For all his big talk, Farage has chickened out of two by-elections now which were a very good shot for him winning (here, and Eastleigh in 2013, where UKIP only lost very narrowly).

“No more than a fraction of people in this kind of seat will vote for “an independent pro-EU candidate” – certainly nowhere close to 35%.”

Perhaps not. Although 48% of them did vote for a pro-EU Labour candidate only two years ago.
Galloway is now out, of course – I don’t think he ever stood a chance in Peterborough. I’ve personally never heard of Mike Greene until now.
Jeremy Corbyn was in the city yesterday. Labour’s Lisa Forbes still looks like the strongest candidate.

“Although 48% of them did vote for a pro-EU Labour candidate only two years ago.”

Well people vote Labour for a whole host of reasons, not just because they are pro-EU. My point is that if your party label is “pro-EU candidate” then that becomes their defining single issue – I think in this kind of seat their potential vote is quite low.

Yes. Fair point.
The idea of a single independent pro EU candidate seems to have been dropped now anyway.

Crazy shenanigans going on in the run-up to the deadline for registration.

So, following a week or so of inter-party haggling, with several reports of what was going on at any one moment in direct contradiction with one another, the “remain alliance” had reached a point earlier today where they would stand down in and support the independent candidate Femi Oluwole, the charismatic and high-profile leader of the campaign group Our Future, Our Choice. Oluwole then bottled it at the last moment, announcing that he himself would be standing down to avoid splitting the vote with the Labour candidate and letting the Brexit Party through the middle. This despite the fact that Oluwole has been highly critical of Labour’s Brexit prevarications over the last three years. The farcical upshot is that, in an election which was supposed to be a totemic test of whether the second-voters have made any headway into the Brexit heartlands, the people of Peterborough are going to be given a choice at the ballot box between Brexit, hard Brexit and very hard Brexit. And this is somehow the result of a tactical decision by all the anti-Brexit candidates to stand aside for one another to fight the pro-Brexit forces in unison.

Tbf Femi has endorsed Labour in the EU elections saying that only they can stop Farage

I find all this language round who is pro Brexit and who is pro Remain rather alienating. The irony is the Brexit has turned me into a Lib Dem. I don’t identify as a remainer or a bexitier. I find myself in the middle of all this desperately depressed that the debate is so polarised and because I don’t find myself passionately wanting to stay in the EU or wanting to leave that’s some how spineless. Brexitiers call you a remoaner and remainers call you a hard brexitier

Everyone and his wife seems to be being suggested as a Brexit Party candidate for Peterborough.
They then, officially deny it.

Matt: fair enough, I can see how incredibly frustrating it must be to have politics totally overwhelmed by a single issue that you’re personally not to bothered about either way.

Keep banging the drum on the issues that do matter to you. Whether we agree with you or not, we could all do with focusing a bit more on the bread-and-butter issues where government has ground to a halt.

There is no Change UK candidate.

There is, however:

Common Good: Remain in the EU

Renew

LD & Green (from the Remain side)

Brexit, UKIP, SDP & EngDem (Brexit side).

Objections have been made to a nomination, but not heard which one yet.

The only oddity is the Green PPC has 12 nominees.

The Labour candidate does not provide her address (but that is now allowed as discussed previously).

The Brexit Party are now favourites with at least one bookie.

I don’t see it. If I were a betting man I’d be putting a tenner on Labour, who are widely available at evens.

Yes, Brexit will win here on EU elections day, but I doubt they will on the Parl By-election day.

I think they have a fair chance. Labour’s best hope is that Farage’s rhetoric pushes up turnout in the substantial ethnic minority electorate here. In Stewart Jackson’s interesting article on ConHome today he states that antipathy from the Asian and Black community was a key reason for his defeat in 2017 (I advanced that theory on here and numerous people pooh-poohed it). If they are sufficiently riled up by the Brexit party, that may be the decisive factor.

I can see Farage tacking right in the gap between the Eu elections and the by-election to give a message which will do better in Peterborough.

I’ve never heard of Greene myself but apparently he was on the Secret Millionaire – a tv show where millionaires with a social conscience go incognito into impoverished communities and agree to give away tens of thousands of pounds

I’ve never seen the one with Greene on it – or at least I don’;t think I have – but all the millionaires in the shows I did see seemed thoroughly good eggs as it were, and perhaps suggests that not all hardcore Brexiteers are the animals liberals (like myself) see them as

I think antipathy from the white community was also a key factor in Jackson’s defeat! He was generally unpopular by 2017.
Hmmm. A right wing millionaire made famous by a reality TV show? Is Greene Peterborough’s own Donald Trump?

Nick Boles, of all people, has endorsed Greene.

If his profile can pull in moderate votes despite being a hard Brexiter he has a very good chance indeed.

We really are through the looking-glass, aren’t we?

Boles has gave a qualified endorsement.
Can Farrage resist the urge to be moderate here when an unmodreate campaign might actually succeed more.

Farage hasn’t had any trouble resisting the urge to be moderate in the past.

Surprised how little discussion there is on here about the by-election. Has the campaign not going yet?
Is there a more up to date version of this forum I don’t know about? 2015 was a long time ago now!

Everyone is fixated on the European vote. The outcome there will change the odds here substantially.

If the Brexit Party can end up with around 35% in Brussels and 30 MEPs then I think they are favourites here. For the moment I would still make Labour the favourites, but not as comfortably as I had previously imagined.

The Brexit Party are now 4/7 fav here.

Labour 11/8