The United Kingdom, officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland but more commonly known as the UK or Britain, is a sovereign country lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster. Officially, the full name of the house is the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. Owing to shortage of space, its office accommodation extends into Portcullis House.
In the United Kingdom (UK), each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elect one member to a parliament or assembly, with the exception of European Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly constituencies which are multi member constituencies.
Standing for UKIP, Carswell retained the seat with 59.7% of the vote, becoming UKIP's first elected MP. The Conservatives came second, and Labour third. According to John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, the result was the biggest increase in the share of a vote for any party in any by-election in history.[7]
Sir John Kevin Curtice is a political scientist who is currently Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde and Senior Research Fellow at NatCen Social Research. He is particularly interested in electoral behaviour and researching political and social attitudes. He took a keen interest in the debate for Scottish independence.
Background
Douglas Carswell defected from the Conservatives to UKIP and triggered the by-election by resigning his seat
On 28 August 2014 Carswell, a Eurosceptic backbencher, announced his defection to UKIP and said that he was resigning his seat in order to fight a by-election. He said he did not think Prime Minister David Cameron was "serious about the change we need", adding that "many of those at the top of the Conservative Party are simply not on our side" and "Of course they talk the talk before elections. They say what they feel they must say to get our support when they want our support, but on so many issues – on modernising our politics, on the recall of MPs, on controlling our borders[,] on less government, on bank reform, on cutting public debt, on an EU referendum – they never actually make it happen".[8] He also said: "...local issues regarding planning and overcrowding of GP surgeries were a factor in my decision to resign".[9]
Euroscepticism means criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies and seek reform, to those who oppose EU membership outright and see the EU as unreformable. The opposite of Euroscepticism is known as pro-Europeanism.
David William Donald Cameron is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Witney from 2001 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He identifies as a one-nation conservative, and has been associated with both economically liberal and socially liberal policies.
Responding to the news that Carswell had defected and would trigger a by-election, Cameron said the contest would be held "as soon as possible". He also confirmed that the Conservatives would contest the by-election.[10] It was later announced that the by-election would be held on 9 October, which was also Cameron's 48th birthday. The poll was one of two parliamentary by-elections the same day, with an election also being held in the constituency of Heywood and Middleton following the death of its MP, Jim Dobbin of Labour.[11]
Heywood and Middleton is a constituency in Greater Manchester represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2014 by Liz McInnes of the Labour Party.
James Dobbin, was a British Labour Co-operative politician and microbiologist, who was Member of Parliament (MP) for Heywood and Middleton from 1997 until his death in 2014.
Analysis of demographics for the constituency prior to the by-election were said to make it the most UKIP-friendly in the country.[12]
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, better known as Boris Johnson, is a British politician, journalist and popular historian. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Uxbridge and South Ruislip since 2015. He had previously been the MP for Henley from 2001 to 2008. He was Mayor of London from 2008 to 2016, and from 2016 to 2018 he served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. A member of the Conservative Party, Johnson identifies as a one-nation conservative and has been associated with both economically and socially liberal policies.
The Mayor of London is the executive of the Greater London Authority. The current Mayor is Sadiq Khan, who took up office on 9 May 2016. The position was held by Ken Livingstone from the creation of the role on 4 May 2000, until he was defeated in May 2008 by Boris Johnson, who served two terms before being succeeded by Khan.
Uxbridge and South Ruislip is a constituency created in 2010, represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom since 2015 by Boris Johnson, a member of the Conservative Party. Johnson served as Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary from 13 July 2016 until his resignation on 9 July 2018. He was also formerly Mayor of London, serving from 2008 to 2016.
While many Conservatives condemned Carswell's defection, some were more supportive of him. Conservative backbencher Nigel Evans suggested that possibly the Conservatives should not stand in Clacton.[16] Former minister Norman Tebbit refused to campaign against Carswell and claimed that the "House of Commons needs men like Douglas Carswell".[17] Backbencher Zac Goldsmith described Carswell as a "model parliamentarian" and remarked that "I hope he is an MP after 2015".[18]
Nick Herbert, the former policing minister, said that the Conservative Party was more concerned with the Clacton by-election rather than winning the Scottish independence referendum that was held during the early part of the Clacton campaign.[19]
During the campaign, a second Conservative MP and close friend of Carswell,[20]Mark Reckless, likewise defected to UKIP and sought re-election in a by-election for his constituency of Rochester and Strood.
