Keir Starmer has reason to celebrate this morning after his party triumphed overnight in both the Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth by-elections. Both on paper are safe Tory seats that aren’t even on Labour’s target list.
Despite this, Starmer’s party managed to overturn a Tory majority of 19,634 in Chris Pincher’s old seat, which was last Labour in 2010. In Mid-Bedfordshire – Nadine Dorries’ former seat – Labour won out in a three-way fight for the constituency that has been Tory since its creation. Overturning a Tory majority of 24,664, Labour won 13,872 votes to the Tories’ 12,680 and the Liberal Democrats’ 9,420.
In both votes, the Tory candidate was close behind in second place by around 1,000 votes. However, that will offer little comfort to concerned MPs who are far more likely to focus on the vote swing. The swing from the Conservatives to Labour in Tamworth was 23.9
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