Weak Labour are real losers of Tory by-election defeat
ASENSATIONAL byelection defeat for a governing party is normally quite straightforward to understand, with a single dominant issue driving the outcome. Over the years everything from the unpopularity of the poll tax to public fury over the Iraq war have led to huge swings in by-elections, often to the advantage of Britain’s foremost protest vote party, the Liberal Democrats.
But the Lib Dem victory in Thursday’s Chesham and Amersham by-election stands out as a bit different because a bewildering array of factors have been suggested as the cause of the Conservatives losing a hitherto safe seat.
Congratulations to the victorious Lib Dem candidate Sarah Green and to her leader Ed Davey for finally showing his party can still pack a political punch in the right circumstances are clearly in order. But what brought those circumstances about?
SOME say it was a revolt against the HS2 project that cuts through the constituency, others that it was about opposition to plans for thousands of new houses to be built around these leafy towns. Yet more suggest we just saw a backlash from southern, middle class Remainers still sore about Brexit.
Or could it be down to local anti-lockdown Tories abstaining? Or is it simply that the normal voter scratchiness about governments known as “midterm blues” is finally descending on the PM’s administration?
Or maybe – and there is some evidence to back this up in the overall vote shares of the parties – a big factor is the spontaneous onset of tactical voting among those with left-of-centre views. In this election the Lib Dems, who had come a comfortable second at the 2019 general election, were the obvious choice for anyone focusing on how to beat the Conservatives.
Labour, which got more than 7,000 votes in 2019, saw its support tumble to just 622, a derisory 1.6 per cent vote share.
If left-wing people now start generally shopping around for the anti-Tory brand that can do the Conservatives most damage in each electoral contest that comes along then that is a definite worry for Mr Johnson.
But it is even worse news for Keir Starmer’s Labour, who are meant to make up the second half of the political duopoly that fights it out for power under our first past the post electoral system. Just a few weeks after its calamitous loss of Hartlepool in its northern “red wall”, Labour has shown it is also going backwards rapidly in a predominantly middle-class southern seat.
It faces a red wall rematch with the Tories in Batley and Spen in a fortnight and most people expect it to lose again – partly thanks to the presence of the maverick George Galloway on the ballot paper.
On Thursday night in a littlenoticed municipal by-election, Labour also lost a seat on
Norwich council to the Greens. So it is losing big chunks of votes to all-comers. At the next general election, having Labour in such a weakened state will be a big positive for the Conservatives even if that comes at a cost of smaller left-wing parties gaining some momentum.
While Labour faces an existential threat, the Tories have been reminded that they also are mortal. There will be those in the party who now seek to dilute its commitment to a levelling-up agenda that is focusing more investment on “leftbehind” towns in the Midlands and the north and who push for it to concentrate once more on the interests of what used to be known as the gin-and-Jag belt.
THAT would be a profound mistake and a betrayal of the promises that delivered the Conservatives their landslide 2019 win.
In fact what is called for is a redoubling of levelling-up, which has been rather marginalised during the Covid fight. The Prime Minister should set out with clarity some benchmarks for us to judge the Government by in the autumn. He could use his party conference speech for this purpose.
If he proves himself a serious political reformer rather than the opportunist his detractors accuse him of being then Mr Johnson can expect to win back at the next general election those prosperous constituencies lost in by-elections.
And he can also expect to hold on to those primarily working-class places that have decided to put their faith in him.
Pulling the plug on levellingup in a bid to shore up the traditional Tory shires heartlands would, by contrast, signal a complete loss of nerve.
Boldness is as essential to his political brand as toughness was to Margaret Thatcher’s. Boris has for now lost a blue brick, but the red wall is still the key battleground.
‘Pulling the plug on levelling-up would signal a loss of nerve’