Closing summary
We’re closing down this live blog now. Thanks for reading and commenting. Here’s a summary of the day’s main events:
The Conservatives lost two out of the three safe seats where byelections were being held. Labour wiped out a huge deficit from 2019 to take Selby and Ainsty, while the Liberal Democrats did similar in Somerton and Frome. The Tories managed to hold on to Boris Johnson’s former Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat, though.
Keir Starmer congratulated his new MP Keir Mather, who will become the Baby of the House. Referring to the Tory MP Johny Mercer, he told Mather: “There was some silly sod on the radio, on the television last night saying you were only 25. But the answer is: You’re 25 and you’ve made history and he’s whatever age he is and he’ll soon be history.
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was urged to think carefully about pursuing the extension of London’s ultra-low emission zone. Local indications suggested the unpopularity of the move drove voters away from Labour in Uxbridge.
But Khan offered a staunch defence of the policy. He said: “The decision to expand the ultra-low emissions zone was a tough one, but it’s the right one. Why? Because every year across our city, roughly speaking, 4,000 people died prematurely.”
The elections expert Prof Sir John Curtice said the Tories “should not take too much comfort” from the victory in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He said the Conservative candidate himself Steve Tuckwell said his victory was all down to the Ulez issue. Tuckwell did not interpret the result as an endorsment of Rishi Sunak, and his five priorities, Curtice said.
The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, claimed the Uxbridge result showed 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.”
The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, used the platform his party’s victory provided to urge Sunak to call a general election now. While there is almost no chance of the prime minister taking his advice, Davey did take the opportunity to say: “The people of Somerton and Frome have spoken for the country and sent a message to this appalling Conservative government.
Messages from the former prime minister Boris Johnson’s old phone were retrieved and will be given to the Covid inquiry, his spokesman said. Technical experts recovered all relevant messages, and he will hand them over “unredacted”.
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Johnny Mercer will 'soon be history', Keir Starmer says, after Tory minister compared new Labour MP with character from Inbetweeners
Keir Starmer has labelled the government minister Johnny Mercer a “silly sod” who will “soon be history”, after he compared the party’s new 25-year-old MP to a character from cult Channel 4 comedy The Inbetweeners.
The minister for veterans’ affairs said Keir Mather had been “dropped into” the Selby and Ainsty constituency and “spouted identikit Keir Starmer lines”, having earlier said:
We don’t want parliament to become like The Inbetweeners.
The Labour leader hit back at Mercer in Selby on Friday, as he celebrated the byelection victory alongside Mather and his deputy leader Angela Rayner. Walking along the pitch at Selby Town FC and surrounded by media, Starmer told the new MP:
There was some silly sod on the radio, on the television last night saying you were only 25. But the answer is: You’re 25 and you’ve made history and he’s whatever age he is and he’ll soon be history.
Mather will become the youngest MP in the Commons – the Baby of the House – after overturning a 20,137 Conservative majority to win the North Yorkshire seat for Labour.
The Inbetweeners, which aired in the late 2000s, follows four adolescent friends at school who end up in awkward and embarrassing situations. Explaining his comments to Sky News on Friday, Mercer said:
I think this synthetic outrage, identikit Labour politician is the opposite of what people like me came into politics for.
He’s been at Oxford University more than he’s had a job, right? So if you can really apply that to the empathy required to understand what it’s really like in this country at the moment, in terms of the cost of living and all these experiences of these people he’s trying to represent.
Personally, I don’t think that is conducive to good electoral representation and I’m more than entitled to have that view.
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