Afternoon summary
Keir Starmer has said that Labour is “redrawing the political map” as he carried out a triumphant tour to the site of two historic overnight byelection wins, as his party overturned huge Conservative majorities in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire. And here is an analysis of the results by Lewis Baston.
And here is his conclusion.
The Conservatives have attempted to draw some comfort from the low turnout in the byelections, but the falls were not out of kilter with other recent byelections and, if anything, it makes the collapse in the Conservative vote look worse.
There is no reason to suppose that the abstainers are cheering the government on. They are more likely to be disillusioned with politics, particularly if they put their faith in Brexit in 2016 and Boris Johnson in 2019.
The byelection results are unalloyed good news for Labour. Unless there is a sharp change in the political weather, Labour is on course for a stunning electoral triumph at the next general election, a turnaround unlike anything Britain has seen since the Liberal landslide of 1906.
Rishi Sunak has told broadcasters in Cairo that the Conservative losses in the Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire byelections were “disappointing” but said there were “local factors at play”.
Rishi Sunak and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, have agreed leaders needed to “avoid a contagion of conflict” in the Middle East. After they met in Cairo earlier today, No 10 said:
The leaders said that the loss of life in Israel and Gaza over the last few days was truly tragic. They agreed that global leaders should do everything possible to avoid a contagion of conflict in the region, and that every effort must be made to stop terrorism and protect civilians.
Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
Updated
In electoral politics, the past is not a perfect guide to the future, but it is a lot better than nothing, and much of the commentary today about what we can learn from last night’s byelections has focused on how Labour is doing compared to when it was in opposition in the past, and what that means for the next election.
Rob Ford, a politics professor, has written a good post on his Substack account going into this in more detail, and he has good charts putting the scale of the Labour victories in context.
This one shows Labour’s best byelection wins in terms of swing from the Conservatives since 1945. The light red ones were this year.
And this one shows average government to opposition swing in byelections parliament by parliament since 1945. The two bars on the furthest right (light grey and black) are swings for this parliament, before Partygate and after Partygate.
Ford says:
The latest two smashing wins have pulled Labour’s average swing in “big two” by-elections for the whole Parliament up to 9 points. This is getting close to the swing levels seen in past Parliaments where the opposition went on to win - Margaret Thatcher managed an average swing of 10 points in 1974-79, David Cameron managed 10.9 points in 2005-10 and Ted Heath managed 12.1 points in 1966-70. Starmer is already wel ahead of some general election winners: Harold Wilson managed only 5.5 points in the 1959-64 Parliament, and 4.3 points in 1970-74, while Winston Churchill managed just 4.9 points in 1950-51. Are were well behind Starmer’s current average.
However, we should take seriously the possibility that the first two years of this Parliament were an outlier, with a major pandemic driven “rally round the flag” effect. If we therefore focus instead on by-elections since 2021, the average swing to Labour is 12.4 points, meaning Starmer is now ahead of five of the six opposition leaders who have gone on to win general elections since 1945. He is behind only one - Tony Blair (14.4 point average swing) - and his performances this year have been matching Blair’s best.
The full post is well worth reading. Here is the in a nutshell version.
It is true that Starmer is not at Blair 1994-1997 levels of popularity.
It is not true that he needs to be in order to win.
Every polling and election performance indicator is flashing red for Cons.
And their PM is currently as popular as...Jeremy Corbyn was in December 2019.
It is true that Starmer is not at Blair 1994-1997 levels of popularity.
— Rob Ford (@robfordmancs) October 20, 2023
It is not true that he needs to be in order to win.
Every polling and election performance indicator is flashing red for Cons.
And their PM is currently as popular as...Jeremy Corbyn was in December 2019. https://t.co/Xmc49IeFGt
