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Post by iainbhx on Mar 30, 2012 10:15:50 GMT
Yes, but unless Madam makes a comeback from her "ill health" who would be in a position to exploit that?? And that LB thinks he can win the nomination does not - to put it kindly - mean that he actually will  Oh, trust me, she can make a comeback from her illhealth for a bye-election. The question is, is the original "deal" still in place from 2006. I suspect that there might be a "deal" involved somewhere with Liam deciding to stand which sort of counter-indicates what I had heard on the grapevine the other day. |
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Harry Hayfield
Green
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Post by Harry Hayfield on Mar 30, 2012 14:47:26 GMT
Just a little exercise in comparsions, but here's the change between the general and by-elections since 1992 coming up to the two year mark of a parliament
1992
General: Con 59% Lab 9% Lib Dem 31% Others 1%
By-Elections: Con 29% Lab 2% Lib Dem 64% Others 5%
Swing: 32% from Con to Lib Dem
1997
General: Con 36% Lab 33% Lib Dem 23% Others 8%
By-Elections: Con 33% Lab 25% Lib Dem 33% Others 9%
Swing: 7% from Con to Lib Dem
2001
General: Con 22% Lab 56% Lib Dem 14% Plaid 6% Others 4%
By-Elections: Con 20% Lab 47% Lib Dem 17% Plaid 8% Others 8%
Swing: 4% from Lab to Con
2005
General: Con 24% Lab 32% Lib Dem 23% People's Voice 10% SNP 8% Others 3%
By-Elections: Con 21% Lab 23% Lib Dem 31% People's Voice 8% SNP 11% Others 6%
Swing: 8% from Lab to Lib Dem
2010
General: Con 24% Lab 45% Lib Dem 19% BNP 4% SNP 2% Others 6%
By-Election: Con 13% Lab 48% Lib Dem 13% Respect 10% BNP 2% SNP 5% Others 9%
Swing: 12% from Con to Lab
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johnloony
Conservative
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Post by johnloony on Jul 12, 2012 3:57:31 GMT
On Monday 9th July I was phoned in mid-afternoon by, er, *someone* who left a message on my answerphone saying "By-election in Bedfordshire - MP has died" (but without specifying a name or constituency). I didn't check my answerphone until Tuesday morning, so I only got the message then.
I looked up to see who the MPs were in Bedfordshire, and there weren't any obvious ones who seemed old enough to be likely to die suddenly; I checked the TV news headlines, and news websites, and Google, and couldn't find any reports of any MP dying. I contacted my MP via Twitter, and he said he hadn't heard anything.
On Wednesday 11th July *someone* phoned again to say it was a false alarm. I asked who he thought had died, and he said Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire). It was obviously a false report or rumour, but he told me that he had seen it on a rolling headline on the screen on Sky News - and that other people had seen it as well.
I am now confused because I haven't heard or seen any other rumours about it, and Google doesn't show any results for any rumours or reports or hoaxes that there might have been. I can hardly believe that Sky News would have broadcast any such thing without checking - even for a few minutes - or that a false report like that wouldn't itself have been reported on by other media.
The only other possibility is that my informant is a silly old fool who misread something, or otherwise somehow got completely the wrong idea. I remember that he told me some time last year that Nigel Farage had told him that UKIP reckoned that there might be a by-election in Mid Bedfordshire because Nadine Dorries might have been in trouble with her expenses (or something), but it obviously never came to anything.
The only other idea I can think of is that "Dorries" and "dies" both end in "ies", so perhaps it was misread somehow. Did anybody else hear or see any such rumours at any time on Monday or Tuesday?
