First a bit of context setting. There have been fifteen parliamentary by-elections in #England since the #UKGeneralElection2019 - and one in #Scotland. Six of those in #England occurred while #RishiSunak has been #PrimeMinister and the remaining nine while #BorisJohnson was. Of the fifteen seven saw the previous party holding the seat replaced. #labour lost one seat (to the #conservatives ) while the #conservatives lost six - two to #labour and four to the #libdems !

#VoterID #VoterSuppression #Localelections

It follows that it would make sense to expect some positive effect for the #Conservatives from the reduction in #turnout though not as much as would have been the case if the differences in preferences by age shown in the #UKGeneralElection2019 had persisted.

This would not be dissimilar to what appears to be happening as a result of the changed rules for constituency boundaries - where the #Conservatives have also gained less than expected.

What is even more remarkable is that the lady in question has contributed much of value to the #Conservative party. She served on the group that reviewed their electoral performance in the #UKGeneralElection2017 and made the recommendations that led to a massive improvement in its campaigning and organisational capability ahead of the #UKGeneralElection2019
She has also served as an officer of the #1922Committee - which governs their parliamentary party.

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Whereas one might regard it as reprehensible for them to seek to undermine a former employer such conduct would not deserve the designation of #sabotage or #treachery since they would have owed no particular loyalty to the #Labour party by then.

So altogether a messy and nasty business to which I would have preferred not to return!

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Which brings me - at last! - to the other part of her claim -namely that losing some people from #Labour #headquarters after 2017 affected performance in 2019.

Curiously enough it may have done so. This is because some of them appear to have gone on to work on the #tactical #voting websites referred to. If they were as professional as claimed then presumably they would have known that their advice was #misleading.

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The #Conservatives would still have won in the absence of that #Misinformation but by rather less seats than they did. So it was not immediately consequential.

However that experience makes me in particular - and probably others - deeply distrustful of any future initiatives involving #tactical #Voting. Missing out on twenty seats would matter a lot in most likely scenarios!

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To the extent that the ostensible purpose of such websites was to prevent the #Conservatives from getting a parliamentary majority then such #Misinformation was entirely counterproductive.

So either those running then did not understand what they were doing or their priorities were not at all as advertised.

It would have possible been to have a #tacticalvoting website that did not provide #Misinformation.

#GinaMiller did exactly that.

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However as some of you pointed out to me - quite rightly - there were a lot of other factors that had nothing to do with the performance of either the #Conservatives or #Labour as campaigning organisations.

One of these was the extent of #Misinformation provided in the autumn of 2019 by various "#tactical voting" websites. This appears to have increased the #LibDems' vote - without having much effect on their seats - while depriving #Labour of up to twenty seats!

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The #Conservatives also used the local elections in #London in 2018 as a live training exercise for the organisers that they had recruited - this helped them to hold onto the #easyCouncil in particular.

By contrast #Labour did run the #Unseat campaign - which was effective in the one instance where it was followed up locally - but not seemingly any of the others!

It also employed Community Organisers - but failed to integrate them with other campaigning.

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The truth is that from the summer of 2017 the #Conservatives made a sustained effort to map the electorate and to take account of the political contours and terrain that it revealed while retaining their overall analysis and strategic approach - which was to move back towards the approach of pre-Thatcher #Conservative thinkers to the role of the state.

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The other part of the #JacquiSmith claim is that the performance of #Labour was worse in 2019 than in 2017 and that this as due to the removal of people who understood how to win parliamentary seats from #headquarters.

It is clear that the campaigning performance of #Labour relative to the #Conservatives in 2019 was worse. However this seems to have been due to a major improvement in the performance of the #Conservative Party - the causes of which are well documented.

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What is more. Someone called James Kanagasooriam has been reported as anticipating a hung parliament.

Mr. Kanagasooriam has an enviable reputation. Much of the unexpectedly strong performance of the Conservatives in Scotland in the #UKGeneralElection2017 has been attributed to his advice and analysis. He is understood to have drawn attention to the #red wall constituencies ahead of the #UKGeneralElection2019

Arguably he is one of best #psephologists going!

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Plis no doubt some change in people's genuine voting voting intentions and preferences!

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So there probably was some voter suppression - particularly of the student vote.

However I can find little sign of it having sufficient effect to alter the result significantly - most changes in England and Wales appear to have occurred in places without much of a student population.

So it seems that the election result rested in part on the rebuilding of the Conservative electoral machine and a shift from Labour to the Lib Dems not warranted by "tactical voting"

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The final question is whether there was any voter suppression in December 2019 and if so did it have any material effect on the result.

The choice of date is likely to have had a disproportionate effect on the anti-Conservative in two respects. There might have been an end of year effect via the electoral register and also weather and reduced daylight hours discouraging voting in person. The exacting timing may also have reduced turnout among students in particular.

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Despite this the autumn of 2019 saw several promoters of tactical voting against the Conservatives systematically overstating the chances of the Liberal Democrats as opposed to Labour.

The principal exception to this was Gina Miller - who to her lasting credit took a far more evidence-based approach.

Nonetheless it does seem likely that voters who might otherwise have voted Labour in seats where this would have mattered were misled by some websites into voting Lib Dem

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There was immediate evidence that voters would not necessarily stay with the Liberal Democrats in a by-election to the local authority in my part of London later that summer. On the basis of the vote count data from May Labour could have expected to lose the seat to the Liberal Democrats. The seat was retained without much difficulty.

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Two parties did very well in the May 2019 election to the European parliament - the Brexit party and the Liberal Democrats - Labour did badly and the Conservatives catastrophically.

It is understandable that the Liberal Democrats concluded from this that they would be in a position to win a large number of seats in the next general election - even though the empirical basis for this assumption was not particularly strong.

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To understand why this happened it is necessary to look back to a very different national election in 2019. This was one that had been even less expected or prepared for than that the General Election of 2017 - namely the elections to the European Parliament in May.

It had been assumed that the UK would have ceased to be a member of the EU before then - however it became clear in the first quarter of 2019 that this was unlikely to be the case.

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There seems to be a paradox in that while the changed split in the anti-Conservative vote may have reduced the total number of Labour seats by up to twenty it does not appear to have resulted in an increase in representation of the Liberal Democrats.

Rather it appears that the principal beneficiaries were the Conservatives!