Labour has won both the Kingswood and Wellingborough by-elections in another night every bit as bad as expected for Rishi Sunak. The Tories saw majorities of more than 11,000 and 18,000 respectively easily overturned. It means the Conservatives have now lost ten by-elections in a single parliament, a worse run than any government since the 1960s. Labour’s double triumph mean it has taken five seats off the Tories since 2019.
Kingswood declared first. Labour’s Damien Egan won with a majority of 2,500 in a place where the Tories won by more than 11,000 in 2019. He polled 11,176 votes compared to 8,675 votes for the Conservatives, on a swing of 16 per cent – some way above the 11-point swing the party needed to win. ‘Fourteen years of Conservative government have sucked the hope out of our country,’ Egan declared in his victory speech.
A poor Tory result in Kingswood was followed by an abysmal one in Wellingborough. Labour’s Gen Kitchen (who cut her Suffolk honeymoon to join the campaign trail) won 13,844 votes compared to just 7,408 for Helen Harrison and the Conservatives. CCHQ expectation management was that the Tories would lose but hoped the swing would be less bad than Tamworth and Selby. Yet Wellingborough dwarfed both of them, with a 28 per cent swing being the second biggest such from the Conservative to Labour since the Second World War.
For all their internal difficulties, Labour are still on course to win a big majority at the next election
It shows that many 2019-Tories are directly switching to Starmer and his party and will temper Labour fears after a difficult week for the party on the abandoned £28 billion pledge and Rochdale rows. It is a reminder that, for all their internal difficulties, Labour are still on course to win a big majority at the next election with an opinion poll lead larger than almost any previous Opposition has seen in an election year. Sir Keir Starmer was certainly quick to credit Tory switchers, telling broadcasters that ‘The Tories have failed. Rishi’s recession proves that. That’s why we’ve seen so many former Conservative voters switching directly to this changed Labour party.’
In both seats, the size of Labour’s increase was roughly half the size of the Conservative decrease. This suggests, in the words of psephologist Sir John Curtice, ‘more about the way in which the Conservatives are in deep trouble, rather than necessarily an indication of the extent to which the electorate have necessarily bought into Labour as the preferred alternative.’ It is unlikely to offer much hope to Tory high command whose line is that ‘both of these seats have been Labour recently.’ The Peter Bone scandal in Wellingborough is understood to have been a drag on the ticket too.
Reform meanwhile secured their best results in by-elections thus far. In Wellingborough, they took 13 per cent of the vote and in Kingswood 10 per cent. It is, at last, evidence that the Reform surge in recent months is real, with the party finally matching the double digits that they have been polling since November. Needless to say, Reform threw considerable resources at both campaigns: Ukip finished second in Wellingborough in 2015, with almost 20 per cent of the vote. Few seats are unlikely to be more fertile territory for Richard Tice’s party.
As for the Conservatives, where do they go from here? There was a deliberate choice by CCHQ to run a low-key campaign, mindful of the likelihood of defeat. Many MPs and members were struck by how few resources were dedicated to both contests, as compared to by-election campaigns of the recent past. But the Wellingborough will result disappoint even the most ardent Sunakites. For them, it will likely be a question of claiming these results were ‘priced in’ and hoping that Jeremy Hunt can deliver in his Budget in three weeks’ time.
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