Rachel Johnson saw the upside of the Tories’ by-election defeats and it really doesn’t add up

Over on LBC Rachel Johnson has been looking for the upside of the Conservatives’ historically bad by-election defeats last week.

And it turns out she found one and was naturally keen to share it with her listeners. Except it wasn’t quite the slam-dunk she appears to think it was.

Rachel Johnson points out the Conservatives got 24,634 votes in the Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton by-elections combined, versus Labour on 14,728, as she attributes their defeats to ‘tactical voting’. @RachelSJohnson pic.twitter.com/5KreWUAxpM

— LBC (@LBC) June 26, 2022

Well, it’s one way of coming out in favour of proportional representation.

The clip went viral although surely not for reasons Johnson (Rachel, not Boris) might have been hoping. Here are our 9 favourite things people said about it.

Someone is having a lobotomy done live on the radio, fascinating.
pic.twitter.com/Vz7pFGVfwq

— Brendan May (@bmay) June 26, 2022

The prime minister's sister is adding up votes in elections he lost to make it look as if he won. I am not sure how many more of these "victories" the Conservative party can take https://t.co/MPmtjEWwxT

— Nick Cohen (@NickCohen4) June 26, 2022

Next week on LBC Rachel Johnson explains that if you put butter on hot crumpets it is likely to melt. https://t.co/xL1b8lKd8s

— Otto English (@Otto_English) June 26, 2022

I saw a film today in which Chris Pratt was able to calm random dinosaurs by holding out his hand in front of them, just to make it clear that when I say this is the silliest thing I have seen all day, it is some accolade. https://t.co/hhbEO4aXlR

— Stephen Bush (@stephenkb) June 26, 2022

We can safely ignore the questionable methodology of trying to add together the results from different seats where different parties won

What's more concerning is that, faced with the truth tactical voting works, there is an attempt to paint it as illegitimate https://t.co/SyG4JAYtq6

— Pascal (@PascalLTH) June 26, 2022

Losing twice to two different parties isn’t as bad as just losing against one party twice, because… (please check ed) pic.twitter.com/iSJgla7IG1

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) June 26, 2022

And they lost both. Welcome to first past the post where your overall vote tally means nothing. Perhaps more Conservatives would like to promote proportional representation if they are so aggrieved. https://t.co/tnCB5mt24h

— Phil (@Philmoorhouse76) June 26, 2022

In a survey, people preferred raspberry cake to blueberry cake by 60-40 and lemon cake to blueberry cake by 60-40. 80 people preferred blueberry cake so it clearly wins when you add the surveys together.
But what adding the surveys together actually gives you is fruitcake. https://t.co/nOqVR5Kk0T

— Andrew Teale (@andrewteale) June 26, 2022