Why are by-elections called; what myths and misconceptions surround them; and how much do they shed light on the national political picture?
I was grateful to be joined by Marc Collinson for this episode - lecturer in contemporary politics and history at Bangor University - to tackle these questions and many more.
Hope you enjoy the discussion!
Recommendations:
Why are by-elections called; what myths and misconceptions surround them; and how much do they shed light on the national political picture?
I was grateful to be joined by Marc Collinson for this episode - lecturer in contemporary politics and history at Bangor University - to tackle these questions and many more.
Hope you enjoy the discussion!
Recommendations:
Welcome to the Modern British Political History podcast. Again, I'm joined by guest. We've got a topic that I know very little about, so I'm joined by Mark Collinson, who's a lecturer at Bangor University. Welcome to the podcast, mark. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks very much for the invitation, Harry. Really nice to be here and to discuss this in a bit more depth.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Could you just tell us to start with actually a little bit about your research interests, particularly in this topic of bi-elections?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no worries at all. So yeah, I started a few years ago as a PhD at Bangor looking at the Labour Party and immigration and race relations and things like that, and just ended up going on a divergence looking at contests like Smeve, glitt and Ilford North, some of which I'm sure we'll be discussing later in this podcast and just in doing that I've got really fascinated about this idea of place and politics, this linkage between the constituency and how people in a constituency vote, and then this how we talk about politics. We talk about this in such a national, almost Americanised way that there's a homogenous, unified outcome, when actually it's a bit more complicated and I think the term I quite like at the minute is it's a bit of a patchwork how British democracy works. So I think, yeah, it's just, that's how I came to this really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I remember, I think, when we talked about doing this episode. I always think that politics starts at the local and people feel politics, don't they? Usually at more the local level. Yes, there's the big national elections, which get a lot of the news attention, but actually a lot of what people think about are very parochial issues. You know about bin collections, equality of the roads, all of those kind of issues which are the bread and butter of bi-elections, aren't they?
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a sense, and I think another way to think about it is that even the most national issue is refracted through some sort of local context. Often defence will be a big issue if you're closing a military base in that town or in that area. You know what I mean. If there's a direct linkage to the locality, that's when it gains a lot of like purchase among voters. In a sense, it's not often, you know, people are like thinking about it necessarily in that big, wider frame. It's how it affects local. So I think, yeah, as you're right, and that Tipo-Aneel line will suppose Tipo-Aneel line about how politics is local, isn't it? That's a big sort of way to see it. So, yeah, I think that's really important, as you say.
Speaker 1:So, to set the groundwork, what is a bi-election?
Speaker 2:mark. Well, I mean, this is the thing. I went to the place where you should all go. I went to the House of Parliament website just to double check. I knew what was, and it's sort of. It's definitely quite straightforward.
Speaker 2:It's a UK parliamentary bi-election happens with a seat in the House of Commons, because they can between general elections simple as in a sense. Now, this often happens when and they give some very interesting suggestions it's when an MP resigns or dies in office, and the resignation is something we could talk about later. That process, because there is a bit of a niche where that happens. If that MP is declared bankrupt, they can be removed from the House of Commons. If they take a seat in the House of Lords if they're what the term is kicked upstairs, that can be another reason that opens a bi-election, and again, I've got a couple of examples of that we could discuss later and also if they're convicted of a serious criminal offence.
Speaker 2:There's also this situation that we've seen more recently. The recent legislation has brought in this way, where voters can remove an MP as well for a recall process. This is something quite interesting. Interestingly, though and this is one that a lot of people always pick up on. An MP doesn't have to face a bi-election just because they change party. They can what's called cross the floor, they can join another party in the House of Commons, but they are still representing that constituency when they do that, if that helps.
Speaker 1:And give us a sense of the timescale that a bi-election normally takes place over and what some of the key milestones you'd expect to have. So I guess you'd have some situation, I guess where it needs to be called and whether that's resignation and then going on to starting some campaign. But give us a sense of some of the key milestones and the timeline it usually takes place across.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this can be done quite politically in a sense. Usually what happens is it's the government or the opposition, whoever's MP it is, their chief whip sort of has a lot of say over when it can be. It's never quite clear how long you could possibly leave a seat unrepresented, in a sense, but often the timing can be managed for advantage and historically there's been suggestions that often has been done the idea of you don't want to call it immediately, or you might leave it a while, or you might think actually things are getting worse, let's have it as soon as possible. There's a lot of calculation as inductive. All politics is calculation and I think there is a sense that the bi-election and its timing often is a classic case of that.
