Could Farage be right about the people vs the establishment?

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Farage presumably thought that resigning and fighting a by-election in which he expected to vanquish all his foes was a wizard wheeze. But then the other parties decided not to play, leaving him to fight a campaign against Count Binface and potentially a few other fringe candidates. There’s something rather pleasing about the man who refuses to play by the rules laid down by others now complaining that the others aren’t playing by the rules he has attempted to set for them.

The pundits all seem to be expecting that he will win an easy electoral victory, albeit one that will prove nothing, and probably leave him facing the same jeopardy. I wonder, though. In the first place, turnout is likely to be low – without other parties campaigning at all, who will be working to get the vote out – and for what? Secondly, in a country where ‘the people’ chose to name a boat Boaty McBoatface rather than honouring official national treasure David Attenborough, is it really too much of a stretch to imagine a victory for Count Binny McBinface, especially if the latter opted for such a scotification of his name? Farage claimed that it would be a fight between ‘the people’ and ‘the establishment’, and maybe he’s right. It’s just that he doesn’t understand that in a fight between these two titans, he – a multimillionaire public school-educated city trader – is the establishment candidate, and McBinface the anti-establishment insurgent. Farage also said that it’s an opportunity for people to stick two fingers up to the establishment – is there anything more likely to have that effect than sending a bin-clad warrior to Westminster? If I lived in Clacton, I’d certainly be tempted – and on a low turnout…

For those of us who see Farage as a danger to community cohesion, bringing his political career to an end would surely be a cause for celebration. And could there be a better – or more humiliating – way of achieving that than seeing him turfed out by a man wearing a refuse bin on his head? Maybe the pundits will be right, but we can surely dream in the meantime.

By-election significance isn't about competing brands of vanilla ice cream

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With the votes counted and the dust settling, Andy Burnham won yesterday’s Makerfield by-election by a large majority. To what extent this was a personal vote for the man rather than the party (‘vote Labour to get the Labour PM out’ is an unusual campaign strategy, to say the least) is not clear. I’ve always tended to the view that personalities don’t have a huge impact on election results at parliamentary level, but all rules have their exceptions and the circumstances and extent of coverage in this case may have enhanced the impact of the individual. If individuals really do make a difference, then it certainly helped that Reform Ltd chose a walking car-crash as their candidate, a man whose past comments made him an easy target. A cynic might even suggest that Farage would prefer Labour to stick with Starmer. Whatever, the fact is that Burnham is now in Westminster, and expectations are high that the starting gun will soon be fired on either a Labour leadership contest or else a coronation for the man from Manchester. Whatever gloss attaches to the Burnham name now may well be tarnished by the forthcoming mayoral by-election, which Reform Ltd have a reasonable chance of winning based on the local council elections, even if the bookies currently narrowly favour Labour; but maybe he’ll have staged his coup before that can happen.

The media are painting the Burnham bandwagon as a virtually unstoppable force, ushering in a new government and a new era. I’m not so sure. Burnham is undoubtedly a better communicator than the incumbent, although that isn’t exactly a high bar. The question is about how different he will be in practice. On that score, the omens are not good. He has already committed to maintaining the arbitrary fiscal rules drawn up by Rachel Reeves, and the appointment of a set of deeply conservative financial advisers to support him augurs badly. It looks as though the neoliberal agenda of continued wealth concentration is likely to continue unabated, and he is tying his own hands to do little more than tinker at the edges. Those sunlit uplands aren’t getting any closer. Burnham vs Starmer is politics as ice cream flavours, except the choice is limited to different brands of vanilla.

To my mind, the more significant, not to say worrying, by-election result yesterday was the one in Aberdeen South, where the SNP lost a seat to the Tories. The significance isn’t in the SNP losing, although that’s unwelcome, or even in the Tories winning, although that goes against the run of play. It is, rather, in the basis of the political upset, which is all about the oil and gas industry. It’s an issue that the SNP have not handled particularly well, but the outcome suggests that voters in Aberdeen have fallen for the snake oil being peddled by the Tories (as well as other parties of the ‘right’), namely the idea that we can both secure the planet’s future for coming generations and at the same time use all available resources with no concern for tomorrow. It isn’t just a problem in Aberdeen. Those who would deny the evidence of anthropogenic climate change have seen an opportunity to persuade voters to support them: after all, what’s not to like about a politician who tells you that you can do what you like today and you don’t need to worry about future consequences? Aided by a dumbed-down and lazy media which reports the debate as a “he said, she said” question rather than seeking out facts and scientific consensus, alongside echo-chamber social media, they are pushing against an open door.

