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Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives on Friday suffered two crushing UK parliamentary by-election defeats but averted a “3-0” drubbing by unexpectedly holding on to Boris Johnson’s old Uxbridge seat.
The grave problems facing the British prime minister were highlighted when the opposition Labour party secured its biggest-ever by-election win in the once-safe Tory seat of Selby and Ainsty in Yorkshire.
The centrist Liberal Democrats earlier demolished a massive Tory majority to win the seat of Somerton and Frome, opening up a dangerous new front for Sunak in the Tory heartlands of England’s South West.
But Sunak was defiant, insisting his party’s narrow victory in west London showed Britain’s political class that the result of the next general election was not “a done deal”. He said: “The people of Uxbridge just told all of them that it’s not.”
Sunak’s party is trailing Labour by 20 points in opinion polls, and is dogged by high inflation, failing public services and the recent chaos of the Johnson and Liz Truss premierships.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said his party’s victory in Yorkshire showed “just how powerful the demand for change is”. Labour has been out of power since Gordon Brown was ejected from Downing Street in 2010.
Sunak’s fears of a by-election wipeout were allayed in the early hours of Friday when the Tories held on to Uxbridge with a margin of just 495 votes after a recount.
The Conservative victory in Uxbridge was attributed to concern over an extension of the ultra low emissions zone, a charge on polluting vehicles, to outer London boroughs planned by the capital’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan.
Starmer appeared to chide Khan on Friday, saying it was “clear” that the Conservatives won the seat because of ULEZ and that the mayor needed to “reflect” on the issue.
Sunak travelled to Uxbridge on Friday morning to meet Steve Tuckwell, the winning Tory candidate, who polled 13,965 against Labour’s 13,470.
But the local issues at play did not mask disastrous results for Sunak elsewhere, where the party suffered massive swings to opposition parties.
Labour won Selby and Ainsty from the Tories with a swing of more than 21 per cent, overturning a margin of 20,137.
Starmer said: “This is a historic result that shows that people are looking at Labour and seeing a changed party that is focused entirely on the priorities of working people with an ambitious, practical plan to deliver.”
Labour candidate Keir Mather — who at 25 will become the youngest MP in the House of Commons — won Selby with 16,456 votes, defeating the Tory candidate with 12,295.
The Lib Dem victory on Friday morning in Somerton and Frome, with a swing of 28.4 per cent, gave leader Sir Ed Davey hope of winning back Tory seats in the South West. “This stunning victory shows the Liberal Democrats are firmly back in the west country,” Davey said.
In Somerton and Frome, the Lib Dems’ Sarah Dyke won 21,187 votes, easily beating the Conservatives’ 10,179. The previous Tory MP David Warburton had been forced to quit in a drugs scandal.
A trio of defeats in the by-elections would have been the first such humiliation for a British prime minister since 1968, when Labour’s Harold Wilson lost three contests on a single day.
Despite the tight Uxbridge victory, some Conservative MPs believe that defeats in Selby and Somerset are a portent of a calamitous general election defeat next year.
Sunak insists he can still turn things around and secure a fifth consecutive election win. In a message to Tory MPs on Wednesday night, he attempted to raise his party’s morale, pointing to this week’s fall in inflation as a sign that a tide of bad economic news may be turning.
Sunak has vowed to stage a comeback, offering a new “long-term vision” for the country. An autumn financial statement and the King’s Speech legislative package will be crucial moments for the prime minister.
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