Quarter One By-Election Results 2022

This quarter 81,526 votes were cast over 53 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. For comparison you can view Quarter Four 2021's results here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/-  Q4  21	+/- Q1 2021	Average	+/- Seats
Conservative	53	29,459	36.1%	+4.7	+11.1	556	-1
Labour	44	16,739	20.5%	-6.4	+0.6	380	+2
LibDem	40	22,317	27.3%	+7.9	+22.0	558	+5
Green	30	5,094	6.2%	-2.6	+0.1	213	+2
SNP*	1	1,217	1.5%	-1.1	-31.6	1,217	0
PC**	0						0
Ind***	19	5,834	7.2%	-0.8	-0.5	307	-6
Other****	12	866	1.1%	-1.2	+0.7	72	-2

* There was one by-election in Scotland
** There were no by-elections in Wales
*** There were two independent clashes
**** Others this month consisted of the Christian People's Alliance (35, 27), For Britain (45), Freedom Alliance (28), Reform UK (64), SDP (12), TUSC (70, 22, 69), UKIP (85), Yorkshire Party (53, 356)

After their car crash in last quarter's elections results, three months' worth of elections on the Tories have stabilised quickly with the net loss of a single councillor and the largest popular vote as well. Boris Johnson really does have luck on his side, though we'll see if the cost of living crisis will start draining enthusiasm from his local authority support. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats rode high with a good number of gains and a very strong showing. Labour limped in as a poor third, but again this has probably more to do with unfriendly seats being up and not standing enough candidates than indifference to Keir Starmer. Though that can't be entirely discounted. Still, coming out two quarters on the trot with the net councillors in the plus column isn't too bad. But a feat easily bettered by the Greens, despite polling a lot less. Their local representative tally has climbed every quarter since Quarter 2. Not shabby.

This far out it's difficult, if not a fools game, to use by-elections as a predictor for this May's local elections. Especially as this quarter has seen significant divergences between the national polls and actual ballots cast. Caveats aside, none of this will stop us scrying April's results for clues about what's in the offing.

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New Left Media April 2022

It's the first Sunday of the new month. Time then to cast an eye over new(ish) left media projects that have been launched.

1. Heather Mendick (Twitter) (YouTube Channel)

2. Peace & Justice Podcast (YouTube Channel) (Twitter) (Facebook)

3. Progressive Readers (Blog)

4. Why We Are Socialists (Twitter) (Crowd sourced book)

If you know of any new(ish) blogs, podcasts, channels, Facebook pages or whatever that haven't featured before then drop me a line via the comments, email, Facebook, or Twitter. Please note I'm looking for new media that has started within the last 12 months. The round up appears hereabouts when there are enough new entrants to justify a post!

Talk About a Revolution

I thought it was a bit odd. During his interview on Sky News on Thursday, Keir Starmer said he wanted to let people know Labour understands the difficulties they're facing, and he has practical plans for addressing them. He added "people don't want a revolution, they do want to know how they're going to pay their energy bill." And again in the same interview, "When I was talking to pensioners in Stevenage they weren't saying "Keir, we want a revolution", they were saying "Keir, we're really worried about our bills"". This is very strange. Literally no one is talking about revolution, neither in the authentic sense of the term nor in the trite manner Blairites used to bandy around words like "radical" and whatnot.

In the Novara video linked to above, Aaron Bastani suggests that Starmer's effort to ward off the revolutionary spectre is because, in the rarefied world of the Parliamentary Labour Party and its Westminster environs, the action necessary to fix the triple whammy of food price inflation, energy bills, and Rishi Sunak's National Insurance increase looks revolutionary. Indeed, with the cost of living likely to go up between £2k-£3k on average, the sorts of wage increases necessary to mitigate it are only usually found in the 'Where We Stand' columns of your Trot paper of choice.

I think there's a more straightforward political reason than this. First, Starmer is on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, like the Tories he doesn't want to commit Labour to offering much as a means of insulating his leadership from public pressures. Neither does he want to offer policies that have the merest connotation of Corbynism. But at the same time, to win an election Labour has to intersect with public concerns and seek to shape them. Starmer, as we have seen plenty of times these last couple of years, understands that he has to do the former but is lost at sea when it comes to the latter. Winning new voters while promising nothing during the biggest squeeze on incomes for a generation - tough gig.

Starmer's reach for the R word is a product of these tensions. Armed with latest pearls from Deborah Mattinson's focus groups, what the Labour leader is attempting to do is associate the party with the popular demand for something to be done about bills and prices, but at the same time attempting to placate the reactionary former Labour voter his circle think they can win back with Delphic language and constant apologies for existing. Starmer was seeking to assure this artefact of the Labour right's imagination that not having to choose between heating and eating isn't revolutionary politics. Seemingly unaware that those Labour has to win over are the "pensioners from Stevenage", who are among the vast bulk of people hardest hit by the Tories' refusal to do anything.

The emerging school of thought in Westminster and among the lobby hacks is that Starmer is very unlucky. Not so. Covid and the war in Ukraine have had their political opportunities where Labour could make a splash. And the cost of living crisis is another. The Tories have not only served Starmer up a juicy issue on a plate, they've taken the trouble of garnishing it with their customary indifference and inaction. Right now, there is a crisis threatening to plunge millions into further hardship. Among these are the home-owning pensioners Labour have steadily lost this century, and others ordinarily in the Tory camp. To use the jargon, it has cut through and has cross-party appeal. Any competent leader would seize the moment by the scruff of its neck to win over new voters and turn the heat up on their opponents. Instead, we have Keir Starmer who thinks the appropriate response is to plead with an imagined comfortable voter that all the little people want is a few crumbs from the table. If you want to understand why Labour is retreating in the polls and, again, Boris Johnson is seen as a more capable Prime Minister, look no further than this miserable spectacle.

