Roger Awan-Scully

The Liberal Democrats win the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election

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. The Conservatives have only held the parliamentary seat there for fifteen of the last eighty years. (The Tories have also, by the way, never won the National Assembly Brecon and Radnor seat either).

The circumstances of the by-election were also distinctly unhelpful for the Conservatives. Chris Davies, who captured the seat in 2015 and increased his majority two years later, was disqualified via a public petition after being convicted earlier this year of filling a false expenses claim. To the surprise of many observers, Davies was re-adopted as the Conservatives’ candidate for the ensuing by-election. A popular constituency MP, Davies probably stood as good a chance of holding the seat for his party as anyone. Behind the scenes, some Welsh Tories also suggested that he was, in effect, being asked to make up for his misdemeanour by ‘taking one for the team’: any loss could be blamed on him personally rather than the party as a whole.

The wider political context was hardly more helpful for the Conservatives than the local one.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in