The Newport West By-Election

Have the good electors of Newport West sent British politics a message? This is what personages with far more esteem than I have scratched their heads about over the last couple of days. And the unsatisfying answer is ... it doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. The result, which saw Labour's Ruth Jones retain the seat on a reduced turn out was always the certain outcome. But that hasn't stopped some, such as Sir John Curtice - patron saint of pollsters, from stirring the tea leaves and suggesting the polarisation seen since the 2017 election is coming to an end. Is he right?

There are a few things worth noting. By-elections, like European elections, local council elections, and Welsh Assembly elections are second order elections. In other words, contests that don't matter much for the bulk of people because general elections matter more. And they have a point. The writ of central government can run roughshod over every other representative body. Wales might be run by Labour and Scotland by the SNP, but their powers are limited and can be overruled by government. The rows during the Conservative/Liberal Democrat years over funding, and more recently the arguments between Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May over Brexit are cases in point.

Because these elections are perceived not to matter as much, they can be useful barometers for localised or passing issues. By-elections tend to be "flatter" than general elections. i.e. The support for the main parties falls as voters, perceiving now would be a good time to make a protest and register their dissatisfaction, are more likely to vote for third, fourth, or fifth etc. parties. For example, this tends to be the case in local council by-elections as well as parliamentary by-elections. As John Curtice observed on yesterday's Politics Live, the combined vote for the two main parties was 71% - well down on the 82% of the 2017 general election. Lewisham East last year saw the Tory/Labour combined vote at 64%. Stoke Central in 2017, 61%. But Copeland, held on the same day as Stoke's saw a combination of 81%. In other words, very little can be read off from how flat an election is. A further point worth adding is turn out from Labour loyal voters tends to be depressed in second order elections more so than Conservative voters, and those motivated by smaller parties. Why? Older people are more likely to vote, as study after study has shown, they tend to be concerned more about and follow the local issues that come into play for localised elections, and they are disproportionately Tory voters. Therefore nearly every by-election confers an advantage on the Conservative campaign that Labour has to make up for.

It's therefore premature to speculate as to whether Newport West is heralding the end of polarisation when the dynamics of the election were different to a general election. Remember, Labour's own local election results were pretty poor in 2017 - one month before the party served up the biggest electoral upset since 1945. What matters is the politics of a general election, and the next one - like the last one - will be a pretty stark choice between two parties with very different programmes of government. That was not as clear in 2015, and was even less so in 2010 and 2005. The dynamics of polarisation have not gone away.

Given the spread of votes away from Labour and the Tories in Newport West, can we glean anything? As John Curtice observed pro-referendum parties managed a combined 17% of the vote. And right there is your problem, combined. This is arrived at by totting up Plaid Cymru, the Greens and Liberal Democrats - each of which has a base independent of its EU positioning. One of the pretenders to the centre party crown, 'Renew', managed 3.7 per cent. Not bad for a first outing of a new party, but not great considering the salience of the issue it champions. However, division like this between the pro-referendum camp is not going to translate into success in the tougher battle of a general election and is super vulnerable to Labour. As we know, a confirmatory referendum is a position Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer are negotiating in talks with the Prime Minister.

Bad news for UKIP too and anyone deluded enough to think no deal = electoral success for the Tories. With wall-to-wall coverage of Brexit, with the right wing press screaming blue murder (and getting close to advocating it), UKIP managed eight-and-a-half per cent. Meanwhile the rebranded, reincarnated and pro-Brexit SDP managed less than one per cent, as did pro-Brexit fash candidates for For Britain and the Democrats and Veterans. Not quite the ground swell of angry leave voters we were expecting, especially in a seat that voted leave in the referendum. How to explain? UKIP certainly isn't what it used to be and is now virtually a legacy party drawing oxygen from the folk memory of Nigel Farage. Now he's interested in his new party for the lead up to the putative European elections, the days are numbered for the kippers. Though it will be interesting to see how the Brexit Party does as many UKIP voters won't be aware of his departure. Seeing the two cancel each other out while taking votes from the Tories will sure be fun.

In sum, the by-election shows Labour and the Tories are still the main choice and the political situation outside of them is chaotic and fractious. What else is new?