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The Labour party has seized two previously solid Conservative seats in England in an ominous blow to UK prime minister Rishi Sunak ahead of a general election expected next year.
Sir Keir Starmer’s opposition party overturned Tory majorities of nearly 25,000 in Mid Bedfordshire and close to 20,000 in Tamworth, a pair of results that will send tremors through the ruling Conservative party.
While by-elections do not always foreshadow the results of subsequent general elections, the results will reinforce the idea that Sunak is struggling to win over the public after a year in office.
Sir John Curtice, a respected elections expert, told the BBC the results left the Tories facing “the serious prospect of losing the next general election heavily and even more heavily than in 1997”, when Tony Blair brought Labour back to power in a landslide victory.
Starmer said: “Winning in these Tory strongholds shows that people overwhelmingly want change and they’re ready to put their faith in our changed Labour party to deliver it.”
Labour secured victory in Mid Beds, previously held by former culture secretary Nadine Dorries, after a three-way fight with the Liberal Democrats.
Labour candidate Alistair Strathern won with 13,872 votes, while the Tories’ candidate Festus Akinbusoye took 12,680 votes. The Lib Dems came third with 9,420 votes.
The Conservatives had a majority of 24,664 under Dorries, a close ally of former prime minister Boris Johnson. She formally resigned in August with a withering attack on Sunak for presiding over a “zombie parliament”.
It was the largest majority that Labour has overturned in a by-election in modern political history. Strathern said: “Nowhere is off limits for today’s Labour party and tonight’s result proves that.”
George Osborne, former Conservative chancellor, had warned earlier on Thursday night that losing Mid Bedfordshire — a Tory seat since 1931 — would mean “Armageddon is coming for the Tory party”.
Labour also won in Tamworth in the West Midlands with 11,719 votes for candidate Sarah Edwards against 10,403 for the Conservatives, with a low turnout.
The Conservatives previously enjoyed a huge majority of 19,634 in Tamworth, making it their 57th safest seat in the country. The swing of 23.9 per cent from the Tories to Labour was the second highest since the 1940s.
Labour’s victory has historic resonance because it previously won the seat — then called South East Staffordshire — in a by-election in 1996, one year before the party’s decisive 1997 win.
Chris Hopkins, a pollster at Savanta ComRes, said there was “no sugar coating how bad this is for the Conservatives”.
There had not been three consecutive 20 point swings in by-elections from the Conservatives to Labour since 1996, he noted. In July, Labour also overturned a 20,000 Tory majority in the Selby and Ainsty by-election.
“This points towards a 1997-style landslide,” he said.
The Tamworth by-election was precipitated by Chris Pincher, the former Tory MP, quitting parliament after losing his appeal against an eight-week suspension from the House of Commons for groping two men last year.
Craig Tracey, Tory MP for nearby North Warwickshire, said the turnout of 35.9 per cent was “disappointing”, adding: “There was always a sense that there might be a little bit of voter apathy out there.”
Greg Hands, chair of the Conservative party, said on Friday morning the results were due to “Conservative voters staying at home” as opposed to flipping to Labour.
The Tories also faced issues on their right-flank, as the Reform UK party secured more votes than the Labour party majority in both seats.
Reform UK leader Richard Tice wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “twice in [the] same night have Reform UK ensured Tories lost their seat”.
But Peter Kyle, who led Labour’s campaign in Mid Beds, said it was the “biggest by-election shock in history”, which was only possible due to Starmer’s leadership.
“We saw the Tory vote had totally collapsed . . . we trusted residents when they told us they wanted to see something better,” he told Sky News. “What happened tonight was a political earthquake.”
The Conservative party has been defeated in a string of by-elections in various parts of the country in recent years, with an unusual number of the contests caused by resignations for misconduct.
Only once during this parliament have the Tories taken a seat from another party in a by-election, when they won Hartlepool from Labour in May 2021.
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