Tories blame Farage for by-election defeat
After Lib Dem victory cuts Commons majority to just ONE...
SENIOR Tories blamed Nigel Farage after Boris Johnson’s majority was slashed to just one yesterday following a by-election defeat.
The Liberal Democrats won the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency by 1,425 votes, with a swing of nearly 12 per cent from the Conservatives.
The margin of victory was less than the 3,331 votes that Mr Farage’s Brexit Party amassed. A Remainer electoral pact saw Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru and the Green Party stand aside to boost the chances of a pro-EU MP being elected, and new Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson predicted further alliances in future.
The first major electoral test of Mr Johnson as Tory leader became his first defeat with the announcement of Jane Dodds’s victory in the early hours yesterday.
She beat Conservative candidate Chris Davies, who was the constituency’s MP until he was ousted by local voters in a ‘recall petition’ after he admitted submitting false invoices for expenses.
The Tory loss will add to the PM’s challenges in steering Brexit through Parliament, and may increase the chances of a snap general election.
But the Conservatives were quick to point the finger of blame at Mr Farage yesterday, arguing that he split the pro-Brexit vote to allow the Remainers to win even though the Welsh seat narrowly voted to leave the EU in 2016.
Yesterday the Tory party’s official Twitter feed stated: ‘A vote for the Brexit Party = A vote to delay Brexit. It’s Conservatives who will get Brexit done on October 31st – Deal or No Deal.’
The Brexit Party has reaffirmed that it was preparing to contest every seat in any snap general election – a message which reaffirmed support among many Eurosceptic Tory MPs for a pact.
Steve Baker MP, from the European Research Group, tweeted: ‘It is becoming obvious to all now that the Brexit Party standing against the Conservative Party would produce a massive own goal.’ With the vote coming eight days after Mr Johnson was appointed, it is the quickest byelection defeat for any PM in the post-war period.
In a celebratory appearance alongside her new MP, Miss Swinson said: ‘This by-election victory shows that the people of Brecon and Radnorshire not only have a first class MP in Jane Dodds but they have shown the people of Britain that we can do better than the choice on offer between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.’
She added: ‘I will fight to keep our country in the European Union, and we now have in Parliament one more MP who will fight to make that happen.’
The Lib Dem leader said she had exchanged messages with the Green and Plaid Cymru leaders, telling the BBC: ‘I think there will be more co- operation in future elections.’ Mrs Dodds said: ‘My very first act as your MP when I arrive in Westminster will be to find Mr Boris Johnson wherever he is hiding and tell him loud and clear: “Stop playing with the future of our communities and rule out a No Deal Brexit now”.’
Tory chairman James Cleverly told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was ‘disappointing to lose a parliamentary colleague’ but suggested the result was closer than many had predicted. Mr Davies won the seat from the Lib Dems in 2015 and secured a majority of 8,038 in the 2017 general election.
His recall came after he pleaded guilty in March to submitting two false expenses invoices for nine photographs costing £700 to decorate his new office.
But despite 19 per cent of the electorate petitioning for him to be ousted the Tories selected him to fight to reclaim the seat. The loss leaves the PM with the support of 319 MPs, including the DUP, while opposition parties now have 318.
However, following the election result, another Tory MP threatened to wipe out Mr Johnson’s majority altogether by defecting to the Liberal Democrats. Dr Phillip Lee, who supports a second EU referendum, said he will ‘spend the summer’ deciding whether to cross the floor.
ON the surface, the result of the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election was a gift for those who want to see Boris Johnson fall flat on his face.
A seat the Tories won just two years ago by a comfortable 8,000 votes was surrendered – albeit narrowly – to the resurgent Liberal Democrats.
Mr Johnson’s Commons majority (even with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party) is consequently now just one, and with plenty of Tory dissidents on the back benches, that’s a majority in name only.
Meanwhile the Brexit Party, whose flame the new Prime Minister must extinguish if he is to win a general election, polled 10.5 per cent and fatally split the Conservative vote. They remain a major threat.
So far, so disheartening. A field day for the doomsters and the gloomsters, one might say. But beneath the headlines, a more encouraging picture emerges.
The fundamentals in this by- election could hardly have been worse for the Conservatives. It wasn’t a traditional Tory seat, having been held by the Lib Dems from 1985 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2015.
The party’s candidate was a convicted expenses fraudster (why on earth was he selected?), for whom many natural Tory voters will have refused to vote on principle. Plaid Cymru and the Greens stepped aside to give the Lib Dems a free run as the anti-Brexit party, which paid off in spades. But could such a pact work on a national level?
And Labour were utterly humiliated, coming within a whisker of losing their deposit. In Wales!
On this basis, the only way Jeremy Corbyn could possibly get near Downing Street would be in some chimera coalition with the Lib Dems and Scottish Nationalists. Would anyone really wish that nightmare on the nation?
But perhaps most significantly, the Conservatives polled 39 per cent – 18 percentage points more than in the Peterborough by-election two months ago.
This is powerful evidence of a ‘Boris bounce’. So can it be built on? No one can deny that Mr Johnson has made a dynamic and purposeful start.
In his first ten days he has signalled his passionate commitment to the Union, with visits to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, reaching out to all political parties.
He has announced a raft of policy moves, including a pledge to grasp the nettle of social care and recruiting 20,000 police officers to tackle rising violence.
Interviewed in the Mail today, new Home Secretary Priti Patel pledges a return to a ‘zero tolerance’ policy on crime, stronger stop-and-search powers and a tougher line on cannabis.
The clear message is that Mr Johnson has more on his mind than Brexit alone. He wants to project a broader Tory vision. A new dawn.
But he knows that it’s Brexit on which he’ll ultimately be judged. He says we will be out ‘no ifs, no buts’ by October 31, and has certainly turbo-charged contingency plans for No Deal.
Whether he can deliver in that time-frame – in the teeth of bitter Parliamentary opposition – remains to be seen. If not, a general election looks inevitable. Going to the country would be a colossal gamble but the prize is huge – a majority big enough to govern effectively.
The lesson from Brecon and Radnorshire is that it will be an uphill task. But by no means an impossible one. ÷HEALTH
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