Byelection results: Labour in historic Selby win, Conservatives retain Uxbridge, Lib Dems sweep Somerton and Frome

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Speaking to Tories in Uxbridge, Rishi Sunak said it was normal for the governing party to lose seats in byelections. He said:

Byelections, midterms for an incumbent government, are always difficult. They rarely win them.

The message I take away is that we’ve got to double down, stick to our plan and deliver for people. That’s what I heard when I was out on the doorsteps and that’s what we’re going to do.

This is not quite true. Including the three contests yesterday, there have been eight byelections in what were Conservative-held seats this parliament. The Tories have lost five of them, but won three.

Here is my colleague Kiran Stacey‘s analysis of what the results means.

And here is an extract.

Conservatives portrayed the results as a sign that Labour’s huge national poll lead is vulnerable, especially when the Tories find the right issues to campaign on, as they did in Uxbridge with Labour’s plan to extend London’s Ultra-low emission zone.

However, pollsters say the dramatic swings against Sunak’s party in Selby and Ainsty and Somerton and Frome show the national mood has turned against them, and may not return in time for next year’s general election.

The Green party came third in all three byelections last night, with 10% of the vote in Somerton (where Labour lost its deposit), 5% in Selby (where the Lib Dems lost their deposit) and 3% in Uxbridge. Adrian Ramsay, the Green co-leader, said his party was the only one to increase its vote share in all three contests. He said:

Greens came a credible third in each seat. We were the only party to increase our vote share in all three contests. That’s because we offered a clear alternative, though we were squeezed in the particular circumstances of these byelections.

These were three Conservative seats with very significant majorities. A competent government that was providing solutions to the real, deep-seated crises facing our country would have held all three of them.

The fact that they lost two of them underscores just how tired and fed up voters are with them. They have let the country down over the cost of living, over the climate emergency and over standards in public life. Now they are paying the price.

Labour will make the best of the Selby result, but the truth is that a government in waiting – which is what Labour believe themselves to be – would have done even better against a Conservative party that has been the most chaotic and damaging in modern history, crashed the economy and repeatedly failed the environment.

Sunder Katwala, from the British Future thinktank, points out on Twitter that the Greens did better than all the various rightwing, populist candidates. Reform UK’s best result was in Selby and Ainsty, where it got almost 4%.

BBC News is showing footage of Rishi Sunak speaking to reporters in Uxbridge.

He said the Uxbridge result showed that the next general election was not a done deal. He said:

Westminster’s been acting like the next election is a done deal. The Labour Party has been acting like it’s a done deal. The people of Uxbridge just told all of them that it’s not.

No one expected us to win here. But Steve [Tuckwell’s] victory demonstrates that, when confronted with the actual reality of the Labour party, when there’s an actual choice on a matter of substance at stake, people vote Conservative.

Labour supporters may fear that Sunak has a point, but it is worth remembering that Labour has not won a parliamentary election in Uxbridge since 1966. Even in the Blair years, it was Tory. There was a byelection there soon after Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997, but even with New Labour at its most popular, the Conservatives won. Keir Starmer has been accused of following the Blair playbook closely. You could argue that losing byelections in Uxbridge is part of that.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory former business secretary, is a Somerset MP, and he is being interviewed on the Today programme. Nick Robinson points out to him that, if the swing in the Somerton and Frome byelection were replicated in his seat at the general election, he would be out.

Rees-Mogg says byelections are not always a good guide to what will happen in a general election. He says his message is “don’t panic”.

He says in 1992 the Tories won back all the seats they had lost in byelections in the preceding parliament.

And the Tories should learn a lesson from Uxbridge.

Q: What lesson is that?

Rees-Mogg replies: “That high-cost green policies are not popular.”

Q: Greg Hands earlier defended government policy on the transition to green energy.

Rees-Mogg says he agreed with what Hands said about going with the grain of human behaviours. He suggests there is no need to rush the phasing out of petrol and diesel cars.