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Local Council By-Elections March 2022

This month saw 25,847 votes cast over 19 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. Overall, four council seats changed hands. For comparison with February's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/-  Feb	+/- Mar 21	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	19	8,924	36.2%	-1.7	+11.2	470	-1
Labour	14	3,907	15.1%	-5.1	-4.8	279	+1
LibDem	14	10,183	39.4%	+13.7	+34.1	727	+1
Green	9	1,050	4.1%	-3.3	-2.0	117	+1
SNP*	0				-33.1		0
PC**	0				-2.6		0
Ind***	7	1,227	4.7%	-5.0	-3.0	175	-1
Other****	5	556	2.1%	+1.3	+1.7	111	-1

* There were no by-elections in Scotland
** There were no by-elections in Wales
*** There was one Independent clash
**** Others this month consists of the Christian People's Alliance (35, 27), UKIP (85), Yorkshire Party (53, 356)

These are the sorts of results that have Liberal Democrats dreaming of government. Almost 40%, little yellow hearts everywhere must be fluttering a-crazy. But in real world land, these numbers are what you get when there are shedloads of LibDem defences and Tory defences in their leafy strongholds. Not the most profitable territory for Labour. But there's a unhappy story here for Labour as well, a story of not being able to or not bothering to field enough candidates. For instance, on 10th March not a single Labour candidate stood in any by-election anywhere. This has always been a problem for Labour. Even when the party was overflowing with members, the Conservative Party always out-organised us. The Tories will invariably scrape up someone to stand, no matter how barren the territory. Labour are less fussed. And this is a problem - it makes it more difficult for Labour to build up local profiles, and effectively means writing off swathes of the country as not worth bothering with. Even though campaigns, where they don't win, can succeed in recruiting new members, sourcing new donors, and identifying where its support is. But as Keir Starmer isn't fussed with any of this, by-elections are another sign organisational decay and decrepitude is setting back in.

Thursday 3rd March
East Lindsey: Halton Holegate, Con gain from Ind
Essex: Rayleigh North, LDem hold
New Forest: Hythe West and Langdown, LDem hold
Rochford: Downhall and Rawreth, LDem hold
Sevenoaks: Brasted, Chevening and Sundridge, Con hold
South Somerset: Neroche, LDem gain from Con
Southend-on-Sea: Southchurch, Con hold
Sunderland: Redhill, Lab gain from Oth

Thursday 10th March
Herefordshire: Bromyard West, Ind hold
Hertfordshire: Hitchin South, LDem hold
North Hertfordshire: Hitchin Highbury, LDem hold
Rutland: Ryhall and Casterton, Grn gain from Con

Thursday 24th March
Horsham: Denne, LDem hold
Northumberland: Seghill with Seaton Delaval, Con hold
Test Valley: North Baddesley, LDem hold
Thanet: Nethercourt, Lab hold

Thursday 31st March
Doncaster: Wheatley Hills and Intake, Lab hold
Melton: Melton Sysonby, Con hold
Scarborough: Mayfield, Con hold

Five Most Popular Posts in March

The clocks went forward, the Tories are still in office, and Keir Starmer is to Labour what sawdust is to a petrol tank. How was your month? Here's what was hot on the blog these last 31 days.

1. A Case Study in Decrepitude
2. On Irksome Erdington
3. The Main Enemy is at Home
4. Keir Starmer's Bad Luck
5. Paul Mason Vs Anti-Humanism

"Beware the ides of March" was the sound advice proffered to Julius Caesar, but he paid no heed. Nor did Tsar Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine has not only been bloody and expensive, it seems to be going backwards in places. Good. This ties in nicely to the month's pick of the posts. My meditation on the decrepitude of Russian capital and Russian politics and how it works as a filter to help understand what's going on and why Putin made such a disastrous decision, one whose blowback might severely weaken his grip on power. Even if independent pollsters presently suggest the Russian public largely back him. The post on the fall out of Putin's war on the British far left grabbed enough attention to power it to the number three spot, with Britain's tankies and their fellow travellers disgracing themselves as straightforward Putin cheerleaders. And to think they don't even do it for money.

Coming back to domestic politics, the Erdington by-election came and went and it was a so-so result for Labour. Certainly not the thumping victory the party needed for it to declare itself well on the way to office, not a massive disaster either, despite the declarations of the more excitable corners of the internet. As is customary these days, the blog doesn't get through a month with a why-Keir-Starmer-is-useless post, and the one discussing his "bad luck" is the latest entry in the sub genre. Then it was the turn of a wee bit of theory to bring up the rear, disputing Paul Mason's oft-repeated assertion that theoretical anti-humanism, which is the default setting for nearly all materialist philosophy and social theory in 2022, is responsible for Putin apologetics. A lesson in if you want to be taken seriously, don't make a fool of yourself.

Selecting the piece for the spotlight of second chances, I've gone for The Politics of Refugee Visa Refusal. The invasion of Ukraine has elicited a great deal of sympathy with support for large numbers of refugees to settle here enjoying a comfortable majority. Yet the Tories won't waive the visa requirements, and Labour - with a literal gift horse standing in front of them - prefer to gawp at its mouth instead. What's happening? Getting to grips with the refusal of both parties to bow to public pressure is key to understanding the difficulties and tensions of politics at this point in time - this just being one example of an authoritarian consensus they share.

Next month we can expect more war and destruction, more Tory awfulness, another dollop of Labour dithering, and a few other things I can't forecast in advance. But if you enjoy what I write and have a few quid to spare, you can do far worse than sponsoring my Patreon. Or if you're skint or whatever, it doesn't matter. Just keep tuning in.