Speaker 1:Who typically controls the timing? Would it be the government that has most of their weight in controlling that, or would it be either party?
Speaker 2:Well, it's an interesting process. So if an MP resigns, they basically have to take up. There's two crown officers which they don't technically resign. They take an appointment to a crown office. When they take that sort of crown appointment, they then forfeit their MP ship, as it were. So they have to sort of, in a sense, go and a bi-election is called. At that point, however, it's the chief whip of that party that have sort of called the election, so it's all done by the whips, which obviously it's this great, fantastic informality of British politics. The whipping system is fantastic in that sense it's in some ways an acridism, but in some ways it sort of oils the wheels of the parliamentary system.
Speaker 2:It allows that sort of discussion and negotiation to come in. I suppose that's how the British constitution works in a way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's that kind of element of the constitution being quite a patchwork thing that's been created over time and is not a set written down element. It sounds like some elements around bi-elections feed in a bit to that. Are there any common misconceptions about bi-elections? I think you mentioned one up front, but were there any others that you point out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this is something that's sort of very fun but historically very procedural process because it's filling an empty seat in a sense and it seems quite basic. But then how that happens has changed over time, and I mean because we have this sort of fantastic constitution we talked about before. In terms of that it has developed organically over such a long period of time. Things change and things tweak. So I mean, interesting fact is sort of between sort of 1708 and 1926, if you were an MP and you were appointed a cabinet minister or just a minister in the government generally you automatically vacate your seat and have to fight a bi-election. It's just one of those very strange sort of procedural things. So in a sense, when you look into the past, bi-elections happen more often, but they're actually for quite this very procedural reason and I think this really has changed in the post-war period. Something that always occurs to me when I've been looking into this is it seems to be since the 60s, which is synonymous with the sort of rise in predictive polling.
Speaker 2:Using polling to predict the next election. A bi-election is a handy moment to kind of it's an actual election where you can test your sort of mathematical formula on it, in a sense.
Speaker 1:And what about turnout? Because I guess the general view is that there's not a huge amount of turnout with bi-elections. Is that fair? Are there times where actually it really captures a constituency's imagination and you actually have a really big turnout, or is it generally the case that they tend to have a lower turnout?
Speaker 2:I think that's an interesting point, and what you actually have is usually, more often than not, it is a lower number. However, what you do sometimes have is you don't necessarily always know who they are. It's only when you look at the result and you can see maybe the opposition party have a good turnout, but the governing party, for various reasons, might have a poor turnout, so that almost the percentages are shifted. Sometimes you will have a situation where you know if the opposition wins, they've had a really good turnout in percentage terms, but then if you look at the numbers of votes, maybe it's not actually that. So this is the problem of using percentages, in a sense, and it's something we can think sort of, let's say, butler for sort of that innovation of using percentages. We all sometimes don't see the raw data. It's the percentage we see first, which can be quite fascinating.
Speaker 2:And another misconception typically on your point as well is that the referendum is the by-elections, are a referendum on government performance. Is it, or is that just how we're wanting to see it? Issues of local change, economic issues, political resets, perhaps you know like all these things can come in. I think it's going back to that point we made. We chatted about earlier, this idea of the sort of representation in Britain being a patchwork, not a monolith. Just because the people of Halifax vote a certain way, it doesn't mean those in Dover and Merionev would agree or be motivated by similar concerns. And that's often the problem with interpreting by elections. Unless you know that locality, how can you weigh up the pertinence of the vote in that area or on its national sort of impact?
