Stranger Things Have Happened

Even than Andrew Rawnsley's being more right than wrong:

Many byelections are a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing at all. An exception to this rule is the contest for Eastleigh, which has been triggered by the downfall of Chris Huhne. One early indication of the size of the stakes is that all three main parties will throw their leaders into the battle. In times past, prime ministers never stooped to involve themselves in the rough and tumble of a byelection. They were supposed to be above such things and there was the risk that an adverse result would be seen as a personal rejection.

Leaders of the opposition used to participate in byelections only when they were highly confident that their party would win the seat, which isn't the case for Labour here. Yet both David Cameron and Ed Miliband feel they have no choice but to join Nick Clegg on the campaign trail. So in prospect is a short, sharp and potentially brutish contest that pits government against opposition, coalition minister versus coalition minister and leader against leader.

The struggle in this Hampshire seat is an early rehearsal for the next general election campaign. It will give us some indication of what might happen in Con-Lib marginals when the country as a whole delivers its verdict on the coalition. Furthermore, it is a test of whether Labour is regaining ground in southern England. It is quite expensive to conduct opinion polls of byelections. The first, and so far only, survey of the constituency has been conducted thanks to the long pockets of the Tory peer Michael Ashcroft. This has indicated a narrow Conservative lead in the seat with the defending Lib Dems second, Labour rising but still third and Ukip also gaining ground.

Byelections can have a special dynamic that means early polls often turn out to be deceptive. But the Ashcroft survey has encouraged the Conservative hunger to take back a seat they feel they ought never to have lost to the Lib Dems in the first place and which needs to be Tory again if they are to be in with a shout of outright victory at the next general election. A Conservative gain in Eastleigh would indeed be impressive, especially in the context of a double-dip recession that could turn into a triple-dipper.

A Tory prime minister has not made a gain at a byelection since Mitcham and Morden in 1982 and that was a rather special case. Bruce Douglas-Mann honoured a pledge to seek re-election when he split from Labour to join the SDP and the subsequent contest was held in the middle of the Falklands conflict. David Cameron craves a win in Eastleigh to soothe the discontent bubbling on his backbenches and convince his MPs that he is still a winner.

The current Tory plan for the next general election is to target 40 seats, half of them Lib Dem held. Taking Eastleigh would make that seem more plausible as a path to victory. There is also something more visceral about the Tory enthusiasm for this contest: a basic urge to stick the boot into their coalition partners. In the opening shots of the struggle, the party chairman, Grant Shapps, has invited Eastleigh's voters to punish the Lib Dems on the grounds that Mr Huhne is a self-confessed liar now facing jail. Not all of the Tory chairman's colleagues are persuaded that this will be a profitable approach. Whatever his other sins, by most accounts Mr Huhne was an assiduous constituency MP.

The results of previous byelections triggered by resignations over expenses suggest that voters tend to put the scandal that caused the contest to one side and vote on the current offer, not what happened in the past. It ought to be a Tory advantage that they already have an established candidate while the Lib Dems selected their standard bearer yesterday and Labour will make its choice early this week. But I pick up considerable jitters among Tory ministers that Maria Hutchings could turn into a liability. She has begun her campaign being forced to deny quotes from the past, which is never a terribly good start, and quarrelling with David Cameron on Europe, gay marriage and abortion.

There is also a tension among Tories about how hard to go at the Lib Dems generally. Some think the way to win in places such as Eastleigh is by suggesting to voters that the government would be more successful were the Conservatives not handcuffed to and held back by what one Tory minister of this mind calls "those pesky Lib Dems". Other Conservatives worry that attacking the Lib Dems in this way actually helps Nick Clegg's party by validating their claim to be the leash on the Conservatives.

For one of the Lib Dems' hopes of retaining the seat lies in attracting support from "soft Tories" who quite like coalition government. This will be an opportunity to road test whether that strategy is a viable one for the Lib Dems at the next general election. The Lib Dems are also relying on the idea that incumbency is an asset. Eastleigh is a good place to test that proposition. It is a Lib Dem one-party state: the only place in the country where every councillor, district or county, is a member of Nick Clegg's party.

They moved the writ very quickly – polling day is 28 February – in the hope of maximising that advantage. After so many humiliating results in other by-elections, a Lib Dem victory would be a huge fillip for Nick Clegg and help him to convince his party that their worst traumas are behind them. It might also persuade the Tories to think again about their plan to try to decapitate 20 Lib Dem MPs at the next general election and focus more on targeting Tory-Labour marginals.

Another vital experiment in the Eastleigh laboratory will be whether "tactical voting" works any more. Over the years, the Lib Dems have won in Eastleigh by relentlessly crunching the Labour vote. It was down to less than 10% at the last general election as natural Labour supporters were persuaded that their party had no hope of winning so it was best to lend their votes to the Lib Dems to keep out the Tories. That argument is clearly no longer going to work with many Labour voters. Does it still remain persuasive with any at all? Eastleigh will help us find out.

At first glance, Labour has no chance. On the party's list of target seats, Eastleigh is number 258. Yet Labour cannot afford to sit it out and just jeer from the ringside as the coalition parties slug it out. Ed Miliband now likes to style himself as the leader of the "One Nation" party. He declares that Labour is recovering support in southern England. So he must be seen to be trying to win here.

And is it quite such a hopeless prospect for Labour as most people, including the bookies, are assuming? At the general elections of 1955 and 1966, Labour came within fewer than 1,000 votes of winning Eastleigh. Admittedly, the shape of the seat and its demographics have changed considerably since then, but more recent elections also suggest that Labour should not entirely write off its chances. The last time there was a byelection in the seat, in 1994, Labour came second, ahead of the Tories, with more than 27% of the vote. At the 1997 general election, Labour achieved a similar score.

This is not posh Hampshire. Benny Hill is Eastleigh's most famous product. While it is hardly one of the most impoverished parts of Britain, nor is this former railway town a place that oozes privilege and easy wealth. The typical Eastleigh voter will be first- or second-generation home-owners feeling a painful decline in their living standards and worrying what the future holds for their children. These are the classic "squeezed middle" voters whom all the parties identify as crucial. These are voters whom Labour must aspire to represent if it is serious about forming the next government.

They dare not say so in public, but there are some Labour people who dream of a scenario in which they do very well in Eastleigh, even so well as to leapfrog over the squabbling coalition parties and snatch a victory. It sounds outlandish at the moment, but as one senior Labour figure puts it: "Stranger things have happened in byelections." Ukip nibbles away at the Tory vote from the right flank. Labour gains some switchers from the Conservatives and more from the Lib Dems.

It is then just about possible to envisage Labour winning the seat. I have heard Labour frontbenchers talk about "the Brighton scenario". Caroline Lucas won the Brighton Pavilion seat for the Greens with just over 31% of the vote because of the way in which the rest of the electorate split between the other parties.

A Labour win in Eastleigh seems hugely unlikely to most people today. Because it would be so unexpected, it would be a spectacular result for Ed Miliband and a shocking humiliation for both the coalition parties. If it happens, remember you read it here first. If it doesn't, forget I ever mentioned it. For Labour, it is anyway better to fight and lose than not to fight at all. For the Tories and the Lib Dems, only victory will do.