Perhaps our end will come not with a bang or indeed any type of sudden event, but in the fug of a long drawn-out party.

Who split which vote?

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When the dust settled, the ‘too-close-to-call’ by-election in Gorton and Denton turned out to be no such thing, and the Green Party gained a very clear victory. That is good news, of course, but even though the margin of victory was solid, the winner only got 41% of the vote. Under a more proportional system of voting, that means that second preference votes would have needed to be counted, and the mathematician and amateur would-be psephologist in me speculated about how the result of that might look.

Of the 11 candidates, eight (accounting for 1892 votes in total) would have been eliminated fairly rapidly and, unless we choose to believe that they would have overwhelmingly (including the 706 Tory votes) gone to Labour, the second choices of those voters would have made no difference to the order of the first three candidates. The final stage of counting would thus have seen the Labour candidate eliminated as well, meaning that there were then 11,256 voters whose second choices would have determined whether the victor was the Green Party or Reform Ltd. With a margin of 4402 between those two parties, those 11,000 votes would have to split something like 2.3:1 in favour of Reform Ltd for their candidate to overtake the Green Party’s candidate and seize the seat. We don’t know, of course, how they would have split in practice. Unless and until someone does some detailed research, it’s all speculation. But the key element of that speculation is a very simple question: of those who voted Labour, despite everything that has happened since the last General Election, would they have tended towards the Green Party or towards Reform Ltd?

Those who cling to the notion that the Labour Party is still a progressive force, and that its supporters are committed to a progressive platform (whatever the word ‘progressive’ means) will be utterly convinced that they would have gone with the Greens, leaving the outcome unchanged. I’m not at all sure that they’re right. Much of the support which Reform Ltd have picked up over the past few years has come from Labour – amongst Labour voters, there is a deeply conservative streak when it comes to issues such as immigration. I don’t think it at all impossible that Reform Ltd would have won the seat in that scenario. (That doesn't make me reconsider supporting Proportional Representation - we need to win the arguments against the likes of Reform Ltd, not rig the voting system to keep them out.)

That brings us to an interesting alternative view of the ‘vote-splitting’ concept. The worry of some before the election was that the Greens and Labour would split the ‘progressive’ vote and allow Reform Ltd to win. What if the real story here is that Labour and Reform split the reactionary, neoliberal, authoritarian, anti-immigrant vote and thus allowed the progressive candidate to win? Those who are still clinging to the idea that Labour is somehow on the side of the good guys might be blinding themselves to the true extent of the danger.

Voters aren't fish, and don't always choose the 'right' angler

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A couple of weeks ago, following a by-election in the Vale of Glamorgan, this blog post talked about the need to count, rather than assume, voters’ second choices. The question about making assumptions came up again on Thursday, in this article by Ben Wildsmith on Nation.Cymru, calling on Gareth Hughes and the Green Party to withdraw from the Caerffili by-election. I’m something of a fan of Ben’s writing: his articles are well-argued, make good points, and are often humorous to boot. But on this occasion, I cannot agree with his logic. The idea that parties seen as outside chances should ‘stand down’ to avoid ‘splitting the vote’ and letting (insert your bête noir of choice here) win is not one I’ve ever been keen on, although my view might be slightly coloured by having been on the receiving end of such expectations on more than one occasion.

There tends to be something of a belief amongst those performing mathematics on polling numbers that there are only two pools of voters. One contains only progressive fish, with Labour, Lib Dem, Plaid and Green anglers all trying to catch them, and the other contains only reactionary fish, with anglers from the Tories and Reform Ltd trying to haul them in. Since the number of fish in both ponds is limited, any caught by one angler are unavailable to the other anglers, and if one of those anglers is better at catching fish than the rest, his total catch is still limited by the number of fish caught by his competitors. And, obviously, the more anglers in one pond, the harder it is to match the catch of the best angler in the other. I’ve knocked enough doors and spoken to enough punters to know that life really isn’t that simple. Voters don’t always stay in their allotted pond, and if the Green angler lays down his rod, some of the fish are as likely to swim into the other pond as they are to leap onto the Plaid angler's waiting hook.