Speaker 1:And that leads to the next question I had, which is about are there any ways that the by-elections are reported that, as someone who studies them in more detail, you find aren't really quite right or can be frustrating? I mean, one might be that I guess that point, that they're often seen as a signal of what the national trend is, but I guess maybe that's not. That's often not the case, as you say. But are there any other ways where by-elections are commonly reported where you think, oh, that's not quite right really?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the thing for me is it's this used to try to prove, disprove, pull them, because often they're just so disconnected and I think that can be quite problematic, although I wouldn't say that that never, it never has a significance. So in 1966, in the first few months of that year, there's a by-election in Hull and Harold Wilson is quite impressed with his result there and he calls the 1996 election basically off the back of it. He thinks the polls have been telling me I'm doing well, but am I doing well? This by-election happens in Hull and he's oh, we are doing well, let's give it a go, and he wins the majority of 1996. The gambling element comes in there as well, but he doesn't know it to be true. But he's reading the runes of the by-election. He thinks this seems like pretty good.
Speaker 1:Let's get into some chunky, concrete examples with this. So one I think is I definitely like to cover, which I know you spent a long time thinking about, is Smethick. There might be, you know, one or two others we want to get into, but maybe we could start with Smethick and use that as a bit of a case study to draw out some themes and common lessons you get from by-elections.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, see, this is an interesting one. This is one you've very nicely led me into an interesting sort of bug about it, but like it's a thing with Smethick Because Smethick's not actually a by-election, which is always quite an interesting one, but this is something that gets repeated in the press a lot, this isn't. This is like a common misconception, I think, because it has this weak, strange pertinence and because stuff that happens there it's like to race and immigration and this idea that it's gained a lot of purchasing in the constituency, I think that it looks like a by-election. It sounds like a by-election but actually it's just another contest, one of 650 or whatever in the 1964 election. But it does have that similar effect, I think.
Speaker 2:If you look at the Layton by-election a few weeks later, the MP defeated the Smethick Patrick Gordon Walker is they. Basically they make the MP of Layton become a member of the House of Lords and try to shift him there, and very much race migration are talked about as the reasons he loses there. But when you actually start to look at a lot of the archival material left behind the press coverage, there's actually a lot of other stuff going on at the time in Layton but people are very cheesed off at the MP they voted for 10 weeks previously has now been sent to the House of Lords to make room for this other bloke, and a lot of the other issues then come out. There's also an issue where Labour in the 1964 election say we're going to rise, we're going to increase the pension, and then they say, well, actually we've all got money, so we'll leave that till March in 2065, but we'll increase the MP's pay.
Speaker 1:Never a vote winner really, in my experience.
Speaker 2:No, so the very can the MP so it looks like a Conservative candidate in Layton really takes advantage of this. He's going around saying God, look at all this, what's going on? They won't give you. And to add to insult to injury, layton has a 25% of population of Layton are over 60, and they're about either drawing or about to draw old age pension.
Speaker 2:So again it has all of these little bits of local information. Tell you, maybe, why it happens. The actual issue of race is actually not really connected, but it's brought in because it's so close to central London. You have people from far right groups turning up and crashing meetings and things like that. So the press jump on this and see well, this is exciting, but actually that's not the real issue. So I think your point's very interesting about this Smevitt-Late and kind of sort of period. It's a very interesting sort of examples.
Speaker 1:So that's Smevitt was in the 60s, wasn't it? Is there one you point to maybe bring us forward a little bit further in the timeline, a sort of more modern example?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you can take an interesting example might be the 78 contest in Milford North I've done some work on. That's another sort of classic example where everyone's thinking, oh, what's? You know a game, migration race, get a peer here. But is it that significant? It doesn't seem to be. And when you actually look at the constituency, a lot of the way that election is discussed it's discussed to show that Margaret Fatcher is processing towards power. Another conservative by-election when Margaret Fatcher's won several. Now it's looking good, she's securing the vote, she's moving towards the general election. But actually the seat has been conservative for most of the post-war period and the interwar period as well, in the sense that the fact that the Conservatives lose it in 1974 is more interesting than Margaret Fatcher retaking a candidate retaking the seat in 1978. So you know, so you have this interesting element of people maybe seeing something as a great victory. But is it just? Actually? The previous result was a bit of an aberration, a bit unusual perhaps. And it strikes you another way.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of this. There's that psychological point that you see with it that humans tend to love narrative. They tend to like patterns, don't they? So if they can find a way and I guess the way that by-elections are reported, if there is a way of fitting it into a wider theme of government in chaos or opposition parties on the rise, those kind of some of those classic narrative, and generally they will won't they Definitely and I mean this classic was.