Candidates
Tendring District Council, the local authority administering the by-election, confirmed the deadline for nominations as 4 pm on 16 September 2014.[21]
Carswell announced that he would stand again for the seat as UKIP's candidate, although he was opposed by the recently selected UKIP candidate, Roger Lord,[22] with some local activists speculating that they might not adopt Carswell.[23] However, UKIP rules for selecting by-election candidates invested the decision with the National Executive Committee, which selected Carswell.[3][24] Lord left UKIP and resigned his County Council seat, supporting the Liberal Democrats in the council by-election.[25][26]
The Conservative candidate was actor Giles Watling[27] who was chosen by an open primary on 11 September. He was shortlisted with Colchester councillor Sue Lissimore.[28][29] Though he lost this by-election, he went on to win the seat at the 2017 general election after Carswell stood down.
Colchester councillor Tim Young had been announced prior to Carswell's resignation as candidate for Labour[30] and was confirmed as their by-election candidate.[31][32]
The Liberal Democrat candidate, Andy Graham, is the former mayor of Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire.[33] He is an actor as well as an author of children’s books.[34]
The Green Party candidate was Chris Southall.[35] Southall has stood for the Green Party over the last 40 years and gained some notoriety for a UFO hoax in the 1960s.[36]
Charlotte Rose and Bruce Sizer were independent candidates.[37] Rose described herself as a "high class courtesan" campaigning "for sexual freedom".[38] Sizer was a consultant oncologist at Colchester Hospital[39][40] who stood as a single-issue candidate to get health and cancer care onto the agenda of the political parties.[41] He was Joint Clinical Director of the Essex Cancer Network from 2006 until 2008 and is Oncology Editor for the Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary.[42]
Campaign
The Conservatives were mocked by UKIP supporters for sending out a leaflet, called "The Big Clacton Survey" asking voters to prioritise issues including “local train and tube service”.[43][44][45] UKIP claimed to have recruited 150 local Conservative members after Carswell's defection.[46]
The journalist and former Conservative MP, Matthew Parris, created a controversy by writing in The Times that the Conservatives should be “careless” of Clacton voters’ opinions as “Clacton-on-Sea is going nowhere”,[47][48] remarks which were disowned by local Conservatives and denounced by Carswell as "reflective of what so many in the upper echelons of the Tory party really think"[34] and were cited by two local Conservative councillors as a reason for defecting to UKIP.[49]
Both the Prime Minister David Cameron[53] and the Labour leader Ed Miliband[54] visited the constituency to help their respective party campaigns.
Ten days before the election Banksy painted a mural on a wall in Clacton which showed five grey pigeons holding three placards. They held the words “go back to Africa” “migrants not welcome”, and “keep off our worms”. They were directed towards a more colourful migratory swallow perched further along the same wire. The mural was removed by Tendring District Council who had received a complaint that “offensive and racist remarks” had appeared on a wall.[55]
The election produced a number of statistical records, partly because of the unusual situation in which an incumbent MP with a large majority for one party has resigned and then stood for re-election on behalf of a new party for which support was in any case on a strongly rising trend. The 59.7% increase in the percentage vote achieved by UKIP since the previous general election (when they did not field a candidate) is the greatest ever in British parliamentary elections, although the percentage swing remains 0.1% less than the record 44.2% swing to the Liberal Party at the 1983 Bermondsey by-election. The 28.4% reduction in Conservative votes is the 16th worst for any party since the Second World War, while the 1.4% of the vote achieved by the Liberal Democrats was, at the time, the third smallest vote ever obtained by a major party, and the worst since World War II.[57] Since then, however, the Liberal Democrats received an even smaller proportion of the vote at the Rochester and Strood by-election later in 2014.[58]
Previous result
UKIP did not stand a candidate against Douglas Carswell in 2010, citing his Eurosceptic views.
