Now the Huhne fiasco has finally come to head the voters of Eastleigh are going to be treated to a by-election, lucky them. I suspect that the Conservatives are likely to win but the election is a lot more interesting than whether the Lib Dems can hold onto the cursed seat.
Certainly the figures show that it’s a two Tesco-lasagna race with the 2010 results (below from wikipedia) and a recent poll showing the Conservatives on 34%, Lib Dems on 31%, Labour on 19%. and UKIP on 13%.
| General Election 2010: Eastleigh |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| Liberal Democrat | Chris Huhne | 24,966 | 46.5 | +8.2 | |
| Conservative | Maria Hutchings | 21,102 | 39.3 | +2.1 | |
| Labour | Leo Barraclough | 5,153 | 9.6 | −11.5 | |
| UKIP | Ray Finch | 1,933 | 3.6 | +0.2 | |
| English Democrats | Tony Pewsey | 249 | 0.5 | N/A | |
| Independent | Dave Stone | 154 | 0.3 | N/A | |
| National Liberal Party – Third Way | Keith Low | 93 | 0.2 | N/A | |
Even with the extra 11.5% that Labour lost at the last election it would be a tall order for Labour to win the seat *however* I tend to think new Labour poster boy Luke Akehurst has a point when he recommends the party should be “throwing the kitchen sink at it”.
Labour should go for it, even though they can’t win
There are two reasons for this. First, we know Labour are doing well in the polls and that they are able to significantly increase their vote in safe seats. We have a lot less evidence on how well Labour does in its weaker areas. It’s not much use under First Past The Post keeping seats with increased majorities if you can’t win new seats in enough numbers to form a government.
So Labour need to prove the kind of big jumps we’ve seen are possible in safe seats are also possible in places like Eastleigh.
The second point is that the 2010 result gives a falsely weak impression of Labour’s support in the area. There was a drop of over 10% from 2005. I think that 10% will be relatively easy to back, and with an extra slice of longer term Lib Dems coming over as a bonus. With many of their votes coming from the yellow tails the cost of *not* going at the election hard could be to allow the Lib Dems to win against Tory vote split by a resurgent UKIP – this is a real possibility if Labour do not try.
While some Lib Dem votes will go to the Tories it is overwhelmingly in Labour’s interest to feed into the national narrative that the Lib Dems are dead in the water and they are able to, say, triple their vote.
So, with UKIP slicing off a chunk of the Tory support and Labour taking a big bite of Lib Dems I think Labour have the chance to do very well, create the impression the seat will be a three horse race in 2015, and that they are riding a wave of popular support – something that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What of the others?
Quite frankly anyone contesting this election outside the four parties mentioned already will be indulging in a spot of self immolation. Even Farage has carefully distanced himself from the election when people began to speculate he would stand saying “I have a national party to run”. Very sensible, it’s not great for a party to have their leader stand in a hopeless seat, and then get the blame for the inevitable kicking they would receive. Let the local blazer wearer win a modest boost to their vote and feel warm about it, when the same vote would look poor hung around their leader’s neck.
If the BNP want to pointlessly waste their money in order to publicly humiliate themselves then please do, but I hope my friends on the left, like Tusc, Respect and the like have a little more sense and discipline.
It doesn’t make sense for the Greens either. Despite some good by-election results of late the party did not stand in the seat in 2010 or 2005 and at the last local elections they stood three paper candidates across 15 wards. Encouraging them to stand is akin to throwing a kitten into the ring with Mike Tyson on the principal that you have to be in the fight. Let the local party spare its activists the humiliation and use the £500 they would have wasted on a deposit on target ward leaflets and campaigning to defend local services. far better use of time ad money.