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Date: 21/12/19
Election Analysis Update
My curiosity piqued by something I wrote here about the effect of the Faragisti standing candidates where they prevented the Tories from gaining a Labour seat, I spent an hour or so this evening doing some research on that point.
My conclusion: things could have been an awful lot worse for Labour than they turned out to be, not just in Yorkshire and County Durham but in other areas as well.
By my calculations (and, again, I cannot vouch one hundred per cent for their accuracy), the presence of a Brexit Party candidate cost B.S. Johnson's mob about 28 seats, based on a quite reasonable assumption that 80 per cent of the BP's votes would otherwise have gone to the Conservatives.
Here's the list:
Alyn & Deeside,
Barnsley Central,
Barnsley East,
Bedford,
Chesterfield,
Coventry North West,
Coventry South,
Dagenham & Rainham,
Doncaster Central,
Doncaster North,
Hartlepool,
Hemsworth,
Houghton & Sunderland South,
Hull East,
Hull West & Hessle,
Newport West,
Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford,
Oldham East & Saddleworth,
Rotherham,
Stockton North,
Sunderland Central,
Torfaen,
Wansbeck,
Warrington North,
Washington & Sunderland West,
Weaver Vale,
Wentworth & Dearne,
Wolverhampton South East
There were also three or four others which narrowly fell foul of my 80-per-cent rule.
This would have given a majority of 136, the biggest majority of any government since the second incarnation of Cardinal Archbishop Blair in 2001, and the largest Tory majority since Thatcher in 1983. It would also have given Labour their lowest seats total since 1935.
Merry Christmas...
