Sunak: it’s not a done deal

There was something for everyone to celebrate in the by-election triple whammy: the Tories clung on to Uxbridge, Labour trounced the Tories in Selby & Ainsty with the second biggest swing since the Second World War and the LibDems won back a seat they lost not so long ago.

Yet there were good reasons for all three parties to sob too. If Labour was to replicate the Selby result at a general election, the swing would bring about a bigger landslide than that enjoyed by Tony Blair in 1997 and the Tories would be all but extinguished. And the LibDems lost their deposit in Selby while Labour suffered a similar fate in Somerton and Frome.

Labour also got a bloody nose from voters in Uxbridge, a seat Sir Keir Starmer was convinced would be a no-brainer to bag following the resignation of former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Infact, many die-hard Tory voters quipped that a Boris Lookalike would have won it.  Rather than a vote on how beastly the Tories are – which is what Labour had hoped it would be – the by-election turned into a mini-referendum on the expansion of the UlLEZ charge which has infuriated locals. 

And Labour lost out badly, moving the dial by only 7.4 per cent away from the Tories, letting the new Tory MP Steve Tuckwell in with a tiny 495 votes. The failure to win Uxbridge has already prompted senior Labour figures to reflect on their green policies, with Angela Rayner, deputy leader, taking a surprisingly realistic line, telling the BBC today: “The Uxbridge result shows that when you don’t listen to the voters, you don’t win elections.”

Controversy over ULEZ – around a third of car owners in the district own vehicles which are not compliant – brought out the voters. The turnout in Uxbridge was high at 46.2 per cent, well above the usual turnout. London Mayor Sadiq Khan was quick to defend the policy – introduced by none other than Boris – but the chairman of the local Uxbridge Labour party immediately quit the party and his job, saying “politics needs principles.”

Predictably, Rishi Sunak hailed Labour’s failure to snatch Uxbridge as proof the next general election is still to fight for. “Westminster’s been acting like the next election is a done deal. The Labour Party has been acting like it’s a done deal. The people of Uxbridge just told all of them that it’s not.”

However, if you look north to the monster victory by newcomer Keir Mather in Selby, who overturned a comfortable Tory majority with a swing of 23.7 per cent, the Conservatives should be quaking in their boots.  The mini Keir, who is 25 and now the youngest MP, was the star of the night, overturning the 19,000 majority in a constituency which has been a classic mix of red-wallers and rural Tories. He has already caused a stir after being criticised as an Inbetweener – for his youth and inexperience – by one Tory MP – but clearly his fresh-faced approach worked with the voters. For now at least. 

And the LibDems? It’s always dangerous to read too much into their victories although Sarah Dyke’s win in Somerset was stonking, and will probably lead to more plotting over tactical voting between Labour and the LibDems.

So should Sunak be breathing a little easier today? He held on to one seat but lost two: not as crippling as many had feared. But the result was still pretty ghastly. Professor Sir John Curtice says that across the three contests the Tory vote was down 21 percentage points, with many Conservative voters simply not bothering to cast a ballot. That’s got to change if Sunak has any chance of surviving. 

More interesting to watch will be how Labour responds to the mixed messages thrown up by the by-elections. Will Starmer now pivot towards a more consumer friendly approach to green type policies, going for what’s being patronisingly called the “retail offer” to win over voters? 

His success is a double-edged sword: it gives him the power to stick to policies that are unpopular with the hard left but which risks sowing more division within the party. Which will he choose? Maybe it’s not a done deal after all.  

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life