019

The Ely ward has never been an area of strength for us, and the top Lib Dem candidate last year outpolled the other two by some way, so we may have lost a personal vote here.

Still, it was a poor result and reinforces the point I made yesterday in my Thought 2. 

We should not assume that The Independent Group will rush to do a deal with us that encompasses every seat in the council. They have little to fear from us in most of them.