There is little disguising what is surely going to be the prevailing story as council election results pour in from lunchtime onwards: Reform UK has had a very good night, Labour a poor one and the Conservatives a disastrous one. To win a by-election – even by just six votes – in Runcorn, will enliven Reform, especially following the civil war which threatened after Rupert Lowe’s ejection from the party. However, as we found with the SDP in the 1980s, by-election victories can give challenger parties false hope: they will not necessarily save them from a meltdown in a subsequent general election.
But it is a remark from a Labour campaigner in the Runcorn by-election, reported on the BBC, which provides the most illuminating comment on that contest and probably on the whole election night. On the doorstep, she said, ‘It was all PIP and winter fuel payments’.
Reform is now the party standing up for industrial jobs
The good voters of Runcorn, in other words, seem to have flocked to Reform because they found both Labour and the Tories insufficiently left-wing.
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