With the House of Commons finally getting round to having the Second Reading debate on the Bus Services Bill on 1 March, we are making renewed progress with its passage through parliament.
I’ll have some observations on the quality of the debate once it’s over, and on the level of interest by our elected representatives. But I’m not holding my breath. More on this next week.
This week I have to comment on the results of the Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent by-elections on 23 February. By any yardstick, the Copeland result was catastrophic for Labour. The party has held this constituency since it was created in 1983.
The previous constituency of Whitehaven was also a Labour stronghold, apart from a total landslide in the 1931 general election when part of the Labour Party remained in government with the Conservatives led by Ramsey Macdonald in a National Government. The last Conservative elected for the area was in 1924.
However, despite this and to be fair to Labour, perhaps you couldn’t describe Copeland as a ‘rock solid’ Labour stronghold. The party’s majorities at the 1983 and 1987 general elections were less than 2,000, and it was only at the 1997 general election when Tony Blair achieved his famous landslide that Labour really achieved more secure majorities.
Nonetheless, this is still a dire result for Labour. It is the first by-election gain by a governing party since 1982. And it was the best by-election performance by a governing party in terms of its increase in the share of the vote since 1966.
Governments are not meant to perform well in by-elections.
It’s the traditional opportunity for the electorate to give the government a good kicking, and after almost seven years of a Conservative Prime Minister overseeing a programme of austerity, Labour should have run away with this by-election.
But it lost. If ever it was needed, this provides clear, irrefutable evidence that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable.
Labour held Stoke-on-Trent, but even here the result was hardly convincing, with a modest majority of 2,620 and a swing against Labour of almost 12%, although the turnout was depressingly low at just 38%.
But the real talking point with this result is UKIP’s performance. They had high hopes of winning given that Stoke recoded the highest Brexit vote in last year’s EU referendum.
You surely have to start asking this question: With Brexit still at the top of the political agenda, if UKIP can’t win a seat like this when Labour is in such disarray, when can it?
Indeed, UKIP only scraped into second place ahead of the Conservatives by 89 votes. UKIP is, in truth, a single-issue party. Its mission is accomplished.
Theresa May only has a modest majority of 12 in the House of Commons, but she is currently unassailable. Her grip on British politics is hugely strengthened.
