I see that Keir Starmer has said that Labour is “redrawing the political map” (Report, 20 October); I am not so sure. In Tamworth, Labour’s Sarah Edwards got barely 800 more votes than the Labour candidate in 2019; and in Mid Bedfordshire, Alistair Strathern got fewer votes than the Labour candidate last time round. This scarcely suggests that Keir Starmer’s “five missions” are energising voters more than Rishi Sunak’s “five promises”.
In both seats, the Labour vote is of a piece with last time round, and the turnout went down by nearly 30% in Mid Bedfordshire and nearly 40% in Tamworth. Nadine Dorries’ share of the vote in 2019, around 38,700, isn’t far off the total number of last Thursday’s votes for all the candidates put together, around 40,700.
It pains me to agree with Gillian Keegan, but the figures show virtually no switch from Conservative to Labour; the swing is from voting Tory to not voting at all. On the strength of these results, a significant majority of the electorate has had enough of the current Tory government; but the number of purblind Conservative faithful is almost identical to those who are rallying to the new vision for Labour.
My suspicion is that this is the result of Starmer so often shadowing Sunak on policy. It is all very well stealing your opponent’s clothes, but a prior assessment of their quality, desirability and potential for resale would seem a wise precaution.
Harry Gilonis
London
• I wonder whether Tory voters really stayed away from last week’s byelections. Perhaps instead, these erstwhile Tories now feel comfortable with voting for the Labour party because it has moved so far to the right, and it was Labour voters who, for the same reason, stayed at home.
Katy Jennison
Witney, Oxfordshire
• As your report makes clear, the scale of Labour’s victories in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth invites comparisons with 1997. How many Conservative MPs will now spend the winter months worrying about a “Portillo moment” of their own? Here in North East Somerset, our MP is a prime candidate to face such a fate. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s politics are divisive, his second job as a TV presenter is widely resented by constituents and he faces very difficult boundary changes. In 2024, will you be up for Rees-Mogg?
James Coldwell
Secretary, North East Somerset and Hanham Labour party
• Labour’s two byelection victories are good news. Whatever reservations there may be about a Starmer government, the demise of the Tories is long overdue. That said, the Tamworth result also provided a warning. Parties of the far right – Reform UK, Ukip and Britain First – got a combined vote of over 9%. If a Labour government doesn’t address the issues this raises, something a lot worse could be on the rise.
Keith Flett
London
• One has to commend Tory MPs on their ability to conjure silver linings in the midst of electoral catastrophe. Labour have now won four of the last five byelections, overturning majorities of 20,000 votes in three of them. The health minister Maria Caulfield, however, remains confident that people are not voting for Labour “in the way that they would need to form a government”.
When all else fails, there’s always delusion.
Daniel Peacock
Salford
• If nothing else, the result in Mid Bedfordshire is surely testament to the hard work put in on behalf of her constituents by the previous incumbent, Nadine Dorries.
Shawn Pearson
Bristol
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