He repeats the point about the need for his party not to panic. They should support Rishi Sunak, he says.

Q: You used to criticise him as socialist.

Rees-Mogg says he wants the Tories to win the next election. No Conservative would want Keir Starmer in Downing Street.

Q: Better the devil you know?

Better a Conservative prime minister than a Labour one, Rees-Mogg says.

He says the energy bill will put high charges on people. The government should not do that.

Q: So you are saying back Rishi Sunak conditionally, provided he drops things like the energy bill.

No, Rees-Mogg says. He wants Tories to back Sunak “regardless”, he says.

Rishi Sunak is in Uxbridge with Steve Tuckwell, the victorious Conservative candidate, PA Media reports. They arrived in a cafe to loud clapping and cheering. PA says:

The prime minister chatted to people sitting at the tables, celebrating the result which saw Tuckwell hold on with a majority of just 495, down from the 7,210 Boris Johnson secured in 2019.

“Are you all pumped?” Mr Sunak said to one group as he thanked Tory campaigners.

He also joked: “Normally when I get woken up at three in the morning it’s only bad news. So, it was a welcome change.”

On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Nick Robinson, is discussing the results with Prof Sir John Curtice, the elections expert. He points out that Curtice was chuckling as Greg Hands claimed that what mattered most was the Uxbridge result. Curtice repeats the point he made earlier about, overall, the fall in the Tory vote matching what the polls are saying. (See 7am.)

Hands says the government is not opposed to ultra low emission zones. But he says the Tories think people should not have to replace their cars until their cars have reached the end of their lives. Policies like this need to be introduced gradually, he suggests, so that they “go with the grain of human nature”.

He says Sadiq Khan botched the consultation on the Ulez policy. This shows that Labour cannot be trusted to run things, he says.

Q: What does Rishi Sunak have to change to respond to the concerns of the voters in Somerton and Frome, and in Selby and Ainsty?Hands says the government is focusing on the people’s priorities.

Q: So you are not going to change – just carry on as now.Hands says the government needs to continue the work it is doing.

Q: But the results show this is not what people want.Hands says there is a long history of people voting against governments in byelections. He goes on:

Byelections are not always a good predictor of general elections.

Greg Hands, the Conservative chair, is being interviewed by Nick Robinson on the Today programme. He says Uxbridge was the standout result of the night. It was not expected, he says.

Q: But you need to face up to reality too. What do you think the voters are telling you?Hands says the voters “are saying that the Conservatives need to do better”. But that is why Rishi Sunak has set five priorities, he says.

Q: Which ones are you actually delivering on?Hands claims the government is making progress.

Q: But are you actually meeting any of them? You accept that?Hands says they were “not designed to be an easy thing to meet”.

He says during the campaigns he picked up “a real misgiving about Labour in power”. And that was reflected in Uxbridge, which is in London, where Sadiq Khan has been in power, he says.

George Osborne, the Conservative former chancellor, claims the Uxbridge result will give his party hope. He says:

Despite dire results in Selby and Somerton – winning Uxbridge has given the Tories something very precious, that they didn’t have yesterday: hope. Hope they can get voters focused on what a Starmer government would mean for their cost of living. Hope this is more like 92 than 97.

Rishi Sunak has posted a message on Twitter congratulating Steve Tuckwell, the Conservative candidate who won the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection.

Asked about the defeat in Selby, Greg Hands, the Conservative chair, claimed it was caused by Tory supporters staying at home. He told GB News:

Clearly we’re disappointed by the result in Selby and Ainsty. We had a fantastic candidate in Claire Holmes. What I would say is that result was driven largely by Conservative voters – previous Conservative voters – staying home.

Clearly we’ve got work to do to win back the trust and confidence, we don’t deny that.

Rishi Sunak has been in office now for nine months working very hard against the five priorities of halving inflation, restoring growth, reducing debt, cutting hospital waiting lists and stopping the boats. That is still work in progress.

