Brecon shows Boris has all to play for

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 – a move that could swell Scottish Government coffers by as much as £100million.

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.

WITH the Brexit deadline just 89 days away, the SNP is refusing to commit any more funding to No Deal planning. Is that because Nationalists believe a chaotic Brexit would breathe fresh life into their moribund cause?