It's bad luck for anyone casting a vote in a byelection at the moment if they don't want to send a message about Brexit. It's the only message anyone is interested in. So what does the one in Sleaford tell us? I think that combined with Richmond it tells us quite a lot. And I find what it tells us pretty depressing. Lets look at what the result means for the parties.
Labour came fourth, but it wasn't a bad fourth as fourths go. They were only a couple of thousand short of being second. Their strategy of not really committing to a strategy isn't working well for them, but it could be worse.
The Lib Dems didn't do especially well, but politics is often about momentum and they seem to be going in the right direction. They seem to have picked up votes from both Labour and the Tories, and it is clear that there are people prepared to vote for their anti-Brexit line and to come across from other parties to do so. Given where the Lib Dems are after their disastrous spell in the coalition, they'll probably be reasonably happy with this.
The result was a terrible one for UKIP. Coming second might look like good, but it was a really poor second. The trouble is that their strategy of trying to win over northern Labour voters didn't really take off. This was always a rather quixotic approach anyway. But with all the publicity a new leader and with Labour still rather vague on the Brexit issue, and still not presenting a particularly united front, the conditions for UKIP were as good as they are likely to get. I don't say it was a bad card to play from UKIP's point of view, but it doesn't look like it is going to work. They'll do a lot better to concentrate on working class people and less well off middle class people in seaside towns which typically vote Tory.
The big winners in every respect are the Conservatives who will be really happy to pull in a comfortable win. They not only have a big majority, but having their three opponents split more or less evenly is if anything even better news. It doesn't look like they have much to fear from UKIP any more. Labour aren't anywhere near general election winning form, but are not looking like they will be vanishing. The only party that will give them pause will be the Lib Dems. If the Lib Dems can re-establish their status as a protest vote against the Conservatives in the south, even now it is possible that by 2020 the electoral landscape might start to resemble that of 2010.
If I were Theresa May the message I'd take from this is that there is little threat from the hard Brexit brigade. They might make a lot of noise but they just don't have the numbers. The risk is from people alienated by Brexit switching to the Lib Dems as per Richmond. It isn't an immediate threat, but it is one that could develop. The way to head it off is to give the impression of making the Brexit process as moderate and non-scary as possible. It may not be possible of course. The EU holds most of the cards in the negotiations, so it might want to force a deal that is harmful to the UK's economic interests. But from a narrow Tory Party point of view even this isn't the end of the world. If they can portray themselves as moderates who were rebuffed by an intransigent opponent they can still look good in the eyes of their voters.
So the way things are going it looks like there is unlikely to be a coalition that can beat the Tories and preserve the UK's position in Europe that will emerge in the near future. The best hope is that Labour realises it can't win by going along with Brexit and might as well come out against it. It won't win any votes doing this in the short run, but it could be part of an anti-status quo platform in 2025. Labour doesn't look much like a party that can recreate itself at the moment, but unlike the Lib Dems and UKIP it does have plenty of members. It has managed to transform itself out of all recognition in the past - the Labour Party of the sixties and seventies became something very different in the eighties, and different again in the nineties. Who knows what it will look like in the twenties.
The Conservatives don't have the problem of winning power. They only have to keep it. Brexit could still lose it for them, but at the moment so long as they don't get carried away and appear to be actually enjoying it too much I think they'll be fine. They don't need to pander to the hardline Brexiters so they can do whatever they can to make Brexit as appealing or at least unthreatening to the less enthusiastic supporters of it. Unfortunately, I don't think that leaving the EU will be much fun for the country.
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