It was down to a massive campaign by the Liberal Democrats who threw more than the kitchen sink at the constituency; it was a typical mid-term show of disrespect to a sitting government; it was all down to local issues; it was just another irrelevant Liberal by-election win; a collapsing Labour vote was looking for an anti-Tory home; and "we'll get it back at the next general election". So much of this reaction was expected, and there is some truth in parts of it. There was another thread which was not picked up by most commentators but which was becoming clear from the reports of Lib Dems on the canvassing "front line": that the respectable voters of Buckinghamshire were alienated by the squalid values of the Johnson administration.
It took a former Conservative MP from the liberal wing of the party to draw attention to the last point. Writing in the i, Anna Soubry asserts:
Those of us who abhor pretty much everything that Boris Johnson and his Vote Leave campaign chums have done to the Conservative Party have good cause to believe this is a significant moment in British politics. The great charlatan is finally being found out. The lovable rogue with the tussled hair and ill-fitting suits, who can barely string two words together as he tries to explain another Covid shambles to a lockdown-weary public, may reach parts of the electorate no other Conservative leader has before, but in so doing Johnson is now alienating huge swathes of the country.
There was a demographic factor. It seems that young, well-educated, liberal-minded couples are escaping inner London to set up home on the northern fringes, in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. The against-trend Liberal Democrat gain of St Albans following local election success in the area was one result. One notes that, like Chesham & Amersham, St Albans was won by a purposeful young woman.
HS2 construction is marring the constituency for no local benefit. It is government policy and the late Cheryl Gillan lost her ministerial post as a result of her opposition to HS2. It enabled her to hold on to the seat, though. It is also Liberal Democrat policy (though in the light of recent pandemic issues this should be reconsidered, or at least nuanced) but Sarah Green has also vigorously argued against it.
Tory changes to planning law, effectively removing local discretion, have also angered voters in the region. There is no sign that Johnson and Jenrick (the property developer's friend) will roll back this policy in spite of a belated back-bench revolt.
For all those reasons, Sarah Green should still be the MP after the next general election. In fact, Liberals and Liberal Democrats had a roughly 50% success rate in maintaining seats won at by-elections and there were some outstanding retentions. Simon Hughes held Bermondsey for 32 years.
There was not so much a collapse in the Labour vote, as a return to the fold of the Liberal vote. For years, Liberals or Lib Dems held a respectable second place in elections for the constituency. They plummeted in 2015, clearly as a result of Clegg's participation in the Cameron/Osborne austerity programme, Labour being the main beneficiaries, though UKIP took second place at that election. Labour's second place in 2017 with 11,374 votes was a high point. In 2019, Liberal Democrat Dan Gallagher regained second place on 14,627 votes with big swings against both Conservatives and Labour. I believe that there is a decline in Labour support in England, but Chesham & Amersham is not a valid example of it.
The "we've been here before" argument is trotted out both by Conservative and Labour adherents. It is exemplified by Sean O'Grady in The Independent.
The commuter belt has always been up for a shock. Places such asington (1962), Sutton and Cheam (1982), Newbury (1993), Winchester (1997), Richmond Park (2016). Sometimes local factors play a part - nimbyism - or the Tories complacently pick an idiot candidate. In any case, voters give the Tories a kick up the ballots, and the media gets (sic) excited. And then nothing happens.
Not true, but by falsifying the evidence, O'Grady disguises the pattern. By omitting the Torrington by-election of 1958 and advancing the true date of Sutton & Cheam by ten years, he seeks to minimise the rise of the Liberal party from post-war obscurity to a position in 1978 when they had an influence on government at a time of financial crisis. Knocked back from 13 seats to 11 in Margaret Thatcher's 1979 landslide victory, the advance resumed, starting with Glasgow Hillhead (1982, an early SDP win) and Bermondsey (1983) culminating in Dunfermline & West Fife (2006) when the Liberal Democrats achieved the highest representation by a third party in Westminster. As a result, Lib Dems were able, even after losing a few seats, in 2010 to enter a coalition at a time of financial crisis. Who knows what would have happened to the party's fortunes if Clegg and company had, crisis over, refused to go along with the Cameron ministerial purge of 2011 and subsequent austerity programme? There may not have been an advance at the general election which would have resulted, but there would surely not have been the devastation of 2015 when the party was reduced to 8 seats, worse than under any Liberal leader since Jo Grimond.
The Johnson machine clearly did not think the by-election unimportant. On Vince Cable's evidence, the number of Lib Dem workers from all over the country was matched by Tory troops on the ground.
Chesham & Amersham marks a significant point in the climb-back from the 2015 low. It is unlikely that the party will achieve more than third party status at the next election, but there should be a third steady revival over the next dozen years with another spell in government at the end of it. If only I could still be around to see it!
