By-election woes and tactical voting in FPTP

Boris Johnson's tenure as Prime Minister took another knock last week, with the loss of two very different seats in by-elections, each with somewhat different significance. The first I will discuss, that of Wakefield, is interesting because it is one of the Conservative seats in the historic 'red wall', where Boris Johnson's Conservatives did very well on their route to a majority in 2019. The other, Tiverton and Honiton, in Devon, has been Conservative ever since it was created in 1997, and was won with a majority of 24,000 votes last time.

The loss of each of these will hurt, but the Tiverton and Honiton seat represents the largest majority ever overturned in a by-election, and will hurt the Conservatives hugely. One of the large factors in the victory of the Liberal Democrats in Devon and Labour in Wakefield was that of tactical voting, with Labour doing very poorly in Tiverton and the Liberal Democrats gaining a very low share of the vote in Wakefield. Indeed, it is clear that the disdain held for the Lib Dems by many after the coalition years has started to disappear, and that anti-Conservative voters of all parties are increasingly willing to hold their noses and vote for another opposition party with the best possible chance of defeating them. In fact the Daily Mail was very unhappy about this last week, as you can see below (though in 2019 they did actively encourage the Brexit Party to stand aside in Conservative held seats).

 By-elections are useful tools for understanding the current position of the government and all of the parties. In a comment to the BBC the elections guru Sir John Curtice said that it can, however be an exaggerated indicator, as governments always do badly in the mid-term of a parliament. That said, it does also look like the Conservatives have declined somewhat, by as much as 20%, and that no government since that of John Major's from 1992-1997 has had such difficulties. Part of this is, of course, explained by what I said above, and the willingness of Lib Dem and Labour supporters to back each other's candidates.

Tactical voting is, of course, a normal feature of First Past the Post voting systems. Labour tend to do better when the Lib Dem vote is higher, as this tends to be in Conservative areas, and can remove seats from them which hinders Conservative chances of a majority or of being the largest party. For example, Labour got 6,800 votes in Cheadle in 2019, a seat the Conservatives won by 2,300 votes. Likewise, the Conservatives won the High Peak by 590 votes from Labour, where the Lib Dems received 2,800 votes. As you can see, tactical voting would massively assist both parties in these instances. A reduction in Green Party votes in US states such as Michigan may have hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the reduction of these numbers in 2020 may be a recognition of the inevitable impact of First Past the Post.

The problem of strikes

 One of the major impacts of the difficult economic circumstances that the UK and other countries are currently going through is that of increasing public section discontent. Inflation, at the time of writing, is 9.1%, with the net impact being a real terms decrease in pay for workers. Unlike private sector workers, whose pay is obviously set without limits by their employer, the government has some sort of role in public sector pay, even if it is (in some cases) less direct. For instance, Network Rail is currently negotiating with the RMT union, whose Secretary-General has become somewhat of a cult media personalty in recent days.

It may seem counter-intuitive in some ways, but many have argued that Labour is actually at greater risk due to these strikes than the government. The Labour Party was formed out of unions and other similar bodies, and has always maintained close links (though less so under Starmer, as seen by his strained relations with Unite, Labour's biggest donor). The Conservatives will be hoping that the strikes are hugely unpopular and that the population associate these with Labour. Starmer has tried to distance himself from these to some extent, which has created some unease within the party, with 25 MPs joining picket lines of strikers, against central party instructions. The line of the party has been that they are a government in waiting, and as such would not be taking a side in the dispute. How well this works will remain to be seen.

However, there are clear risks for the government in this strategy. Firstly, people will often blame the government for everything under their watch, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly. When their transport is bad, the chances are that many people will roll it in with other things that have happened recently and blame the government anyway. Also, it seems likely that many more strikes are likely. Teachers and nurses may be likely to go on strike later this year due to their pay offers, so the government's line that Labour will take us 'back to the 70s' may be true of what is happening under their watch, with a huge level of strikes and an economic crisis. The public may also be somewhat more in favour of strikes than the government believes, as a recent survey (above) suggests.

The situation will be likely to change further in the next few months, but the fallout could be different than one would expect.