Results day today was not like yesterday. Thousands of students getting results for their future is not the same as one man getting the totally expected result in a still farcical by-election that actually changes very little about the future. Despite what Reform will tell you.
For the record Nigel Farage, the former MP for Clacton, is this morning the MP for Clacton.
Turn out was 44 per cent. Mr Farage who did not turn up to the count (not the bin one) claiming intelligence of a threat to disrupt it if he did, got 22 239 votes (up on 2024) and the other Count, Binface got 9 455. The investigation into whether as per any other MP, Mr Farage should have declared the £5M ‘gift’ he was handed in the year before he became MP (the first time) was suspended for this summer circus, and will now resume. Frankly, honestly, as I’ve said before it seems to change very little if anything and despite the expected noise from Reform, it just doesn’t signify anything other than Clacton seems very happy to have him as MP. Which would have been the case anyway without all this.
However three weeks into the job with policy tweaks, a lot of words and copious online messaging the man who won the Makerfield by-election – that Reform certainly did not – is now Prime Minister and ‘getting on’ with that job.
So what did Conservative members want to see him concentrate on?
The hopes of our responders in choosing three priorities are not looking so likely to be matched with Labour still struggling to match the defence spending challenge that Conservative members backed by 75 per cent, nor – with the Timms review still yet to deliver over a year since it was started – does it look likely the Burnham government will tackle the 74.6 percent push for welfare reduction.
Ed Miliband’s former push for hard net-zero targets doesn’t manage a whole percentage point, reducing immigration is 61.7 percent. Cutting taxes is an expected priority from Tory members but is still just over half the push on defence and welfare. The key issue we are told and the main focus for many over the past two years have been reducing the cost of living. Interesting then that Tory members only have that at 16.6 per cent. The left no doubt would chime that Tories are wealthy enough to weather the storm, but that’s simplistic and probably not really it. It may be more that so far attempts to reduce the cost of living are not only not really targeted at a huge number of people who work – as opposed to Labour’s go to vague umbrella of ‘working people’ – but moreover that those it’s not targeted at, are having to pay for those it is.
Now by any stretch of the imagination, and even with tribal political loyalties, everyone would have to admit Burnham can sell an idea, push a button, articulate a vision, light years better than his predecessor so perhaps it’s not surprising Labour’s polling recently is improved. The so called Burnham bounce does appear to exist. It’s only three or four weeks old, and the man himself has not yet been put under the kind of scrutiny I’m expecting when Parliament returns, and that Farage so dislikes. But what did our survey responders think might happen?
Well to be fair 12.3 percent who said no, either that they’d stay at Starmer levels or fall lower, have not been proved right as there does seem to be a lift, and in some polls over the top of Reform’s year or more polling dominance. Now slightly fewer, 10.9 per cent think that bounce might go on for some time, but it sets up the autumn session of Parliament and the Conference season that 76.4 per cent thought “yes there will be a bounce but it will be short lived and go back to pre-Burnham levels. Reform and Conservatives will want to make that prediction a reality, it’s certainly the implied narrative inside the bubble commentariat, but whether it is actually true, is largely moot, and rather down to the Opposition to make true.
Were the 10.9 percent to be right, and that’s not something we’d want to see, to be frank, then saddle up folks that might well point to Burnham thinking “shall I just go for it” and seek to dissolve Parliament and go to the electorate.