Speaker 2:I mean the sixties I draw back to, but also ones in the eighties. There's some great examples of this, of new parties using by-elections as a way into power the Liv Dems and the Liberal Party, its predecessor. If we go to the eighties as well, we could look at Warrington and Glasgow Hillhead, where Roy Jenkins has contested in these constituencies for the SDP in the early 1980s. And the SDP are desperate for by-election victories to prove that it's the right decision. They've got this 1983 election coming up.
Speaker 2:Margaret Factory is really unpopular before the Falklands War. So the SDP for them to, as they like to say, break the mold of British politics. It's all right saying yes, we'll break the mold of British politics, but you need to show it and there's a lot of risk involved. There's previous elections that don't quite go the same way. So I think it's very interesting. And Warrington, they don't win, warrington, they just miss out and Jenkins then succeeds at Hillhead sort of later on in 1982. But you know, and it's a really interesting sort of period, how these things can be used to try and give legitimacy, I suppose, to issues and to you know, sort of nascent political operations.
Speaker 1:And to what extent do small parties, do you think, do better in by-elections? Because my assumption and you tell me how wrong or right this is that small parties can be good at by-elections because they can really focus in and maybe focus in on a particular issue and maybe they're more fleet of foot than a large party, they can move and change and they're not as beholden to a sort of heavy, cumbersome leadership structure. Perhaps, but what do you think about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's something in that. I sort of touched it before. The Liberals and the Liberals, the Liberal Democrats from the late 50s almost with the Torrington by-election in 58 onwards, they really develop a talent for this and I think what it is is. It's almost the inverse of what you're saying. I think the fleet of foot thing, but it's also shoestring element as well they can actually focus all the resources that they have rather than spreading it nationwide where they can't really, which they struggle at in general elections. You look at the Liberal Party minutes and that's like a constant conversation. But when you're looking at how they throw themselves into a by-election like at Torrington, where Mark Bonham Carter is successful, he loses it in the next election but it lays out a point. You look at all. Pincton is picked up on as a big thing, the all Pincton by-election in 62, it's this scene is this great moment of the Liberals are back, macmillan's in trouble, you know, and that suits Harold Wilson, of course, to allow that story to go out there and would you?
Speaker 1:to what extent do you think smaller parties use by-elections as a rare opportunity, because you said it's hard, isn't it for small parties to get any airtime? To what extent do they use it? Is that opportunity to get some media attention?
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely, that really does happen. I mean, you have a situation in 69 in Birmingham, ladywood. There's a guy, wallace Lawler. He's a Liberal candidate. He's not that Liberal really, but he's a Liberal sort of candidate and he wins this by-election because basically the constituency's in a really bad way and the Labour have held it for a while and they just spot the opportunity and they're able to get a victory out of it. But I think even smaller parties than that.
Speaker 2:You look at the coverage from the 80s in particular and that's why, really, the Monster Rave and Looney Party are known, because they use the by-election as a way to promote themselves and they're just trying to make a point in a way about how the issues with the wider system. There's a really interesting candidate who contests a lot of elections from the late 50s to the sort of mid-80s Bill Bokes and he'll stand under any title really that he thinks will get in votes in the constituency. But the real issue he wants to promote is road safety, which is quite fascinating. There's something very British about that. Somebody who's fought in the Navy in the Second World War is obsessed with road safety and will do anything. He'll throw road safety, monocists, anti-monocists, all sorts of things into his title to get in there.
Speaker 2:Now, his notoriety is most interesting because in 1982, at Glasgow Hillhead, he receives five votes, which is the record of the lowest number of votes of our election which he holds, which is held until the early 90s. So see, it can go off-wairs, but he's remembered as a character, as it were, of that system, which is really interesting in a way that he tells us so much. There's something about Bill Bokes. I think that sort of sits with other issues about British sort of electoral democracy, but we don't do grand things. It's like you're in a school hall, you're in a leisure centre, been told you've lost something. The Prime Minister has 24 hours to get out of his house. There's an element, there's a Heath Robinson kind of feel to it, but candidates like the Montsouris, the Unipartee and Bill Bokes really sit in really fascinatingly in this element of how politics works in Britain.
