It's mixed news from the Thursday by-election in Corby (ancestral homeland of both regular commentator Brutal Snake, and free-floating chaos-courting liability Ibb). Obviously, any occasion in which the Tories are defeated and Louise Mensch has to suck lemons can only be a good thing. Interesting that this is the first by-election Labour has won since the last time they were out of power, but then I'm not sure how surprised we should be by that. I'd have thought the opposition would tend to better in such circumstances, since lower voter turn out tends to mean protest votes have a greater weighting than they do in the general. That's true of American midterms, at least, maybe Tomsk has something to add on the matter.
On the other hand, we should consider it a national disgrace that the Elvis Loves Pets party didn't break into triple digits. One more lousy vote! Brutal Snake, I hold you personally responsible. How can anyone not want this man in Westminster?
(Best comment on that video, by the way: "Elvis really, really liked cow.")
I mean sure, Sawford's victory means one less Conservative can stink up the place, but a Bishop victory would resulted in the castration of Boris Johnson, so it's hard not to see this as a missed opportunity.
2 comments:
It's very rare these days (possible always) for a party in government to win a seat they didn't already hold in a by-election (I think the last time that happened was in the 80s), so this story could be written less sensationally as "Labour win by-election seat from the Tories for the first time since the last time they had the chance to".
BigHead is right, but it is surprising that the Tories have lasted two and a half years without having to defend a seat in a by-election. In the same period Labour have had to defend eight plus another three by the end of this month. Statistically that's got to be pretty unlikely, hasn't it?
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