The Tory party chairman resigned on Friday after it suffered two damaging by-election defeats. In a bombshell resignation letter, Oliver Dowden stressed that “somebody must take responsibility” for losing Wakefield in the “Red Wall” to Labour and the former Conservative stronghold of Tiverton and Honiton in Devon to the Liberal Democrats.
Election experts said the dramatic swing of almost 30 per cent from the Tories to the Lib Dems in the West Country seat was the worst Conservative performance since the Second World War in terms of the percentage majority lost.
