The Newark by-election was a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election ( Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to ...

in the Newark constituency of the

British House of Commons 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 in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 65 ...

, which was held on 5 June 2014, following the resignation of

Patrick Mercer Patrick John Mercer (born 26 June 1956) is a British author and former politician. He was elected as a Conservative in the 2001 general election, until resigning the party's parliamentary whip in May 2013 following questions surrounding paid ad ...

. Conservative Robert Jenrick won the seat with a majority of 7,403.

Background

Mercer resigned the Conservative Party whip on 31 May 2013 after an investigation by the BBC's ''

Panorama A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined i ...

'' programme regarding allegations of paid lobbying without registering the interest. He was paid £4,000 for asking questions in Parliament, and the ''Panorama'' team considered that he asked five parliamentary questions, but declared only £2,000 of the £4,000. As a consequence, he said at the time that he would not stand in the 2015 general election. On 29 April, after being told that the Committee on Standards would recommend that he be suspended from the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

for six months, Mercer announced that he would resign his seat: he told journalists on College Green that he was standing down from "God's county of Nottinghamshire". Mercer was appointed Steward and Bailiff of the Three Chiltern Hundreds on 30 April 2014, a mechanism by which MPs resign. The writ was moved on 1 May 2014 for the by-election to be held on 5 June.

Candidates

The nominations closed at 4pm on Tuesday 13 May with 11 candidates being nominated. The local

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

had already selected Robert Jenrick to fight the seat. Jenrick trained as a solicitor and is a director of

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is owned by Groupe Artémi ...

auction house. He is married with two children. Labour selected 27-year-old councillor Michael Payne, a former students' union president and current deputy leader of Gedling Borough Council. The Liberal Democrats chose David Watts, leader of

Broxtowe Borough Council Broxtowe refers to a number of geographic entities, current and historic, in Nottinghamshire, England: * Broxtowe, Nottingham, a housing estate in Apsley ward, within the City of Nottingham * Broxtowe (UK Parliament constituency), the constituenc ...

Nigel Farage Nigel Paul Farage (; born 3 April 1964) is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Brexit Party (renamed Reform UK in 2021) from 2 ...

was immediately interviewed on the evening of 29 April and said he was "tempted" to stand, but the next morning he ruled himself out.

UKIP The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest p ...

instead announced that outspoken former Conservative and current UKIP MEP for the East Midlands

Roger Helmer Roger Helmer (born 25 January 1944) is a British politician and businessman. He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East Midlands region from 1999 to 2017. Before becoming an MEP, he was a business executive. Helmer was elect ...

would stand in the by-election. The Bus Pass Elvis Party leader and perennial election candidate, David Bishop, announced on 6 May that he would stand in the by-election after taking fourth place ahead of the Liberal Democrats in a recent local authority by-election in Clifton North ward, Nottingham.Alex Britton
"Patrick Mercer 'deliberately evaded' MPs' rules, watchdog finds"
, ''Nottingham Post'', 6 May 2014

Result

The Conservatives retained the seat with a majority of over 7,000 which was described by the BBC as 'a relatively comfortable victory'. While UKIP's performance decreased the Conservative majority the BBC's Alex Forsyth said this was 'not as much as Mr Farage had hoped - or predicted'. Christopher Hope, writing in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'', argued that 'the scale of the victory is a vindication for the Tory high command which mounted a huge effort to win the seat' and claimed that

David Cameron David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...

'had halted the momentum of Ukip'.

George Osborne George Gideon Oliver Osborne (born Gideon Oliver Osborne; 23 May 1971) is a former British politician and newspaper editor who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2016 and as First Secretary of State from 2015 to 2016 in the ...

hailed his party's victory and noted that it was the first time the Conservative's had held a seat at a by-election while in government for 25 years. However, both Nigel Farage and Labour's

Chris Bryant Christopher John Bryant (born 11 January 1962) is a British politician and former Anglican priest who is the Chair of the Committees on Standards and Privileges. He previously served in government as Deputy Leader of the House of Commons fro ...

suggested that the Conservative performance was not particularly impressive. It was suggested by

Owen Jones Owen Jones (born 8 August 1984) is a British newspaper columnist, political commentator, journalist, author, and left-wing activist. He writes a column for '' The Guardian'' and contributes to the '' New Statesman'' and '' Tribune.'' He has ...

in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' that "Labour and Lib Dem voters clearly voted tactically to keep Ukip out". The poor performance for the Liberal Democrats was described by the BBC as one of 'worst performances in a post-war English by-election' for the party or its predecessors, and by ''The Telegraph'' as 'a disaster' for the party.

Polling

Previous result

Notes