Speaker 1:It does seem very British, doesn't it, seeing politicians be kind of brought down a peg or two in a sense by being actually not in huge, illustrious surroundings. It feels very British as well, the kind of those kind of quite anarchy issues becoming coming quite big things. And the last thing as well is could there be much that's more kind of characteristic of the country than celebrating the sort of glorious defeat of someone getting up like getting five votes as well feels that you can see the people enjoying that and getting behind that, something about the underdog maybe.
Speaker 2:And it even comes into popular culture. There's an episode in the third series of Black Haders, set in the Regency period, where there's an entire skit around this by-election in Donnie on the wall. And they go so far and it's become such a cultural reference point that what they do is to make it funnier. They get the journalist Vincent Hannah, who basically spends the early 80s going around by-elections with a camera, basically going up and interviewing candidates and turning it into a bit of a circus. And they get Vincent Hannah in. They dress him up as like a Regency gentleman and journalist and he's by presenting from an open window the results of the by-election in the style of an election results coverage night. So even the way it's done it develops almost a ritual and a process that I think really, like you say, it's very evocative of that British system of government that's familiar in a way.
Speaker 1:Are there any examples of very small parties or those kind of joke parties almost winning or doing better than they should that you a particularly memorable point out?
Speaker 2:don't worry if you don't have any, but just something that came to mind, I mean, I think you know, a way to see it as well is if you're looking at the issues of the nationalist parties in the 60s. If, like Henry the SMP, I don't think anyone was really expecting it. I don't think anyone was expecting them to win, I think it does really really shakes it up a bit. You've got a really interesting one in the general election. But the 1922 general election. You have an interesting thing where the prohibitionist party in Scotland win a seat, for example. You know so these things do, sort of prohibition of alcohol, well, yeah, and it beats Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill loses to the prohibitionist party in 1922. Is there some irony?
Speaker 1:that Churchill was renowned for being quite a heavy drinker.
Speaker 2:Yes, I can recall that quite like really shocked it. I suppose there's an interesting one in the 70s where you have Victor Fern, the Lincoln MP. He's a Labour MP but basically he votes to go into Europe and his local party don't like it, so they try to deselect him and he basically decides well, no, he resigns to fight a by-election and he manages to win it on very few people to fight a by-election on European unity in the early 1970s. So you do get these sort of strange one-issue things going on as well.
Speaker 1:Gosh, yeah, that is, that is brave. What tactics then which we've lent into a bit, but let's get into this fully tend to be used and tend to be effective when campaigning in by-election? So we, you know, I know there's kind of very parochial local issues and you can be hyperlocal or you can find some. You know that I guess a classic one would be kind of the hospital that's closing down that you can defend. But yeah, give us a sense of what tactics tend to be used and what you think are some of the most powerful ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's definitely it. It's that local issue and I think you tend to see a linkage between by-election a party maybe winning a by-election they didn't vote before. When they find that sort of wedge issue, that issue where they can really pull people together, Then it's not the only issue and the discussion by any realm, realm of imagination, but it somehow manages to pull everything together quite. You talked about narratives earlier, Harry. It brings everything together in a sort of nice narrative.
Speaker 2:And so to go back to when the Liberals, historically, were very good at this, the Liberal Party, I've done a bit of work on them in Liverpool, but they did. This was a process that they then they spread beyond Liverpool and they use in the sort of 70s by-election. They had these sort of sheets, these sort of focus sheets. They still use them and they would write how these newsletters they can deliver and it would be said these are the local problems. They might go around taking pictures of potholes or taking pictures of damaged buildings or whatever, and they would bring it down to the local, as you're saying. And then what you do then, once you've got that issue emphasized, you throw the kitchen sink at it.
