By election analysis after Sedgefield and Ealing
Last Thursday two by elections took place for two vacant seats in the House of Commons. One was due to the standing down of Tony Blair in Sedgefield in County Durham. The other took place in Ealing Southall in London, where the Labour MP there recently passed away.
In Sedgefield Labour held the seat comfortably as had been expected. The Liberal Democrats came second but well behind and the Conservatives third. Nothing out of the ordinary happened there as this was the expected result. The more unpredictable election was in Ealing. Labour began with a majority of 11,000 and by the end of the night they held the seat with a majority of only 3,000. The Liberal Democrats came second and the Conservative, who put a huge amount of effort into this seat, including speculating they may even win it or at elase come a close second, ended up a fairly miserable third.
For Labour there will be some releif they have held both seats. A Governemnt defending seats in a by election is always very difficult. It reinforces the polling evidence that while new PM Gordon Brown is doing well with a steady as she goes approach and is not yet at least scaring anyone away as some in the Labour party had feared, some his opponenets had hoped he might do.
For the Liberal Democrats it is a mixed bag. They will have hoped to run Labour closer in Sedgefield as it was clear from the off they were the main challengers there. In Ealing they will have been pleased to secure a resonable second, cutting Labour's majority and holding off the Conervatives push to move ahead of them. Having said that, passed experience shows this is the sort of seat that in the past they have actually won in by elections. There by election strategy is a formidable one but on this occasion had not had any huge impact. Liberal leader Ming Cambell will still have plenty of critics on the back of this, but has done just about enough for now to remain leader.
The biggest impact of these results will be on the Tories. Leader David Cameron has from day one tried to make the Conservatives approach a softer and in many ways more Liberal approach. His right-wing critics are already getting the knives out. They state the Conservatives are being punished for not being Conservative enough and state Cameron must do this to get his act together.
Are these critics correct however. In the last couple of weeks the Conservative coverage in the news has been all about exactly the sort of issues these critics have been going on about. I discussed the alcohol tax in a previous entry on here, an attempt to stop 'binge-drinking,' exactly the sort of issue the moral right like to talk about. Cameron has also committed himself to tax breaks specifically for married couples, something these same people fully support. Since these measures were introduced, Labour have taken the lead in the polls and the Consevratives have fallen behind.
Why would this be if traditional Conservatove polices are needed as Cameron's critics suggest? The reality is probably that the sort of voters Cameron has been targeting with his new approach, do not like the moralising that goes with the sort of measures that came out of Iain Duncan-Smith's report. These ideas of the moral right are why the Tories are behind, are why they did so badly on Thursday. The irony of Thursday is those who cirticise Cameron for Thursday, are actually the people who have pushed Cameron into backing ideas that have come out in the last couple of weeks. It is they who are to blame for Thursday's failure, not what Cameron was doing before this point.
We are in a strange position in politics right now. Usually the Governemnt and what it does drive the political temperature. Not now though. Brown is a caution man and will continue to play safe, it is what the opposition leader Mr Cameron does that will be the key. The right will use this result as a means of trying to push the Conservtives towards more of the sort of ideas we have seen in the last two weeks, they don't understand that this is the reason why Cameron is now struggling. Now we will see if Cameron is really fit for Governemnt. Does he have the courage to decisively ignore and defeat his critics, or will he cave in some more, and hand Gordon Brown an easy ride on a plate?
