“When the great oracle speaks, we are never quite certain what the great oracle said,” was a famously cynical remark about elections made by Lord Salisbury, the reactionary Tory leader in the age of Gladstone, who didn’t much like democracy of any kind and warned about reading too much clarity into voters’ verdicts. The maxim is certainly true of by-elections, held to fill parliamentary seats which fall vacant, and it will be particularly apposite of the two by-elections to be held next Thursday, upon which the fate of Boris Johnson is widely thought to hang.
Predictions are a mug’s game, so I am not going to suggest the result of the by-election in the Red Wall seat of Wakefield in (post) industrial Yorkshire, where Labour is seeking to overturn a Tory majority of just over 3,000, nor in the Blue Wall seat of Tiverton & Honiton, in rural East Devon, where the Lib Dems are seeking to topple a colossal Tory majority of 24,000. But in the current state of politics, it would not be surprising if both seats fell to the opposition parties and—surprise alert—this would be compatible both with Johnson remaining prime minister and with the Conservatives winning the next general election under his or alternative leadership. There is a good chance they would retake Tiverton in a general election, and if they win the next general election at large, they might retake Wakefield too.
Mid-term governments tend to lose by-elections, often on huge swings, and this does not necessarily signify their death. Thatcher, Major and Blair all lost by-elections to the Lib Dems (or their predecessor parties) on revolts larger than the 23 per cent swing required for Tiverton to fall, and almost all by-elections produce swings against the governing party greater than the 4 per cent needed for Labour to win Wakefield.
The Lib Dems usually pull off the largest revolts, precisely because they are generally seen as a protest party and not an alternative government—which is why Tiverton is far more vulnerable than the raw figures suggest. Johnson’s Tories lost two by-elections to the Lib Dems last year on swings larger than that required to take Tiverton, and neither of them (Chesham & Amersham and North Shropshire) were in counties with Devon’s strong Liberal tradition.
In Wakefield, the critical thing to look for will be the size of the swing, not the likely loss of the seat. If the swing to Labour hits double figures, then it may signify a decisive underlying shift. Historically, Labour has only managed to secure swings of this magnitude when it is either on course to win a general election—as in the run-up to 1997—or is facing a mortally wounded Tory prime minister—as in the last months of Thatcher, when she refused to abandon her wildly unpopular poll tax.
Is Johnson similarly wounded by Partygate, and would a by-election double whammy, including a big swing in Wakefield, mark the end for him? I suspect it depends on whether Graham Brady and his colleagues, who run the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, agree to change the leadership election rules so that another ballot can be held less than a year after the last one. It is highly unlikely that the shamelessly entitled and complacent Johnson would resign without an act of force majeure, and the other form that this might take—a Cabinet revolt—looks extremely unlikely, given that the Cabinet is packed full of Johnson loyalists.
Brady has been playing a curiously ambivalent role vis-à-vis Johnson so far. His intervention last week, to suggest that a rule change was undesirable even after a double by-election loss, may indicate an underlying personal opposition to another vote this year. I suspect there was a lot more to Brady’s comment than meets the eye.
As for the wider repercussions of any by-election losses, we are probably still two years from a general election. In political time that is an eternity. In just over two years the SDP had climbed and fallen between 1981 and 1983, its rise facilitated by a string of sensational by-election victories. And in just a year and a half, Major had inherited Thatcher’s crown and gone on to win the 1992 election fairly easily. It is distinctly possible that Thatcher herself would have won the 1992 election against Neil Kinnock, a weak Labour leader who had only partially laid to rest the fears of Labour extremism from the 1980s.
Thatcher’s fundamental problem, had she survived her leadership contest against Michael Heseltine, is that her poll tax would still have been there, haemorrhaging Tory support in an atmosphere of deep crisis. Major abolished the poll tax almost immediately. Partygate, by contrast, is now historic. Each day that Johnson continues as Tory leader between now and parliament’s recess in mid-July makes it more likely that he will survive for the whole of the next year and even until the next election. All of which I say without making any predictions!
