Patrick Mercer to resign. By-Election incoming.

[Quartz]

Would it be in Labour's longer-term interest for their candidate to withdraw? Get their voters to vote UKIP for maximum Tory discomfort over the next year? OTOH UKIP actually being elected would give them a great chance of falling flat on their faces and thus improve the Tories' chances at the General Election. A tough decision indeed.

 

[redsquirrel]

15% swing against the LDs . Vulnerable but I think the Tories will hold it.

 

[Dogsauce]

They have a young parachuted candidate, whereas the Labour guy is local, could play on that.

Is Helmer allowed to be an MP and an MEP? That's a lot of expenses to trough.

 

[redsquirrel]

Is Helmer allowed to be an MP and an MEP? That's a lot of expenses to trough.

Nope but (IIRC) he doesn't have to resign from the MEP position unless he actually gets elected as an MP.

 

[brogdale]

15% swing against the LDs . Vulnerable but I think the Tories will hold it.

Yeah....

But clearly vulnerable to tactical voting.

 

[brogdale]

Nope but (IIRC) he doesn't have to resign from the MEP position unless he actually gets elected as an MP.

I think someone (Butchers?) said that UKIP would have to go to next candidate on Euro list to replace Helmer.

 

[treelover]

I can see either UKIP or Labour winning, the fact that UKIP are up over 24% since the General Election, compared to 4.7% that Labour are up since the election, shows the momentum is with UKIP.

Labour haven't got a chance,

have they?

 

[Dogsauce]

That's not too bad a showing for labour given they lost a chunk of their voter base to boundary changes since they last held the seat. Suspect the UKIP vote here might be quite Tory-based so unlikely to shift in their direction.

I think the best possible outcome to hope for is a meteorite to hit the count venue at the moment of the announcement.

 

[co-op]

Tories are throwing the kitchen sink at Newark - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27626889 - all tory MPs have been ordered by the whips to make at least three visits each! To do leafleting! Hah. How are the mighty fallen, that used to be a job for the rank and file, even senior councillors wouldn't have been out doing that once upon a time.

Not surprising really, this would be a very very bad seat for them to lose now. I think they'll keep it, too many signs that Labour vote is holding up and not going over to UKIP.

 

[butchersapron]

Would it be in Labour's longer-term interest for their candidate to withdraw? Get their voters to vote UKIP for maximum Tory discomfort over the next year? OTOH UKIP actually being elected would give them a great chance of falling flat on their faces and thus improve the Tories' chances at the General Election. A tough decision indeed.

Where do you come up with this stuff from? Of course they're not going to withdraw. And ukip being elected would help them rather more than a tory victory.

 

[treelover]

could you say why?

 

[torquemad]

Is Helmer allowed to be an MP and an MEP? That's a lot of expenses to trough.

Yes, look at Paisley et al in Norn Iron who have seats in Westminster and MEP seats in Brussels. Oh, and for good measure, there are also a number of NI MPs who, in addition to the two wedges of expenses above, also sit in the Stormont Assembly as elected members with concomitant allowances.

Now, that's how to ride the Gravy Train. Wankers all.

 

[torquemad]

could you say why?

Why it would be to UKIP advantage if Labour withdrew and gave them a free run?

First, UKIP would win and , boy, would they milk it. Second, the media would have a field day about Labour's lack of bottle. Tactical withdrawals don't come into it where the Tory meejah are concerned. Third - and most important - it is incumbent on Labour to get stuck in to the Tory and UKIP twats and expose their absolute lack of progressive social and economic policies (UKIP) and the appalling austerity imposed on us by the ConDem fuckers whilst the Tories fiddle and line their pals' pockets. Oh, and for good measure, use any election airtime to kick fuck out of Clegg.

 

[belboid]

Yes, look at Paisley et al in Norn Iron who have seats in Westminster and MEP seats in Brussels. Oh, and for good measure, there are also a number of NI MPs who, in addition to the two wedges of expenses above, also sit in the Stormont Assembly as elected members with concomitant allowances.

Now, that's how to ride the Gravy Train. Wankers all.

It's been banned since 2009. Paisley stopped being an MEP in 2004. For the previous 6 years he had been a 'tripler' - with seats in the three assemblies, as was SDLP's John Hume.

 

[torquemad]

It's been banned since 2009. Paisley stopped being an MEP in 2004. For the previous 6 years he had been a 'tripler' - with seats in the three assemblies, as was SDLP's John Hume.

Oops! I stand corrected.

