Labour missed an opportunity to fight a by-election in Bury South

The standard routine for an MP defecting to another party is for members of the jilted party to demand that the turncoat submit themselves to a by-election; the MP and their new party say let’s have a general election.

This ritual has been played out many times since 1982 when Bruce Douglas-Mann defected from Labour to the new Social Democratic Party and resigned as an MP to fight the seat under his new colours. He lost to Angela Rumbold, the Conservative candidate, and for decades no defector was keen to repeat the experience.

Not until 2014, when Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless defected from the Conservatives to Ukip, fighting and winning by-elections in their seats. They seemed to be unusual cases in the peculiar circumstances of the agitation for leaving the EU, although Reckless subsequently lost his seat in the 2015 general election.

So when Christian Wakeford crossed the floor of the Commons last week, I thought little of the Tory demands for him to stand in a by-election, and dismissed the fuss about his having in the past advocated requiring a by-election when an MP changes parties as part of the usual theatre of defection. A defecting MP always has a number of past views and votes to disown.

But Sunder Katwala suggested on Twitter that Wakeford ought to fight a by-election in his constituency, Bury South, because he would win it.

I realised I had been so trapped in the conventional way of thinking that I hadn’t considered the advantages for Labour. The party could fight a by-election campaign against a government stumbling through stories of lockdown parties and double standards. Bury South is a marginal seat – Wakeford’s majority as a Tory was just 402 votes. On current national opinion polls, Labour should win it easily – not least because, as Jordan Tyldesley reports, local people think highly of Wakeford.

I suppose cautious Keir Starmer didn’t want to take the risk, or more importantly didn’t want to set a precedent in case other Tory MPs in safer Tory seats defected to him in the future. After all, when Alan Howarth and Shaun Woodward defected to New Labour, not even Tony Blair, miles ahead in the opinion polls, risked by-elections in their Stratford-on-Avon and Witney seats. They switched to safe Labour seats for the following general elections.

Or maybe Wakeford didn’t want to do it. But I think Labour missed an opportunity to show a confident face to the electorate and create another wave in the sea of troubles threatening to wash Boris Johnson away.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator