1 yr. ago • 81%

‘Lib Dems will raze this place to the ground’: Mid Beds byelection duel could gift seat to Tories

www.theguardian.com ‘Lib Dems will raze this place to the ground’: Mid Beds byelection duel could gift seat to Tories

A split-vote Conservative victory is seen as ‘a serious threat’ as Labour and Lib Dems battle for Nadine Dorries’s former seat

Bedfordshire @feddit.uk ‘Lib Dems will raze this place to the ground’: Mid Beds byelection duel could gift seat to Tories

14 comments

Vote yellow get blue, a tale as old as, er, 2010 or so.

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- Depends on the constituency. In this case yes...but plenty of others it is vote red get blue as LD are more palatable
  
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  But as they showed in 2010, if they become king makers they'll side with the Tories.
  
  As someone who was foolish enough to agree with Nick, I'm still bitter about just how much stuff they enabled the Tories to do in that first term.
  
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I've already received the usual lib dem leaflet showing a graph proving that only they can beat the Tories here. It's almost exactly the same as I got in the last general election, which was in a completely different constituency. A bar graph with Tories high, Lib Dems slightly below and then Labour near the bottom with a massive graph.

It might very well be correct but it really just puts me off them, especially as the constituency candidates they put on there are two roads over and not ours. I'm sure I'll get another one for this constituency at some point of course, with the same graph but different names.

I am really struggling as in my last constituency, I voted for them to remove the Tory and their hard line brexit but they took just enough off Labour for the Tories to win whilst being a very distant third place, so completely different to what they were suggesting. Of course it's hard to know if any of those voters would have gone Labour instead but I certainly did so am guessing others did. Plus Labour were not anti hard brexit and non committal which didn't help them.

F this FPTP system, really wish we voted for the alternative vote

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

On a sunny morning in the village of Barton-le-Clay, Emma Holland-Lindsay, the Liberal Democrat candidate in next month’s Mid Bedfordshire byelection, is arguing that her party is best placed to overturn the huge Tory majority in the seat.

In this sprawling constituency, which is home to small towns, farms, new-build estates and dozens of villages, it is clear that support has flooded away from the Tories since Nadine Dorries, the outgoing MP, secured almost 60% of the vote and a majority just shy of 25,000 at the last election.

Complaints about access to GPs, the cost of living and Dorries’s alleged lack of presence in the seat regularly come up as the Labour and Lib Dem contenders knock on doors.

Yet the moment Dorries indicated she was resigning back in June, Labour’s high command saw it as a chance to show that Starmer’s new-look party could also compete for supposedly safe Tory seats.

They say there is considerable demographic change, with younger families moving into a significant amount of new-build housing, and lots of them commuting to the likes of London, Luton, Bedford and Milton Keynes.

Peter Kyle, the increasingly influential shadow cabinet minister who is overseeing the campaign, says the data he checks every morning suggests Labour is clearly the better-placed party – though he acknowledges the Tories could end up benefiting from a split vote.

The original article contains 1,038 words, the summary contains 227 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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If Labour is so desperate to beat the Tories, maybe they should consider not backing them on every terrible policy. Honestly, I can't think of a single issue I care about that Labour hasn't adopted the same Tory messaging on.

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As an American I can not understand most of the words in the title. What language is this?

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- A "gift" is where you give something to someone without demanding payment. In the US you would be denounced as a communist if you were to do this.
  
  11
- Nadine Dorries' seat is up for by-election. There is a lot of tactical voting going on in by-elections to keep the conservatives out. LD and Labour are neck and neck in the polls. If neither side give way then conservative could take the seat back.
  
  I can see why both are standing firm. At least this way they get a proper feel on which party is the most favoured between LD and Lab. This will make it an easier choice on who will give way at the general election proper, which could be less than a year away. This seat will be ran again when a GE is announced.
  
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- "The Liberal Democrats (a centrist political party) will demolish this whole place": Mid-Bedfordshire by-election duel could lead to a Conservative win.
  
  If the Liberal Democrats could encourage their supporters to vote Labour strategically, they might prevent handing the election to the awful Conservative Party. But parties in first-past-the-post systems rarely manage to swallow their pride for the greater good.
  
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- It's English, but not as we know it, Jim.
  
  Translated it reads: "The Liberal Democratic Party will ruin everything" competition between two left-wing parties in mid-Bedfordshire by-election could split votes and result in a win by the Conservative Party.
  
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  Lib-Dems are centrist but otherwise yes
  
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