Reform UK’s ballot box failure continues
Posted by admin978 on March 3, 2023 · Leave a Comment
Yesterday’s local by-elections offered further confirmation that Reform UK is not making any impact in real contests (as opposed to opinion polls and friendly promotion on GB News).
In Belgrave ward, Tamworth, RefUK’s Ian Cooper polled 40 votes (4.1%), finishing fourth of five candidates. The protest vote seems to have gone instead to an Independent candidate who finished a strong third with 25.8%. On a split vote, the Tory just about held on to the seat with 34.8%.
This is a ward that UKIP contested six times during 2014-2021, on three occasions polling over 20%. It has tended to be a Con-Lab marginal, and the intervention of an Independent cost Labour what would otherwise have been a probable gain in present circumstances.
Further evidence from our movement’s standpoint that there is a substantial public mood of “plague on both your houses”, and that unlike UKIP and the Brexit Party in their day, RefUK is failing to mobilise that mood.
In the Watling South division of Staffordshire, which includes Belgrave ward but is usually a safer Tory seat, RefUK’s Barry Gwilt polled 110 votes (6.0%), finishing 4th of 4. Gwilt is a borough councillor in Lichfield, elected as a Tory, who defected to RefUK last month, so you would expect him to be far better than the average RefUK candidate (his borough council ward is adjacent to this county division). Therefore, although his 6% is in line with national opinion poll scores for RefUK, it actually suggests that RefUK’s true nationwide position is considerably below 6%. (Again the Tory held on, with a sharply reduced majority over Labour.)
Meanwhile the strange case of the Mosleyite who became a Tory county councillor ended in a fairly respectable vote for ex-Cllr Andy Weatherhead in Hythe West, Kent. After being ‘exposed’ a few months ago as a former activist in New British Union (a party inspired by the legacy of Sir Oswald Mosley), Mr Weatherhead resigned from the council and contested this week’s by-election as an independent, which readers might consider either brave, principled or foolish since there was nothing to prevent him serving out his term until May 2025, even after the Tories had thrown him out.
Mr Weatherhead finished bottom of the poll, but was far from disgraced, polling 237 votes (6.6%). Voters were faced with a confusing ballot paper, because there was another Independent – a former UKIP candidate, Ian Meyers, who finished fourth with 306 votes (8.6%).
It’s interesting that Meyers had not chosen to join RefUK or any of the other UKIP splinters but has ploughed a lone furrow, and that both he and Mr Weatherhead achieved votes that RefUK might envy. Again this suggests that the RefUK brand name doesn’t really add much to a dissident/populist campaign.
The big headline in Hythe was that the Greens gained the seat from the Tories, with a 12.5% swing. This has for some years been a Con-Green marginal – the Greens won it in 2017, only for Andy Weatherhead to take it back as a Tory in 2021 – so in present circumstances the result was no great surprise, though for the Green to win it by almost 500 votes was pretty impressive.
This is part of Michael Howard’s old constituency Folkestone & Hythe, presently held by technology minister Damian Collins, and it’s difficult to imagine it being anything other than Tory at the next general election. It’s surprising that the nationalist movement (racial or civic) hasn’t made more impact in these coastal areas, given the migrant crisis. Perhaps locals dislike ‘nationalist’ protesters arriving in their area from London, even more than they dislike immigrants?