Speaker 2:There's some really interesting stuff in Kristinaard's memoir, who used to be Chief Executive of the Lib Dems and Embryers ago, and he talks a lot about this, about how they would throw everything at it and they become almost by-election specialists. In a sense it's a way for them to get in and it works really well in years when, say, one party has won the most recent general election so the other party is unpopular, but because this new party is in power and they're having to do difficult things, neither party are very popular. So then you get a great moment where, if a by-election falls there, both parties are a bit unpopular. So if you can sort of then build yourself up as the plucky underdog, as you were saying earlier, that's the way you can get it, get it, get things done in a way.
Speaker 1:And my assumption would be it's best to be not the government in a by-election. That usually governments get and that's a common media story. Usually governments get a hammering in by-election. To what extent is that true?
Speaker 2:It's pretty true. You have occasional instances where governments won by-election, I think although there was one in recent years, and I think that was the first one since the early 80s where the governing party had won a by-election. But again, this is a very modern phenomenon. Clement Atley's government never loves to by-election, as far as I'm aware.
Speaker 1:So you know it's a very modern phenomenon in that sense.
Speaker 2:Obviously, that's not like saying before that was all of this the case as well, but there are instances where, yeah, it doesn't necessarily follow.
Speaker 1:I'm interested in the modern element. If you were speculating, why do you think it is that more recently it does tend to go in that anti-government direction and then back in the 40s, less so. Is it something about the 24-hour media or something else?
Speaker 2:You see, I think that's the easy answer.
Speaker 1:That's what I would jump to, but yeah what do you think?
Speaker 2:I would say that's got some pertinence. I think the media, the change in media. But I think it's a different element and it ties into something else. I would say it is a sense of how we talk about politics nationally and how parliamentary politics has become the core of how we are governed. You look back to the 1940s and in the 1940s it's only at that point local governments are very powerful still.
Speaker 1:It's very powerful.
Speaker 2:And your local government up to the 1970s. That sucks up a lot of discontent. You know they're having elections every year. Everyone knows what's local government, Everyone knows what's national government.
Speaker 2:I'd say that maybe one of the downsides of what's happened since 1972 reorganization of local government is that local government doesn't seem to be equal in the same way as maybe it used to be and therefore people don't really know who's fault. You know, and because obviously since the 70s central government got more involved in local government finance, so that muddies the waters again, People maybe don't see local government as being local enough. Back when the council was for the town that you're in, it's obvious who's who. But when you start talking about these areas that are created, these new counties, new boroughs that are created across the country that have no real historical origin, in a sense I think that has done a lot and linked to that, to your press point, you look at newspapers up to sort of late 70s, early 80s.
Speaker 2:Local newspapers are really rich. Like you know, if you're doing post-war British history, they're a fantastic source because people actually read them and they were sort of a. They filled that sort of Habermasian void of the centre point between the people and the government and discussion and all that kind of thing, Like they weren't really important. But local newspapers don't seem to have that. It's sad because they're sort of lack of them. Not being there means that the National Press dominate and therefore that kind of obfuscates a bit I would. That'd be my view on what I've seen.
Speaker 1:That brings us on actually to thinking a little bit about. We talked about tactics in terms of what issues do you focus on, but in terms of tactics, about what channels you use, to what extent does it look similar to it, to the national? Is it what you'd expect? That there's a combination of and I'm thinking more, I guess a bit more modern, that there's growing use of digital and and other media channels, but then I guess it's very that it's very local, isn't it as well? But by election. So maybe, maybe you really want to be Really doing the traditional stuff, really going door-to-door, because you, it's very locally focused. So, yeah, what are some of the media channels that that tend to be used?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I suppose in recent years TV has become more, you know, significant as it, and then obviously, the Internet has Transformed again. I think there was a lot of hope, wasn't there, that social media would maybe Allow us to move back to more so the local conversation. How long that, how that works, I don't know. There's been a lot of work done looking at in the American context, looking at how peps, facebook communities play in, people discussing issues, and I suppose this idea of people being inside loads to some extent people sort of group think, coming in as well, so that there's interesting ideas out. I'm not something I looked at specifically in the period I've looked at, but I think there are interesting issues about in the modern world, about what technology is using, how issues game pertinence, but I don't mean to some extent, I'm not gonna say it's magical, but there is like a something unquantifiable certainly about how an issue just seems to Take grip of the voters in this.