There is a convenient and comfortable myth to which many involved in Welsh politics cling, in which the electorate in Wales is of a radical disposition and finds the Tories toxic. Would that it were so; but whilst it may have been a couple of decades ago, it isn’t today. And the rise of Reform Ltd shows us that Tory toxicity isn’t about policies or personalities anyway, it’s just about branding. Take the same people and the same policies and give them a different brand name, and many voters will, apparently, flock to the cause. To a very large extent, I blame Labour for that. Firstly, because they’ve ceased to be particularly radical or even progressive, and secondly because they’ve depended for so long on one simple attribute rather than arguing for any particular policy platform: being 'not-the-Tories'. It turns out that even those who have voted for them for years, if not decades, have come to believe that Reform Ltd, despite being largely composed of ex-Tories, are also now ‘not-the-Tories’, with the additional advantage of being untainted (as a brand, even if not as individuals) by having failed in the exercise of power.

And that’s the point about the Green angler and his rod. Laying it down simply gives credence to, and reinforces, the idea that all self-identified ‘progressives’ essentially share a perspective, and that ‘progressive’ voters should support the ‘progressive’ candidate most likely to win. I doubt that the Green Party candidate will receive many votes in the by-election (sorry, Gareth), but even if the total votes cast for him is more than the difference between the first and second placed candidate, there will be no way of knowing that his absence would have made a difference – in a first-past-the-post election, his votes cannot simply be added mathematically to those of another candidate. And he will be putting a different perspective and agenda before the electorate – can giving the voters more choice ever be a bad thing?

There is actually a very good case for politicians to come to an agreement on which party will stand where, but it applies only to a single issue and is only relevant in a Westminster General Election. It relates to the question of electoral reform. A short, single issue parliament which passed such a law and then dissolved itself for a new election under new rules would be well worth while. The problem is that that single issue doesn’t neatly split itself between self-styled ‘progressives’ and ‘reactionaries’. And whether Farage will still be as keen on electoral reform if an election under FPTP gives him absolute power on a minority vote is an unanswered question. Not one to which I really want to discover the answer the hard way.

Cutting out the middleman

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The six week suspension handed to one of Plaid’s Senedd members has provoked a comparison with the position at Westminster – in similar circumstances, a Westminster MP would be facing a recall petition and a probable by-election, but there is no such sanction available in the case of this list MS. It’s a valid question, but the suggestion of instituting a similar provision for the Senedd seems to be based on the English constitutional fiction underpinning the Westminster process, which is that people vote for an individual, not for a party. In the case of list members, the vote is unquestionably for the party. And whilst introducing such a provision for members elected on a closed list is not impossible, it does rather look like twisting the system, when there is actually a very much simpler process available.

The recall process is comparatively novel in the UK’s system, and to date there have only been five instances of a petition being called. The first of those was in Northern Ireland, where none of the UK parties operate, and in a constituency which was not seen then as being particularly competitive – it was widely assumed that the DUP would win anyway. That petition failed to attract the necessary support of 10% of the electorate. In all other cases, the 10% was reached, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out why. I doubt that there is a constituency anywhere, no matter how apparently popular the transgressing MP might be, where a determined opposition party or parties could not find 10% of the electorate wanting to get rid of their MP. We can probably, therefore, take it as read that once a petition is called, it is overwhelmingly likely to be successful.

To date, only in one instance has the transgressing member stood in the subsequent by-election (although in another case, the member managed to arrange for his party to select his girlfriend, a situation which led to a remarkable lack of external support for her candidacy). The one who did stand again was defeated in the by-election. Indeed, the idea that an MP who has either been convicted of a criminal offence or else suspended by his or her fellow MPs for a serious breach of parliamentary rules would be presented by his or her party as a suitable person for re-election is a strange one, a form of political madness. Certainly not something likely to be repeated any time soon.

So, regardless of the objective of the recall principles (that the electors should be given the opportunity to call for a by-election and that the individual should have the opportunity to stand again), the electors are always likely to say yes to a by-election, and the party is always likely to disown the previous member and select a new candidate. It is, therefore, in practice if not in principle, a process where a member in breach of the relevant rules ends up being expelled from the parliament and replaced by a new member who may or may not be from the same party. In which case, instead of trying to come up with a complex set of rules for list members to face by-elections, why not simply cut out the middleman, and declare that, on conviction (in the case of criminal acts) or suspension from the parliament for more than a specified period (in the case of a serious breach of the parliament’s rules or standards), the seat becomes vacant and the member is replaced through the normal process which would apply in the case of death or resignation? For a constituency member, that means an automatic by-election, avoiding the cost, time and effort of a petition, and for a list member, it means the appointment of the next eligible member on the relevant party’s list. It’s both simpler and more rapid than the current process, which seems to have been designed (with a remarkable lack of forethought) to maximise the chance of the transgressing member being returned to the club.

