UK byelection results paint truly ominous picture for Tories

In the end the byelection scoreline was 2-1 to the opposition; a Labour triumph in Selby and Ainsty and a Liberal Democrat victory in Somerton and Frome, and a consolation win for the Conservatives in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. On the surface it looks like something for everyone, but taken together, the results paint a truly ominous picture for the Conservatives.

The swing to Labour in Selby and Ainsty was a monster 23.7 per cent. This is the second-highest swing to the main opposition in any government seat since 1945, with only the 1994 landslide in Dudley West (29.1 per cent) being larger.

It is a historically terrible result for a government, and correspondingly an amazing one for a principal opposition party. There may be one or two excuses for the Conservatives – many electors will not have been sympathetic to Nigel Adams’s reasons for resigning, the organisation may have become complacent, turnout was sharply down – but these are not enough to take away from the scale of the verdict on the government.

There have been several massive swings to the Lib Dems in recent years – Chesham and Amersham, North Shropshire, Tiverton and Honiton – so Somerton and Frome does not tell us much that is new despite the big Lib Dem victory.

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Selby and Ainsty shows Labour is capable of winning big, and that tactical voting is working consistently against the Conservatives. However, Uxbridge and South Ruislip has a certain amount to show us about the politics of outer London and the limits of the patience of the electorate during a cost of living crisis.

Uxbridge seems to be a jinxed constituency for Labour. This result makes it three times – December 1972, July 1997 and now July 2023 – that it has fallen short of the polling and expectations.

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The third time was not the charm for Labour, and Frank Beswick (1945-59) and John Ryan (1966-70) remain the only non-Tory MPs for the constituency. Big byelections attract minor party and independent candidates, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip was no exception. There were two independent candidates standing in opposition to the London mayor Sadiq Khan’s expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) who polled 394 votes between them, but the Conservatives ran by far the most successful single-issue anti- Ulez campaign.

Their new MP Steve Tuckwell’s victory speech was about London politics rather than a defence of the Sunak government. There can be no doubt that Ulez enabled the Tories to run an anti-incumbent campaign that turned out enough of their vote to squeak home.

The Uxbridge result will cause short-term problems for Labour. Their candidate, Danny Beales, had already expressed reservations about the implementation of Ulez during the campaign. Dropping the change to the scheme would fit in with the cautious approach of the national leadership and be a gesture of listening to voters in a cost of living crisis. This is not the first Ulez election – Labour performed poorly against the Conservatives in the May local elections in places just outside London, such as Dartford and Harlow, where it was an issue.

However, Khan regards clean air as a vital climate and public health issue, and can hope that the politics of it will settle down after August when many people realise it will not affect them. Labour campaigners also pointed to the lack of a “retail offer” – a simple promise to improve people’s lives that would enable the conversation to move on from Ulez, and some on the left blame the national leadership’s lack of ambition. Uxbridge and South Ruislip could be a stress test for how well the anti-Tory vote holds up in the face of a vigorous campaign.

The longer-term dilemma is for the Conservatives. Going all-in on Ulez was enough to stave off defeat in Uxbridge, and the Tories will be tempted to go further down the road to campaigning as the motorists’ party, even at the cost of their own net zero transition policies and their long-term future with younger voters.

The Conservatives will find it hard to replicate the anti-incumbent technique outside London or Wales, and there are only a handful of other constituencies that resemble Uxbridge electorally or demographically (and the Uxbridge swing is big enough to take out some of them).

The problem the Tories have is that there are large numbers of constituencies that are a bit like Selby and Ainsty or Somerton and Frome. Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire is a mixture of small towns, commuter villages and some countryside, neither poor nor affluent. It has elements of “red wall” and “middle England” and a big swing here has wide implications. The Uxbridge result might caution us against expecting too many Labour advances into new territory in 2024, but Selby and Ainsty suggests Labour is on course to rebuild the electoral coalition that previously brought it victory. Somerton and Frome was part of a swathe of rural and small-town former Lib Dem seats in the south-west that seemed like extinct volcanoes after the coalition government and Brexit. If these seats are in flux, the Conservatives face a daunting task if they are to retain an overall majority.

The swings since 2019 look as if they are all over the place – 29 per cent to the Lib Dems in Somerton and Frome, 24 per cent to Labour in Selby and Ainsty, and only 7 per cent to Labour in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

But from a longer perspective it looks a lot clearer. It is less dangerous to prognosticate on the basis of three byelections in very different types of seat than it is for a single byelection. In 1997 the Lib Dems gained Somerton and Frome by 130 votes – in 2023 they gained it by 11,008. In 1997 Labour gained the Selby constituency by 3,836 – in 2023, on less favourable boundaries, Labour gained by 4,161. And in 1997 the Conservatives held Uxbridge by 724 votes; in 2023 they held a somewhat more Tory version of the seat by 495 votes. These results, allowing for the Lib Dems’ winning ways in byelections, show the level and distribution of the parties’ support is a bit worse for the Conservatives than it was in 1997. The Brexit realignment? Left on economics, right on culture?

Gone like tears in rain. – Guardian