Speaker 2:How do you, like you say, you picked up on the hospital earlier? That's a classic, isn't it? The local hospital because I suppose there was a politician wasn't there in was it 2001?
Speaker 2:2010? Richard Taylor he was the NMP Somewhere in the East Midlands and he basically was saved the local hospital. That was his like thing and he won, and he won a couple of my elections. I suppose you've got 97. You've got Martin Bell taking on sort of Neil Hamilton there's some veteran war correspondent because he was arguing that there were issues with Hamilton and issues of how he'd been performing and how he'd been dealing and ideas of perhaps Improprieties, maybe, or suggested improprieties, you know. So you do sometimes get these sort of candidates going in the personal as well, going for the person who's in the seat at the time.
Speaker 1:And on that, has there been any shift with by elections from, let's say, post-second world war to to more modern, so the early 2000s? Do you think there's been any shift in the reason why by elections are called? You know we've talked about some of them, about types of resignation, as there've been any shift in how much one reason tends to predominate as for why prior elections are called?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean those points I was making before. I think they're linked, sort of our general election contest.
Speaker 2:Well, he did start to make like about parties, but just I don't want to make it look like I've suggested something. Otherwise I think what you're saying there is really interesting. Has that changed? There's all this sense, isn't there, of deference and perhaps Probity and things like that, and there's, but there's always been questions about those sort of issues. I think in some ways maybe how they'd be discussed in the press would be different. But I think MPs on the whole tend to resign for broadly similar issues.
Speaker 2:There's, there's a mix of issues that come up. It can be linked to Resigning further opportunities. Some people resigned to take Jobs elsewhere, that there were people, that there's. People think someone at Liverpool, scotland, in the 1970s, resigned to take up a regional trade union job or something. Anyway, that doesn't tend to happen so much now, but you have had someone I think quite recently was resigned to take up the chair and ship of a sort of health board or something. So I suppose that can happen sometimes. I've not heard of anyone resigning. I don't know of anyone in recent years resigning from being declared bankrupt, but that historically was a thing. I suppose it's that moral element, isn't it On that sort of Victorian ideas of probity, that a bankrupt would not be someone you would trust With the nation's affairs. You don't tend to see, I suppose, in the same way, people technically besieting the House of Lords. In the same way, I suppose since 1999 hereditary peerage isn't a thing and historically the House of Commons was where the second sons would go or the first ones would go before they inherited. It's a couple of teeth in a sense. So you would have that. I mean.
Speaker 2:There's an interesting tale, I suppose from the 60s, with Tony Ben, of course who he was. He was an MP in Bristol South East and then in 1961 his father dies and he becomes like outstands get. He automatically has to go up there to the Lords, but he doesn't want to. Then there's a gentleman's agreement with him and the conservative candidate who wins that obviously if he changed the law We'll have another by-election. So Ben campaigns to change the law so that you can disclaim a peerage, which is successful. There's an argument, it's only successful so that I do assume can become Prime Minister, and then they do have a by-election 63 and Ben wins. There's an interesting link to the House of Lords. I think that's an interesting element that perhaps, as you're saying, maybe doesn't happen in the same way anymore. There's been some examples in recent years, of course, of people being given a peerage, the end of the premises, tenure or whatever. But that's unusual. They usually leave to the end of a parliament sort of resignation on us when they've stood down, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:I was going to take us on to the last question, which is the big one, I think, is how much do by-elections matter? So you'll know better than me, mark. There's the argument you get which sometimes, which is it's a bit of a flash in the pan of by-election, it doesn't really mean too much, and you've made some arguments actually in this podcast about you know, actually you can't draw too much. It might not impact on the national as much as maybe some people think, or it might not reflect the national trend as much as people think, but how much do you think they matter? And I assume you know you will think they matter because it's been an area of interest to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, to pick on the words, paraphrase the words of someone who won two by-elections and fought a number of others. I think Roy Jenkins had a very interesting idea about what makes a good Prime Minister, and he said it's a good sense of proportion. And I think a sense of proportion is what's needed when you look at a by-election, and it's just a caution rather than an answer. I think it depends on what you want from them. I think that's what I would say. If it's predicting the election, I wouldn't bother, as we talked about before, less people voting them in the right proportions.