But being a Westminster MP is no bar to holding a Stormont Assembly seat if I understand it correctly. And is it not also the case that most Stormont/ Westminster MPs (NI-based) also had an additional nice earner as local councillors? That was certainly the case with at least two of my Belfast MPs. A right few years ago I will admit.

 

[butchersapron]

Which voters are going to blink first - labour or UKIP?

 

[butchersapron]

I think someone (Butchers?) said that UKIP would have to go to next candidate on Euro list to replace Helmer.

Yep.

 

[brogdale]

Which voters are going to blink first - labour or UKIP?

One set eminently more 'turnable' than the other?

 

[butchersapron]

One set eminently more 'turnable' than the other?

Yeah, the former. That's there for UKIP now. On a fucking plate.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Does the fact that the ukip candidate is an odious twat (more so than NF) not feed into this? Those who generally back labour and are influenced by the actual potential mp as much as the rosette colour would surely be hard pressed to back him?

 

[brogdale]

Does the fact that the ukip candidate is an odious twat (more so than NF) not feed into this? Those who generally back labour and are influenced by the actual potential mp as much as the rosette colour would surely be hard pressed to back him?

Even Joey Barton gets why working class voters hate NL so much; Helmer might be an odious twat, but they feel differently about his party.

 

[butchersapron]

Does the fact that the ukip candidate is an odious twat (more so than NF) not feed into this? Those who generally back labour and are influenced by the actual potential mp as much as the rosette colour would surely be hard pressed to back him?

For who? Why don't you get how politics works?

 

[butchersapron]

I expect it's the media's fault.

Left-lib-loons like taffboy laugh at what they think are crusty old majors blaming everything on the lefty BBC - whilst blaming everything on the daily mail/bbc/express/fuck knows what else has annoyed them that day

 

[brogdale]

One of the Guardian's 'foreign correspondent' pieces from Newark...

Some interesting quotes, though...

Michael Hunter, 63, a mechanical engineer and lifelong Labour supporter who lives behind the Nottingham to Grantham railway line on the edge of Bingham, is one such voter who would never have identified with a party associated with the right. "I will always be a socialist, I shall never desert socialist ideals and I will vote Labour at the general election," he says. "But I am considering voting Ukip to send a message. At certain stages in history you need people who are not necessarily very pleasant to give the establishment a prod.

"Nigel Farage is scaremongering a bit on immigration – I don't totally go along with the idea that people have been put out of work because people are coming in. But there are only so many jobs to go around.

"I have certainly not got the answers. People used to say to me in Michael Foot's time why vote for somebody who has no hope of getting in. I said because if I don't reach for that star I'm not going to get it."

and as an added bonus the vermin candidate comes out as a fan of a royal commerce raider, slaver, privateer and colonialist.

Robert Jenrick, the youthful Tory candidate, who is writing a history of the English civil war, says Prince Rupert, nephew of Charles I and commander of the royalist cavalry at the age of 23, is his hero.

 

[William of Walworth]

Still not expecting the Tories actually to lose this.

 

[brogdale]

Still not expecting the Tories actually to lose this.

The more ministers they throw at this/subject the electorate to...the greater the chance IMO.

 

[brogdale]

Smithson looking at 'kipper underestimation in single-seat polling....

1. 
   It is important to recall that all the polls in that contest, as the chart shows, understated the purples by quite some margin. None of them had UKIP any higher than third place.

It was a similar pattern in Corby in November 2012 when the Tories were trying to hang on to the seat following Louise Mensch’s decision to quit politics. The final Ashcroft poll had UKIP on just 6% – they ended up on 14.3%.

By-elections, of course, are susceptible to late swings which is what can make them so exciting. But I believe there are other methodological reasons why the polls have struggled with UKIP in by-elections in particular the reallocation of don’t knows or refusers to what they said they did at the previous general election.

I’ve been in correspondence with Lord Ashcroft about tomorrow’s Newark poll and have suggested that he highlights the pre-reallocated numbers. At Eastleigh that would have got his final poll a bit nearer to what UKIP achieved.

Ashcroft's tomorrow!

(Also posted in polling thread)

 

[nino_savatte]

They have a young parachuted candidate, whereas the Labour guy is local, could play on that.

Is Helmer allowed to be an MP and an MEP? That's a lot of expenses to trough.

Ian Paisley was both. Kerching!

 

[steeplejack]

when is this actually happening?

 

[brogdale]

when is this actually happening?

By-election? Thursday.