Set against the expectation of a triple by-election defeat, last night will be seen as cause for optimism by some Tories. Labour failing to take Uxbridge and Ruislip is an unexpected boost for Rishi Sunak – and a result that will be seized upon by Keir Starmer opponents, not least those in the Labour party. Given the Boris baggage and the national polling, this is a seat Labour should have taken and probably with a reasonable majority.
However, there is still plenty to glean from yesterday that should concern the Tories. Losing a seat like Selby is alarming, particularly doing so to Labour by a margin of more than 4,000 votes. The Lib Dems romping home with a 10,000+ majority in Somerton and Frome is also deeply worrying to Sunak and his team. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said the result shows the party is ‘firmly back’. He’s right.
Somerton and Frome was a Lib Dem seat from 1997 until 2015, albeit a seat they always won with tiny majorities, barely staving off the Tories at each election (their majorities from ’97 onwards: 130, 668, 882, 1,817). When the Lib Dem vote tanked in 2015, the Conservative party took this constituency back with a whopping majority of over 20,000 and it has been a safe Tory seat since – at least until yesterday.
But this Lib Dem victory isn’t the only scalp the party has taken in this parliament: in North Shropshire in December 2021, they overturned a majority of 22,949, winning a seat that should have been way outside of their ability to pick up. But do victories in North Shropshire and Somerton and Frome show that the Lib Dems can do well in a general election? Or is the party simply good at winning by-elections, when the whole of the party’s machine can be focused on one constituency?
It seems hard to pass off Somerton and Frome as a Lib Dem by-election blip. It's true that the Uxbridge by-election demonstrates that the Tories can still win – so long as they give the voters something tangible to vote for that fits the mood of the moment. They ran on opposition to Khan’s Ulez policy and it turned out to be enough. But the problem for the Tories with this is that they can't roll out a similar anti-incumbency strategy in a general election, given that they have been in power for so long. Yes, Uxbridge should have been a Labour victory, but the win for the Tories looks more like a one-off, with a host of factors that won’t be relevant almost anywhere else come the general election.
If Rishi Sunak thinks the Uxbridge result has him in the clear, he needs to think again
In an age of 'none of the above', the party that has refashioned itself once again to be just that – the Lib Dems – looks increasingly appealing to voters. Somerton and Frome shows that those seats in southwest England that the Lib Dems held for decades pre-2015 can all be won back by them if the prevailing mood of unhappiness continues. And while yesterday was nowhere near as bad for the Tories as feared, there is little sense that the mood of the country has changed in the party's favour.
But the final takeaway from yesterday’s by-elections is the one that should probably scare the Tories the most. If people are angry enough with the government, tactical voting can have a huge effect with very little obvious working together of Labour and the Lib Dems. They basically just need to stay out of each other’s way, and yesterday's results mostly demonstrate that they've figured out how to successfully do this. It isn't difficult to see the Lib Dems getting 50 seats while Labour take back the red wall and a host of other seats in England on the way to a majority.
So while there was some cheer for the Tories in keeping hold of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, there are still plenty of reasons why they should be fearful of a general election. The Lib Dems alone can deprive them of a majority, letting Labour into government even if they underperform, as the Somerton and Frome by-election has demonstrated. If Rishi Sunak thinks the Uxbridge result has him in the clear, he needs to think again.
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