Perhaps we really are doomed

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One of the less endearing traits of politics, in Wales as much as in England, is the habit some politicians have of campaigning against their own party’s policies in order to get elected. In Wales, it’s commonplace when the Labour government wants to make changes to the NHS to see Labour candidates and elected members purporting to ‘lead’ the opposition to their own government’s proposals; more locally, Labour councillors are more than happy to ‘lead’ campaigns against school proposals put forward by their own authority. For some strange reason, it seems to work – voters really are bamboozled into thinking that members of the ruling party can indeed be relied upon to stop their own party’s proposals.

We saw a variation on that yesterday in the by-election in Boris Johnson’s old seat, which the Tories largely succeeded in turning into a one-issue campaign against the extended Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). They presented it as though it was all the fault of that evil mayor, Sadiq Khan; but as Richard Murphy has pointed out today, that simply isn’t true. The original idea of the zone was born under the mayoralty of a certain B. Johnson, and the extension of the zone to include areas such as Uxbridge was imposed on Khan by the Tory Transport Minister, Grant Shapps (other names for the same person are available), with the very specific aim of raising cash for Transport for London, as a condition of a grant. So when the Tories attack the ‘anti-car’ policies designed to raise money from motorists, they’re actually attacking their own policy. And it seems to have worked.

It's probably no surprise that the likes of Jake, Frosty and Deadwood have leapt onto the bandwagon and demanded that the Tories abandon all net-zero policies because they are unpopular. I’m pretty certain that uncontrolled climate change will be unpopular too, but unfortunately the inexorable changes being caused by human activity are stubbornly refusing to submit themselves to the UK’s electoral cycle. Within the Tory Party itself, they’re pushing at an open door – short term profit will always be seen as the priority. The more worrying aspect is that the increasingly probable next government is also frightened by the prospect of electoral damage as a result of supporting net-zero policies. Starmer has already back-tracked significantly on the issue, as on so many others. What we need is leadership; politicians prepared to spell out the consequences of not acting. What we’re getting is politicians who are willing to say whatever makes them popular today, and hang the consequences. We really do seem to be doomed.

The inescapable shadow haunting the Tories

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It was probably predictable that the Tory campaign in Boris Johnson’s former constituency would seek to distance itself as much as possible from the former MP, although it was rather less predictable that they would also seek to distance themselves from the current PM and the entire Conservative Party itself. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and that is exactly what they have done, producing a leaflet which manages to avoid all mention of both the former MP and the party of which he (and presumably the new candidate?) is a member. I can’t really say that I blame them for giving it a try – last roll of the dice and all that. And honesty isn’t exactly what they are best known for anyway.

But the other thing that struck me was that the leaflet refers to the candidate instead as the ‘Stop ULEZ candidate’ and the election itself as the ‘Stop ULEZ by-election’, in an overt attempt to turn the by-election into a referendum on the expansion of the ULEZ scheme in London. Now my memory isn’t what it used to be, and I could be wrong on this, but I’m sure that I remember the Tories telling the SNP that they could not claim that the next Scottish election was a referendum on a new vote on independence. I could have sworn that there were words along the lines of ‘it’s not for one party to determine what an election is about’. Perhaps that was a different Conservative Party – there seem to be so many of them co-existing under the same label these days that it's hard to keep track. Or maybe it’s just another example of their standard modus operandi – honesty and consistency, like dignity, are grossly overrated commodites. That Johnson-shaped shadow is not as easy to shake off as they might wish - his approach to the truth has become deeply ingrained in his party.

Will it make a difference?

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Whichever decision Plaid took about standing in the Brecon and Radnor by-election was always going to be divisive for the party’s members and supporters.  There have been those arguing in favour of standing and those arguing against; someone was going to be unhappy either way.

Personally, I’m not sure how much difference it will make.  Doing the mathematics of looking at how people voted in the past and adding up the votes for ‘remain’ and ‘leave’ in a way which gives a majority for a particular outcome is easy enough to do; but mathematical theory isn’t the same thing as electoral fact.  It is by no means certain that people who support a party will vote for a different party just because ‘their’ party asks them to.  And when a party has such a low vote in a constituency as Plaid does in Brecon and Radnor, the probability is that a higher proportion of those voters are committed to the party’s fundamental aim than is the case where the party enjoys much wider support.  That means that asking them to vote for a party fiercely opposed to the stated aims of ‘their’ party may turn out to be counterproductive. 

