The important message from the by-elections?

[Suff]

The Copeland election was, for me, fairly straightforward. But the Stoke election was something different.

Labour won and by a decent margin. But only because the Tories and UKIP split each others vote.

If there is any take away from these two by elections, the message is that Corbyn is a liability but the saving grace is the bitter war between the Tories and UKIP.

Were the Tories and UKIP to bury the hatchet, preferably in Corbyn's back, they could literally decimate Labour at the next election.

As the war between UKIP and the Tories is, if anything, worse than ever, Labour can breathe a very strong sigh of relief.

For now.

[Workingman]

Two very different results.

In Stoke the Cons and UKIP cancelled each other out and let Labour in.

In Copeland UKIP were the biggest losers with their voters looking to have turned to the Cons who then won.

In both seats the LibDems increased their share of the vote, which bodes well for them.

What does it all tell us about the next general election? Nothing.

[cromwell]

Just over 50% turn out in Workington (Copeland), less than 37% turn out in Stoke. I know that the weather was bad but crikey, that's poor.

[Suff]

Stoke was estimated to be under 30% before the election. In the storm that was a very good turn out

[Workingman]

According to UK Politics as far as by-elections are concerned Copeland was well above average and Stoke at the top end of the average band. Not bad, all things considered.

[TheOstrich]

I think the thing to emerge from the Stoke by-election is that the media will always run a dirty-tricks campaign against UKIP if they have even a remote chance of winning a seat, and UKIP will always field candidates that make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

The Labour candidate at Stoke demonstrably wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine either, but he didn't get the treatment they gave Nuttall.

If we are to achieve the demise of Labour in the North, UKIP probably needs to be wrapped up now.

[manxie]

I may be too naive but in the interests of the country and brexit is there no way we could have coalition of all the parties to get the UK through brexit on the agreement that full elections were held when the dust had settled??

I just feel all the infighting and backstabbing by all the parties and all the media is so not in the best intrests of all of us

Manxie xx

[Workingman]

That is not a bad suggestion, Manxie, but it will never happen, they are at loggerheads too much to do anything sensible.