In 2016 the television actress Tracy Brabin was elected as Labour MP for Batley and Spen, the constituency in which I live. (It has now been re-drawn to become Spen Valley.). In 2022 M/s Brabin decided she would rather be, or the Labour Party thought she had the best chance of winning the election for, the Mayor West Yorkshire.
She did win, so resigned as our MP and was replaced after a by-election by another Labour MP, Kim Leadbeater.
The average public cost of a parliamentary by-election is just short of a quarter of a million ponds. (£228, 000 - it varies with the number of candidates, as a large part of the cost is the Freepost to which each candidate is entitled.)
I thought at the time that the Labour party should have born the public cost of this by-election.
There was no need for it other than the internal manoeuvrings of the Labour party. It arose only becasue the Labour Party felt that Miss Brabin had the best chance of winning, or she preferred the job and she was prepared to break the promises she had made to the electorate of Batley and Spen if she got it.
This argument applies to the creation of a vacancy in the Makerfield constituency in order to give Andy Burnham an opportunity to re-enter parliament and challenge Sir Keir Starmer for his job.
There is no need for it other than that sections of the Labour party think it would be to their advantage.
So they should pay the public cost.
Much more expensively, should Mr Burnham win the Makerfield seat he will have to resign as mayor of Manchester and the by-election to replace him is estimated to cost the public purse almost five million pounds (£5 000 000 - it's a very large electorate.)
I'm sure these manoeuvrings feed the public's distrust of our apolitical system. Politicians abuse it for what we see as their "games." It's not just the cost, but the fact that the actors as so willing to break the promisees of devoted service they have made to their previous constituents in order to further their careers.
And the manoeuvrings are not always successful.
Way back in 1964 the Labour Party under Huddersfield's own Harold Wilson won the general election (with a narrow majority of four.) But their shadow foreign secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, failed to win his seat of Smethwick after a bitter and racist Tory campaign.
Gordon Walker was a senior Labour figure who had been expected to become foreign secretary. A "vacancy" was created for him a a safe constituency, Leyton, by transferring the Labour winner to the Lords.
PGW fought the by-election - and lost.
The electorate didn't like being manipulated.
Things may not have changed.
For once I think you are right, and this is likely to backfire on Mr Burnham; one of the best features of the British electorate is that it does not like being told what to do (cf, when Mr Cameron, Mr Clegg and Mr Osbourne told them to vote to remain in the European Union, and they showed that unholy trinity of smugness exactly what they thought of that).
ReplyDeleteAs for who should pay the costs of a by-election, that's an interesting one. Did you know that a Member of Parliament is not actually allowed to resign? This stems from the sixteenth century, when serving as a Member was seen as an obligation to be accepted reluctantly, not an honour to be sought (it sounds like you would be in sympathy with this) and therefore giving people an easy way out was not seen as something to be encouraged.
However, no one is allowed to both serve as a Member of Parliament and also hold an office that is paid by the Crown (as this would be a conflict of interest — someone receiving a salary from the Crown can hardly be expected to impartially scrutinise the Crown and the Crown's government). Therefore nowadays if a Member wishes to leave the House, they are appointed to such an office.
This has had the amusing result that the despicable friend of Mr Corbyn, Mr Gerry Adams, was for a while simultaneously a high-ranking member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (a terrorist group of lawless murders and thugs) and also the holder of an office for the British Crown.
But perhaps more interestingly, in tims past being a minister of state was also seen as being such an office, and so any member of the House of Commons appointed to be a minister had to fight and win a by-election before they could take up the post. I sometimes think that this custom should be brought back! It would certainly sharpen minds around reshuffle time. Do you think that perhaps this a custom which should be revived?
Anyway, the problem with working out who should pay for a by-election is being able to lay out the rules precisely. Presumably you would not charge the estates of members who die, but if you say that any Member who leaves the House when they are still capable of serving should bear the costs of the resulting by-election, then what about those who fall ill, or who need to leave to take care of a family member who is has become ill? Would it be fair to them to make them pay for the by-election caused by their absence? And what about members who lose their seats due to being convicted of treason, or sentenced for some other offence to a period of more than one year in prison, or who are subject to a recall petition under the Recall of MPs Act 2015? What about members granted peerages?
And you need hard and fast rules about this: this is one thing you can't really leave up to the discretion of the Prime Minister for the electorate to judge, because it's quite likely (as in this case) that the Prime Minister might not be a disinterested party in such an event — Mr Starmer has previously attempted to block Mr Burnham from contesting a by-election, so if it were an option here to discourage Mr Simons from relinquishing his seat by making him pay a quarter of a million pounds to do so, one can see that Mr Starmer might well be tempted to declare that Mr Simons would have to pay the costs.
You’re saying the snake oil triumverate of Farage, Johnson and Gove didn’t tell the British electorate what to do?!
ReplyDeleteYou’re saying the snake oil triumverate of Farage, Johnson and Gove didn’t tell the British electorate what to do?!
DeleteNo. Of course they didn’t. The Leave message was ‘take back control’. The Remain message was ‘vote the right way or else (the economy will collapse, there’ll be a punishment budget, super-gonorrhoea will run rampant, etc etc etc)
The Leave side invited people to vote for them; by contrast the Remain side gave the impression that if you didn’t vote for them you must be stupid or racist, so you better do as your intellectual and moral betters say.
In that case, I have a big red bus to sell you.
ReplyDeleteIn that case, I have a big red bus to sell you.
DeleteI was there; I remember the campaign.
Even the usual Remainer lie of ‘people only voted Leave because they were so stupid that they believed a lie on a bus’ rather proves my point, doesn’t it? Firstly because you’re repeating the ‘the only reason anybody voted Leave is because they were stupid and gullible’ line, which Remain pushed at the time; unsurprisingly, telling people you think they are stupid isn’t a good way to get them to vote for you!
And secondly, because the famous bus wasn’t ‘telling’ people to do anything, was it? It was offering something. The worst you can say about the bus is that it was offering something that was impossible to deliver. But even in that case, it’s not telling people to do anything. Not like the hectoring, supercilious, ‘do this or else!’ Tone that characterised the Remain campaign.
Anyway, it was ten years ago, you lost, get over it.