Being busy and all lately with Prince’s Trust stuff, social worker activities, and also working on my larger blogging projects, the Chesham and Amersham by-election went totally out of my mind and only realized it was happening on the exact day that it happened. It was certainly one to watch as the constituency is located in the South of England, an area of particular interest when we are looking for another possible political realignment that is taking place – this to do with the comeback of the Liberal Democrats in what are traditional Tory seats, or as some call it, the Tory “Blue Wall”.
And boy did the Liberal Democrats pull off a massive shock win in this by-election, within an area the Tories have held since 1974, it was expected to be close and Conservatives did reckon that they should have been able to pull it off, if even narrowly. Even the Lib Dems themselves and the media are surprised by the win. But the Liberal Democrats went ahead and won with a large majority of the vote over 50%, a shockwave for this by-election. And so, it is the new dilemma being faced by the Tories now, although they are picking up in the North at the expense of Labour – and also seem to be possibly on track to win the Batley and Spen by-election next month from them – they are falling behind in their traditional areas such as most prominently the South of England, especially in so-dubbed ‘remainer areas’, although BREXIT is not the main issue for what has taken place, and not something any of the parties had a focus on.
Nonetheless it is slowly and seemingly dividing among that line, but other more prominent issues have involved the people in these constituencies feeling like they are being shunted aside as the Tories focus a lot more in their new Northern constituencies, and in particular for Chesham and Amersham the HS2 conundrum is a big sticking point as it is planned to run through their constituency, something many there are strongly opposed to, but the Conservative Party continues to support. Many in the South of England are also strongly against planned housing developments as well.
We already saw some small signs that things were heading this way in the recent local elections and now this by-election gives even more evidence to that fact. But we also need to remember that it is simply a by-election, and that Liberal Democrats did well in a few by-elections before the 2019 General Election, only to then receive a pounding. It is not good enough for them only to overperform in locals and by-elections but fall short in the Generals, they need to translate their successes to the wider national stage, something they have so far been unable to accomplish, some Tory strategists already believe they will be able to take the seat back in the next General Election, with some calling it a simple protest vote. Perhaps next time shall be different, but it is a while off for now.
Of course others will also argue that the Liberal Democrats would do far better in a system that does not use first-past-the-post and instead a system of proportional representation would be much better, and this is certainly true, things would have been quite different in 2019 if a proportional representation system would have been used instead, as then it does not matter as much if votes are not concentrated, the whole thing would be taken into account and would mean in most cases coalitions would be required to form a Government.
But for now, the reality of a new voting system is not something that is realistic to consider as while the Conservatives remain in power, and even if Labour did take power, it remains unlikely either would want to change the voting system as for them they won using the current system, why would they sabotage themselves? That is the issue, and is likely only going to be solved via another coalition government where the condition for the coalition is to reform the voting system – but again we saw how this almost did happen in the Lib-Con coalition but then failed in spectacular fashion, and the Lib Dems still have deep scars from it until this day, even vowing to not join anymore coalitions. And so that is the conundrum, the issue seems unsolvable in that view.
Many as of late have also suggested a progressive party pact for the next General Election, but this is something that would only work out realistically if Labour also put their backing into it, as 2019 showed us. So really, it’s quite the sticky-stuck situation as Labour remain determined to be a lone wolf like the Conservative Party.
But anyway. Ignoring all of those issues, this outcome is still a big achievement for the Liberal Democrats and they will be hoping to capitalise on it, as if the trend is repeated in a General Election, the Lib Dems could possibly see dozens of seat gains from the Conservatives in the South of England (as well as hopes for a comeback in the West of England), which could potentially knock the Tories off of a working majority, although even if the Conservatives performed poorly in the South/West, it is possible if they still performed well or better in the North they could hold on to a reduced majority.
The Conservatives meanwhile will be looking into what went wrong and how they got their predictions so incorrect. Labour on the other hand performed terribly in the election coming 4th behind the Green Party, but this could very well have been down to tactical voting where traditional Labour voters saw the writing on the wall and voted for the Lib Dems instead to prevent a split of the vote that would allow the Conservatives to have retained the seat, a strategy that has become a popular talking point and encouragement as of late in progressive circles, specifically on certain social medias like Twitter. Naturally though we will need more study into the by-election to see if that is what actually happened.
Now we look ahead to the next and perhaps final major electoral contest of this year in the United Kingdom, the Batley and Spen by-election. Will the Conservatives pull off another win in the ‘red wall’ or will Labour manage to hold on this time?
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