Speaker 1:People love predicting, don't they? I've noticed this so much in a moment. People love to predict and usually they're wrong, aren't they? Yeah?
Speaker 2:and motivations are often different and again, it's this point I've made a couple of times about the sort of the patchwork nature of the electoral system. Each constituency is different and its composition is different and we could have gone down a long conversation about constitutional boundaries being redrawn and how that affects things and all sorts of elements of that. I mean, to some extent I think the predictive sociologist should probably avoid the by-election in terms of what it can do in that way. But as a historian and that's what I'm coming at this from to some extent I think for those interested in the wider socioeconomic stories, you can draw from them and if you're interested in that continued pertinence that links politics and place, I mean they are really important and I think as a voter I would always say as well. We often have these very monolithic assumptions. Going back to Lord Hale's Schirm, again, he had this idea that you have an elective dictatorship, that you know there's an election for five years and in between that, basically, you have no input.
Speaker 2:The by-election shows you can have an input and that it's. Therefore voters do call the shots, and I think what we almost need to do is rethink as you've highlighted at the start, harry, when we were talking about that local, the constituency level it is the only time in the British sort of constitution that there is an actual election. I think that's something I often say to people and they just look at me for that and I'm not thinking about it A political party, a lexical leader, however method it chooses to do it. You know, the House of Lords is elected, the monarchy is elected. The only point in national government where people vote for who governs them is when they vote for their MP, and the by-election is important because it allows for the continuity of that process.
Speaker 2:It's not like in some systems where there's an option. You can't just co-opt somebody in the next person on the list or whatever, as they can do in the Northern Irish system and in sort of the Welsh and Scottish systems, where the lists are there. You just get the next person who was going to be that party's candidate, their number two on the list or whatever. You know you can't do that in a first-past-the-post system, so it's important that it's a method of filling a seat. Yes, but I mean that sits in a much more important element of how representation sits within the British system of government, would be my argument. I don't know if it's convincing.
Speaker 1:I don't know how. It's a good lesson, I feel, lessen for life as well, about treating things within proportion, isn't it as well? These kind of issues. Well, that's been incredibly interesting and definitely I'm a lot further along in understanding this stuff, and I hope people listening to this are as well. Where would you point us to next, then, mark, if we want to learn a little bit more about bi-elections both maybe through any book recommendations, but any other media as well you'd point to?
Speaker 2:I think the classic sort of text. David Butler and John Ramstone did a book on sort of bi-elections of the 20th century. I think that's great. There's a couple of editions of earlier pre-First World War books that are good. Christopher Nard's memoirs are quite good at looking at the Lib Dems and issues like that. Pete Sloman's work, again thinking about elections and the economy Definitely people's. You know I'm not going to plug my own stuff.
Speaker 1:You're completely allowed to privilege it too, if you would like to. I would. It's not something I tend to do.
Speaker 2:But no, there's lots of good stuff out there and also it's just something I think to sort of. The thing I always do, which I think is always quite fun, is if you know the bi-elections somewhere you're interested, the first thing you should do is not read what's on the national newspaper but go to the website of the local newspaper in that area and see what the big issue is. Not that it's going to help you predict it, necessarily, but it might give you a sense of what's going on. What is the sense of the place? Is the place doing really well? Has it been regenerated, or is it somewhere that's struggling? Is it somewhere that's?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of talk of issues of crime, perhaps, or poverty. Maybe you know what I mean. Like you can tell a lot, I think, from a local newspaper. So I'm totally going against what I said earlier about local newspapers no longer being what they were. Maybe to go talk. On your other point about channels, maybe the local press going online is actually quite a good thing, in a way that people can share local stories and that conversation can happen. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1:That's just a bit of a random change for me, some good tips, though, for us, as we maybe will have see more by elections in months and years to come. So I think, with that, then, I think it's time to say goodbye to by elections for the moment, and I also want to say thanks so much, mark, for joining us. This has been incredibly interesting and I have really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for the invitation, harry. I really enjoyed myself.