There are a wider range of policy considerations as well.  If I were an elector in the constituency, I’d have serious reservations about voting for a party which is vehemently opposed to Welsh independence and which supports the retention of nuclear weapons, to name just two policy areas – without even starting to think about how honest and trustworthy they are, having seen their approach to campaigning over many years.  (Not for nothing are they widely known as the Fib Dems.)  Whilst it’s clear what the Lib Dems might gain from the decision, the political gains for Plaid are far from clear, and assisting the party which most threatens one of their own seats to regain some of its credibility could turn out to be a colossal mistake.

And yet…  The looming threat of Brexit is an historic turning point, and I can fully understand why any party which is serious about putting Wales first would seek to act in a way which could help to change the direction of travel on such a defining issue.  And changing the way politics in Wales works necessarily requires an occasional bold decision; there’s no gain without an element of risk.  It’s a pity, though, that an outdated and unfit for purpose electoral system doesn’t do more to facilitate a switching of votes by allowing people to place parties and candidates in order of preference rather than requiring one or more different viewpoints to voluntarily remove themselves from the field of battle.

Whether it’s the ‘right’ decision or not remains to be seen – and it will be many years before that becomes clear, because the implications go well beyond the counting of the votes on 1^st August.  Those claiming that it’s a massive own goal and those claiming that it’s a defining change in Welsh politics are both speaking too soon and projecting their own preconceptions onto the decision.  I rather suspect that it will turn out to be neither of those and will actually make little difference, more’s the pity.

Taking 'brave' decisions

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I’m struggling to understand the process of ‘logic’ by which the Tories have selected their disgraced former MP for Brecon and Radnor to be the candidate in the upcoming by-election.  It’s clear that he still doesn’t understand why forging documents which purport to have been issued by someone else can be wrong, and it looks as though local Tories are prepared to overlook the crime as well.  I think they’re wrong on that, but I suppose there’s something to be said for loyalty to their man.

But it’s the politics of it that I don’t get.  With an electorate of some 52,000, and a likely by-election turnout of only around 60% based on other by-elections, there will be around 30-35,000 votes cast.  10,000 of those have already declared they want him out – and given that they had to make the effort to go and sign the recall petition, it’s probable that these are electors who will actually vote in the by-election.  So they know that one third of those voting are against him from the outset.  Nigel Farage plc have already announced that they will be standing and are likely to take a significant proportion of pro-Brexit Tory voters, and they are also facing the Lib Dems who are – largely because of Brexit – on a roll and have held the seat before. 

For a party to choose a candidate who’s been ejected from the seat due to dishonesty looks suicidal to me.  Perhaps they simply couldn’t find anyone else ‘brave’ enough (in the Yes, Minister sense of the word) to attempt it in the circumstances.

Short-termism is the enemy

Tweet A little over 40 years ago, in 1972, I found myself standing outside the Rhydycar leisure centre in Merthyr, waiting for the results of the Merthyr by-election for which Plaid and its candidate, Emrys Roberts, had high hopes.  I got involved in a discussion with the late Harri Webb and another, sadly now also departed, comrade about the sort of Wales they wanted to see.

Harri was arguing for a free and open democracy, but Terry was a little more hesitant.  He was concerned that a Plaid government, having led Wales to independence, could subsequently lose power and that some of the Labour Party’s Unionist dinosaurs would come to power and undo all Plaid’s work.  Kinnock, Abse and Thomas were the names specifically mentioned as I recall. 

Harri’s response was typically robust.

“Oh”, he said, “we will have shot them in the first week.  Then we can have a free and open democracy.”

I’m not a great believer in the idea that shooting people changes anything very much, and I never really believed that he was serious – although one could never be entirely sure with Harri.  The conversation was brought to mind again recently by a number of apparently unconnected stories.

The first was the result of the Australian election, which the opposition won convincingly.  One of the factors believed to be behind the scale of the election victory was that the opposition promised to scrap the hugely unpopular carbon tax.  (There’s a parallel in the UK of course, with some politicians calling for scrapping those environmental measures which are perceived as being constraints on economic growth.  It is a call which might even prove popular.) 