The UK Independence Party is a hard Eurosceptic, right-wing political party in the United Kingdom. It currently has one representative in the House of Lords and seven Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). It has four Assembly Members (AMs) in the National Assembly for Wales and one member in the London Assembly. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two Members of Parliament and was the largest UK party in the European Parliament.
Tendring is a local government district in north east Essex, England. It extends from the River Stour in the north, to the coast and the River Colne in the south, with the coast to the east and the town of Colchester to the west. Its council is based in Clacton-on-Sea. Towns in the district include Frinton-on-Sea, Walton-on-the-Naze, Brightlingsea and Harwich. Large villages in the district include St Osyth and Great Bentley.
A parachute candidate, also known as a “carpetbagger” in the United States, is a pejorative term for an election candidate who does not live in and has little connection to the area he or she is running to represent. The allegation is thus that the candidate is being “parachuted in” for the job by a desperate political party that has no reliable talent indigenous to the district or state or that the party wishes to give a candidate an easier election than would happen in one's own home area.
John Douglas Wilson Carswell is a British former Member of Parliament who in 2014 became the first elected MP for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), representing Clacton. From March 2017 to May 2017, he sat as an independent.
Philip Thomas Hollobone is a British Conservative Party politician and former investment banker. He has been the Member of Parliament for Kettering since the 2005 general election.
Giles Francis Watling is an English actor and Conservative politician. He has been the Member of Parliament for Clacton since 8 June 2017.
Clacton is a constituency in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament, represented since 2017 by Giles Watling of the Conservative Party.
Craig Mackinlay is a Conservative Party politician and businessman. Since May 2015, he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for South Thanet. He was re-elected in the general election of June 2017.
This article lists the election results and representation of the UK Independence Party with respect to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales, Northern Ireland Assembly, London Assembly, European Parliament and local authorities.
Mark John Reckless is a politician and a Member of the National Assembly for Wales, representing South Wales East. Having been elected a member of the Assembly representing UKIP in 2016, he renounced his UKIP membership the following April and joined the Conservative group in the Welsh Assembly. He was previously elected as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Rochester and Strood in the 2010 general election, joined UKIP in September 2014, won re-election as a UKIP member in November 2014, but lost his seat to the Conservatives in the May 2015 UK general election.
Since 2009, the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom has experimented with the use of open primaries to select some parliamentary candidates.
Amjad Mahmood Bashir is a Member of the European Parliament for the Yorkshire and the Humber region for the Conservative Party. He was elected in 2014 for the UK Independence Party and defected to the Conservative Party on 24 January 2015.
The 2014 Castle Point Borough Council election took place on 22 May 2014 to elect members of Castle Point Borough Council in Essex, England. One third of the council was up for election and the Conservative Party lost overall control of the council to no overall control.
The Rochester and Strood by-election was a by-election for the UK parliamentary constituency of Rochester and Strood in Kent, England, held on 20 November 2014. The by-election was triggered when the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Mark Reckless, left the Conservative Party and joined the UK Independence Party (UKIP). He resigned his seat in Parliament in order to seek re-election for his new party.
Arron Fraser Andrew Banks is a British businessman and political donor. He is the co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign. Banks was previously one of the largest donors to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and bankrolled Nigel Farage’s campaign to leave the EU.
The 2015 City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council election took place on 7 May 2015. This was on the same day as other local elections and a general election. One councillor was elected in each ward for a four-year term so the councillors elected in 2015 last stood for election in 2011. Each ward is represented by three councillors, the election of which is staggered, so only one third of the councillors were elected in this election. Labour retained overall control of the council.
The UK Independence Party is a British political party, founded in 1993.
The 2018 Plymouth City Council election took place on 3 May 2018 to elect members of Plymouth City Council in England. The election was won by the Labour Party, who gained enough seats to achieve an overall majority and took control of the council.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