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jul 12, 2012 8:59:20 GMT
I'm sure if there had ever been such a runour,it would have been reported on Twitter and from there posted on the rest in peace thread by ianrobo
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2012 11:50:05 GMT
nope she is still with us
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johnloony
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Post by johnloony on Jul 13, 2012 2:30:52 GMT
nope she is still with us A hilarious example of not answering the question |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2012 22:40:31 GMT
Will the next one be Cannock (again) even his own side have turned against him.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jul 27, 2012 22:48:29 GMT
Oh give it up ian ffs.. some lame tweet by Gavin Barwell hardly equoates to 'his own side have turned against him'
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johnloony
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Post by johnloony on Jul 28, 2012 4:57:38 GMT
Oh give it up ian ffs.. some lame tweet by Gavin Barwell hardly equoates to 'his own side have turned against him' Gavin Barwell's tweets are never lame. They are always extremely brilliant and sensible, and he speaks for the vast majority of ordinary normal decent people almost all the time. |
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Pimpernal
Forum Regular
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Post by Pimpernal on Jul 28, 2012 10:10:09 GMT
Oh give it up ian ffs.. some lame tweet by Gavin Barwell hardly equoates to 'his own side have turned against him' Gavin Barwell's tweets are never lame. They are always extremely brilliant and sensible, and he speaks for the vast majority of ordinary normal decent people almost all the time. Is he in UKIP then?  |
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Post by pstaveley on Jul 31, 2012 22:32:57 GMT
Gavin Barwell's tweets are never lame. They are always extremely brilliant and sensible, and he speaks for the vast majority of ordinary normal decent people almost all the time. He is my MP and I can assure you that he does not speak for the people that I meet in Croydon Central. |
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johnloony
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Post by johnloony on Aug 1, 2012 0:11:06 GMT
I have corrected your misprint for you |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 1, 2012 10:27:29 GMT
Will the next one be Cannock (again) even his own side have turned against him. No chance whatsoever of a by-election! Probably has a better than evens chance of holding the seat too at the next election, and this is assuming that the bulk of the local voters are aware of the tweets, which I doubt. |
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The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
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Post by The Bishop on Aug 1, 2012 10:33:09 GMT
What do you base that on? Labour's results here in May were none too shabby, and they will be highly motivated come 2015.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 1, 2012 12:08:37 GMT
No chance whatsoever of a by-election! Probably has a better than evens chance of holding the seat too at the next election, and this is assuming that the bulk of the local voters are aware of the tweets, which I doubt. You're being complacent and over-optimistic, as is often the way with online Tories. This is a seat we won in 1992 and the result last time is generally seen as a fluke. Those of us inside the political bubble tend to overestimate the impact of these media controversies, but Burley does get himself into a lot of needless scrapes and it can't be doing him any good. It gives the impression of being immature and out of his depth - which he almost certainly is. add to this put in a good local Labour candidate and Burley will look an outsider to many. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 1, 2012 12:55:59 GMT
No chance whatsoever of a by-election! Probably has a better than evens chance of holding the seat too at the next election, and this is assuming that the bulk of the local voters are aware of the tweets, which I doubt. You're being complacent and over-optimistic, as is often the way with online Tories. This is a seat we won in 1992 and the result last time is generally seen as a fluke. I'm not sure how an election victory like that can be described as a fluke - it was a rsult of a deliberate decision by large numbers of voters to vote for the Conservative candidate and not to vote for the Labour candidate. I think you could describe odd results like Bradford North in 1983 as a fluke maybe, but in general it doesn't seem an appropriate term to describe what may be a surprising result. IN anyc ase the fact that this is a seat which Labour won in 1992 but lost in 2010 is indicative of a steady long term trend to the Tories in this area. Even in 1997 it was a less safe Labour seat than it had been in 1974. Anyway not sure why this discussion is taking place on this thread. There is no by-election here outside of Ian's wet dreams |
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The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
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Post by The Bishop on Aug 1, 2012 13:06:20 GMT
Labour's share was, tbf, depressed slightly in 1997 by two other "left" candidates who polled more than 5% between them.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 1, 2012 13:16:15 GMT
True enough, but just taking the Conservative share, it was at a similar level in 1997 to what it was in both 1974 elections and given the relative national positions then, its clear there has been a long term movement over several decades. If anything ity is the 2005 result which looks most abherrent
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Aug 1, 2012 13:35:35 GMT
Cannock was historically a mining area, and kept the seat safe for Jennie Lee until 1970 when she was very unexpectedly defeated on a huge swing (probably helped by the Powell effect in the Black Country). Then Penkridge and a huge chunk of rural territory was removed and the seat was pared back to just Cannock and Rugeley in 1974.
Cannock and Burntwood from 1983-97 excluded Rugeley and extended to the east of Cannock instead; it was less safe for Labour than the 1974-83 seat. The 1997-2010 boundaries added Rugeley back in and increased the Labour majority. Changes in 2010 were adverse to Labour but did not make a significant difference.
A large part of the fall in Labour's vote in 2010 must surely be attributed to the retirement of the sitting and very personally popular MP Tony Wright.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Aug 1, 2012 13:53:10 GMT
The boundary changes which came into effect in 1983 had the effect of reducing Labour's majority from 7,346 (15.5%) to a notional 5,451 (10.9%) - a 'swing' of 2.3%. In 1983 Gerald Howarth won on the new boundaries with a majority of 2,045 (4.0%) so its clear the result would have been on a knife-edge then on the old (and current) boundaries. The 1997 boundary changes almost exactly recreated the pre-83 seat (except that Huntington was included from South Staffs). The effect of the boundary changes then was to increase Labour's majority from an actual 1,506 (2.5%) in 1992 to a notional 6,469 (10.8%) - a far bigger impact than the same process in reverse had had a decade earlier ( a 'swing' of 4.2%). This was likely to be an effect of the Mid Stafforshire by-election which gave Labour an inflated vote in that seat (and therefore in Rugeley) in 1992
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