The second is the debate about the proposed high speed rail line in the UK, and the growing suspicion that the cross-party consensus (at UK level anyway) in favour of the project is rapidly disintegrating for short term electoral considerations.

The third, returning to that discussion outside the Leisure Centre, is the question of the continued decline in the usage of the Welsh language, and the issue of what, if anything, can be done about it.

And the fourth is the increasing belief in government circles that our behaviour can be ‘nudged’ in a particular direction rather then forced that way by legislation.  Number 10 even has a ‘nudge unit’, apparently.

The thing that links all these strands is this; bringing about real long-term change depends on winning hearts and minds and creating a new consensus.  Winning an individual election is never enough; it’s the arguments which need to be won.  Almost anything which can be easily done by one government can be equally easily undone by the next.  Failure to convince people of the merits of a particular policy or direction enables others to take an unpopular stance against that policy or direction, and undermine the longer term commitment which is necessary to bring about real and fundamental change.

Whatever the issue, for any long-term policy the work of convincing people that it’s the right thing to do is the key to success, not the result of an individual election, nor the passing of laws, nor even the gentle ‘nudging’ of our behaviour - let alone shooting people.  And in the same way, ‘success’ isn’t measured by election results – it’s measured by the extent of change. 

Much of what passes for political debate seems to ignore that, and seek short term electoral success on the basis of populism.  In the real world, political short term electoralism is the enemy of real change; it is not the route to achieving it.

Reading the runes

Tweet Crewe and Nantwich is done and dusted; the inevitable defeat for Labour, and by a larger margin than many (other than Vaughan Roderick) predicted.

Of course some try to read the runes and make projections from any by-election; but one needs to be careful. I've been a candidate in a parliamentary by-election myself, and there’s no doubt that it’s always a bit of a circus, and a far from reliable indication for the future.

In my own case, it was in 1989, following the death of Sir Raymond Gower, who had been the Conservative MP for 38 years, ever since 1951. The Vale of Glamorgan, and Barry before it, had remained loyal to Sir Raymond and the Tories all through the Labour years under Wilson and Callaghan, despite the fact that, in psephological terms, it should always have been much more marginal than the Tory majority suggested.

However, the Tories were at a low ebb, and the seat was captured by Labour’s John Smith – as in Crewe and Nantwich, with a bigger majority than most had really expected. A 6,000 vote Tory majority became a 6,000 vote Labour majority. There were special factors – of course there were. It was a by-election, and there are always special factors. In this case, it was the intervention of an ‘Independent NHS’ candidate. He got a fairly low proportion of the vote (even lower than me!), but he focussed the campaign on a single issue, which had a particular resonance for people at the time.

As for me, well, I came a creditable fourth, and did at least beat Screaming Lord Sutch, Miss Whiplash, and the SDP by a respectable margin, although I failed to gain the even more creditable third place which the opinion polls had promised me. (They may have been less than entirely objective, mind – my wife was opinion-polled on three separate occasions during the campaign. I hope that boosted my score!)

But, and back to the plot, at the next election in 1992, the Tories regained the seat, albeit with a wafer-thin majority of 19, and the Tories retained their majority overall in Westminster, although reduced. But, and this is the big but, in the following election, in 1997, Labour swept the seat, and John Smith was returned with a massive majority of almost 11,000. John has held the seat ever since of course.

So, my point is this; the by-election undeniably exaggerated significantly the extent of the swing; but the direction of travel, to use one of the latest jargon phrases, was perfectly clear. That, I suspect, is the message of Crewe and Nantwich. Labour’s days are numbered. They may yet make the sort of recovery that John Major’s Tories achieved in 1992, but their days of large majorities in Parliament are finished.

Normal Mouth argues that the concept of tipping points is much-overstated, and certainly passé. Possibly; but sometimes a mood can set in. It may well be that the Tories have done well recently less out of a positive commitment to what they stand for than out of desperation for change. But winning seats, even in by-elections, that would previously have been thought beyond their reach gives the opposition heart, and disheartens the government. A small surge can become a flood in such circumstances, as MPs start to see the end of their careers looming in front of them, and begin to panic.

Even if Labour are not yet facing a rout, one would have to be pretty much detached from reality to believe that they are on course to gain seats at the next election. That brings me neatly to Martin Eaglestone. If I read him correctly, he seems to be saying, basically, that people should hold their noses and vote Labour in order to keep the Tories out. If that’s the best reason for voting Labour that they can come up with after 12 or 13 years in office, then they will lose – and they will deserve to lose.