Welcome to the new MP for Aberdeen South – the forgotten by-election with all the fuss made about one in Lancashire somewhere, but more special than that. The Nationalists were shown the door by a new Conservative. Welcome Douglas Lumsden.
(I have to say, thinking about the Lancastrian one, that electing Andy Burnham to parliament was a bit of an extreme way to get rid of a disastrous Metropolitan Mayor. Still, that is what they have done. To replace one failed Labour government with, erm, the same one.)
They say it is the first Conservative Westminster by-election win in Scotland since 1967 – that is astounding as you would think they would happen oftener, but maybe because Conservatives have for most of that time been the ones in power and by-elections are about kicking the government, and somehow with the wedge being driven through British society, the Tories have been portrayed as ‘the English party’. That is a sad development. Scotland used to be heavily Conservative, and many of the Conservatives’ leading lights have been, and are, Scots (if you can even make a distinction, after centuries of mixing). If we carry on like this, with Reform showing strongest south of Berwick and the Tories north, maybe the Conservatives will be ‘the Scottish party’.
Hard work, over an extended period, becoming known on the doorstep – these are the keys to a Conservative local campaign. It is hard to despite a distant caricature when its embodiment is standing on your doorstep charming your boots off. That is the way it was won.
You would have to speak to those actually on the doorstep to know the full story, of why this part of the city used to vote for nationalist socialists, and then came to their senses. It is a transformation that hints at something in the weirdness of the electoral system. It can be examined in detail – except that all the attention is on Mr Flip-Flop 2, who won in Makerfield.
It was not all good news: the nationalist socialists won again in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (and Broughty Ferry so polite a place!) As we knew she would, their winning candidate spoke of ending division in the nation, by dividing the nation. Apparently these things make sense to politicians. Sigh and move on.
See also
- Two-Year Keir
- Gorton Bennett, what was that?
- Fantasy league politics
- Honest, Georgian elections
- The fine at of pop-up journalism (4 December 2019)
- Letterboxes, endless letterboxes (9 December 2019)
- The Last Tory Government? (3 December 2019)
- Boris unleashed (25 November 2019)
- The Borisiad
Books
- By Boris Johnson:
- The Borisaurus: The Dictionary of Boris Johnson by Simon Walter
- Woke: A Guide to Social Justice by Titania McGrath
- The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity by Douglas Murray
- Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay (1841)
- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Jordan B Peterson
- All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class by Tim Shipman
- Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union by Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley
- Brexit: How the Nobodies Beat the Somebodies by Sebastian J. Handley
- By David Cameron:
- For the Record
- Cameron on Cameron
- For the Record by David Cameron
