Labour held Blackpool South from 1997 until Boris Johnson won it for the Conservatives in 2019. There wasn’t a lot of suspense about who would win this time: given the dire national backdrop and the fact that the byelection was forced by the resignation of Tory MP Scott Benton over a lobbying scandal, Labour were certain to take the seat. Even so, the scale of the defeat was pretty grim news for Sunak. On a turnout of 32% - normal for a byelection - their candidate Chris Webb (above) won with 10,825 votes, more than the Conservatives and Reform UK combined. That’s a swing of 26% - the third biggest in Labour’s favour since the second world war, and the fifth swing of more than 20% since Keir Starmer became leader, more than there were under Tony Blair before 1997. There was some interest in whether the Tories could hang on to second place against Reform - which they just about did, by 3,218 votes to 3,101. Avoiding that symbolic blow will be cold comfort. “We expected a Labour win, but the swing is massive,” Kiran said. “They’re turning out these big by-election wins pretty consistently now.” And while the Conservatives like to call these mid-term elections, the blunt reality is that they have very little time to turn things around. Local elections | Grim reading for Sunak, problems for Labour with Muslim voters “The top line so far is that this is a set of results which show Labour having recovered a huge amount in the places it lost in 2019,” Kiran said. Dr Will Jennings, a political scientist at Southampton university crunching the numbers for Sky News, pointed out that the Conservative vote share so far is falling the most in areas that voted Leave in the Brexit referendum. Ben Walker of poll aggregator Britain Elects said that with more than 10% of results in, the early pattern was of a similar Conservative vote share to last year, but much worse losses in terms of seats. The anti-Conservative vote seems to be very efficient: election researcher Dylan Difford said that shortly before 4am, the number of seats lost seems to be about 30% worse for the Tories than you would expect on the basis of their overall vote share. “We shouldn’t underestimate what tactical voting is going to do,” Kiran said. “The Lib Dems are very chipper this morning about what they see as good gains in the ‘blue wall’. People have become very good at working out which party to vote for to get rid of the Tories.” Meanwhile, Labour made important gains, picking up councils in Leave-supporting areas like Hartlepool, Thurrock in Essex, and Rushmoor in Hampshire. But these were somewhat offset by losses in (mostly) safer boroughs. One really interesting factor in Labour’s position: it looks like they’re losing seats in wards with high Muslim populations, perhaps because of Keir Starmer’s stance on Gaza. Those losses have translated to gains for Green and independent candidates. Because those tend to be areas where Labour is strong, that has had a relatively limited impact on council control - but one ominous sign was the loss of Oldham to no overall control thanks to the election of seven new independent councillors. “They’re going backwards in areas with big Muslim populations,” Kiran said. “I’ve been tracking this for a while now, and it’s something they are perhaps not aware enough of.” It also suggests that where George Galloway’s Workers’ Party has strong local candidates (er, Monty Panesar?), it might be able to hurt Labour’s chances of picking up seats in the general election. “It’s important to say that if Labour gets the big national swing it’s currently on course for, it would still have a big majority,” Kiran said. “But people I talk to think there are as many as 12 seats they hope to win where they might not, because the loss of Muslim support will balance out the gains of Leave-supporting voters.” Meanwhile, Reform does seem to be winning a meaningful number of votes, but remains some distance from the highs that Ukip reached before Brexit. Political analyst Sam Freedman said that their figures are “more consistent with them getting 7-8% in a general election than 15%. But that’s still enough to do serious damage to the Tories.” Whatever’s going on under the bonnet, it’s important not to lose sight of the big point: these results suggest that if nothing changes, the Conservatives will lose the next election heavily, and Keir Starmer will be prime minister. What we don’t know yet | Key mayoral races – and some careful expectation management We’re only getting started, really – here’s a full timeline of what’s still to come. It’ll largely be quiet – other than the drone of relentless spinning – for the next few hours, but at about 12.30pm we’ll get the result of the Tees Valley mayoral contest, where Conservative candidate Ben Houchen’s personal popularity appears likely to save him from the general Tory bloodbath. About half the council results will arrive between noon and 6pm today. As well as their local significance, they will make it much easier to draw concrete conclusions about the state of the parties nationally, and Sky and the BBC will both produce projections of what they tell us about the general election in the afternoon. We’ll also find out if Labour has held off the challenge of their former mayor and now independent candidate Jamie Driscoll in the North East. The two biggest mayoral races, in the West Midlands and London, aren’t due until Saturday. (Look out for any signs of whether Labour’s problems with Muslim voters held up in each.) If Andy Street wins in the West Midlands and Houchen wins in Tees Valley, Rishi Sunak will try to present that as evidence of the Tory vote holding up – but these are races with strong local candidates who have distanced themselves from the Westminster party, so beware of over-interpretation. “The Tories have done a great job of expectation management,” Kiran said. “To turn an election where they’ll certainly lose several hundred coucillors into a relative success is quite the piece of political manoeuvring.” Conversely, if the Conservatives do lose both, and considering their generally grim performance, a leadership challenge to Sunak will begin to look like a real possibility. “I don’t think it’s likely that the Tories lose both – but if it does, we’ll know Sunak is in a totally catastrophic position,” Kiran said. “And I suspect we’d know the date of the election by the end of the weekend.” |