In his pocket, Keir Starmer carries around a list of the 150 target seats Labour wants to gain at the next election, most of them from the Conservatives. Before the latest round of byelections, the party needed to hit 124 of those targets to win a majority in parliament of just one seat.
The fact that Selby and Ainsty is not even on the Labour leader’s list shows just what a historic result this is for the opposition, winning its biggest ever byelection victory by overturning a 20,000 Conservative majority.
