Were there a Most Beautiful Parliamentary Constituency in the UK award, Brecon and Radnorshire would be a very plausible contender. But Conservatives may be struggling to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of this large chunk of rural mid-Wales today. The by-election there overnight has reduced Prime Minister Johnson’s effective parliamentary majority – that is, including the DUP – to a single seat. A difficult parliamentary situation for the government just got ever-so-slightly worse. So much for the honeymoon period…
In truth, the by-election result should not have been much of a shock. Brecon and Radnor has not, historically, been particularly fertile territory for the Conservative party. The seat was actually held – albeit on slightly more favourable boundaries – by the Labour party between a 1939 by-election and 1979. It was then captured by the SDP-Liberal Alliance in a famous 1985 by-election, lost in 1992, but then re-taken by the Lib-Dems in 1997 and held until the Clegg-catastrophe of 2015.
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