We’ll be fighting hard to regain that constituency next year.

There may be some truth in the claim that some Tory supporters “stayed at home” during the byelection. But this is a normal occurrence in byelections, and it does not explain why the swing from the Tories to Labour was the second biggest since 1945. (See 5.39am and 7am.)

The turnout was not particularly low in the byelection. Including those last night, there have been 16 byelections in this parliament. Only five of them had a higher turnout than in Selby and Ainsty.

Greg Hands, the Conservative party chair, accused Keir Starmer this morning of “flip-flopping” on Ulez. In an interview with GB News he said:

There’ll be real questions in Labour headquarters today about not gaining Uxbridge.

Londoners see that Labour is not good at running things and they see that Keir Starmer is changing his views all the time depending on the audience that he has in front of him.

In inner London he’s pro-Ulez, put him in outer London he’s suddenly expressing his doubts about Ulez.

Hands was using the “flip-flop” line because portraying Starmer as someone who is unreliable, and who keeps performing U-turns, has become one of the Conservative party’s main attack claims.

On Ulez, the Tories were entitled to claim that the policy was being introduced by the Labour mayor of London, but opposed by the Labour candidate in Uxbridge, where voters will be affected by the extension.

Starmer’s line on Ulez was similar to that set out by Angela Rayner this morning (see 7.40am); he said that in principle he was in favour, but that he thought central government should have funded a more generous scrappage scheme to minimise the financial impact on drivers affected.

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, told BBC Breakfast that the problem with Ulez, the ultra low emission zone being extended to outer London, was that central government had not provided London with enough funding to help people, via scrappage schemes, who need to get rid of polluting cars.

She argued that the Uxbridge result did not mean Ulez was wrong in principle; it just showed that people needed financial support to change their behaviour. She said:

At the moment the government is failing to provide the support for people to change their behaviours. And they can’t outsource it to mayors or to cities. This is a problem that’s going to hit most of the UK because we do have emissions in some of our big major towns and cities that are unsafe for people and we’ve got to clean up our act. But that means we’ve got to help people to do that.

The result in Uxbridge tells you that people want to do the right thing, but they don’t want to be penalised because they can’t afford to change their vehicles and there isn’t a scrappage scheme that complies with the legislation to help them do the right behaviours.

So I think the public want to do the right thing, they just want to make sure they’re not penalised. I hear that and I think it’s something all political parties need to reflect on.

Ian Dunt, the political commentator and author of the superb How Westminster Works … And Why It Doesn’t, has posted a good thread on Twitter arguing that what is really significant about the byelection results is what Uxbridge says about how easy it is to mobilise opposition to environmental measures.

Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, told the Today programme that the result in Somerton and Frome showed her party were “back in the west country”. She said there were 15 seats in the west country with smaller majorities than the one overturned in Somerton and Frome. She went on:

There are seats like Chippenham and Cheltenham and Taunton Deane and places like that that we’re really going to be targeting.

Amongst those 15 seats, we’re going to look at the result that we’ve had this morning and we’ll be looking at what other prospects there might be for us in that area.

Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary and Boris Johnson uber-loyalist, is arguing that the Uxbridge result is some sort of endorsement for her former boss. She has posted this on Twitter.

If the horrible fictional invented by the media ‘long Boris’ syndrome did exist, it would have been felt the worst in his own former constituency. The swing and the numbers show v clearly, angry Tories won’t turn out for Sunak – they know how to administer their own justice.

It’s an unusual view. According to a report in the Telegraph last week, Johnson’s only involvement in the campaign was a call to Steve Tuckwell, the Tory candidate, asking him if he had read Johnson’s Mail column about Ulez. “After Mr Tuckwell responded that he had read the piece, Mr Johnson replied: ‘Very good,’ and the call ended,” the Telegraph reported.

But Dorries might not be entirely wrong. Her point about the Uxbridge result not being an endorsement for Rishi Sunak is one that Prof Sir John Curtice has been making too. (See 7am.)