Boris Johnson’s lying and bungling in government has not gone unnoticed by voters. Opinion polls show his popularity fading. Two byelections in England next Thursday could see Mr Johnson’s Conservatives lose a working-class northern “red wall” seat to Labour and a true-blue seat in the Devon countryside to the Liberal Democrats. Defeats in both contests would send a clear message to Tory MPs that their seats are not safe unless there is a change at the top, even if that requires altering party rules. This is why Labour voters should cast their ballot for the Liberal Democrats in Tiverton and Honiton, and Lib Dems should back Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
Neither seat will slip easily from the Conservatives’ grasp. The Tories have a majority of 24,000 in the bucolic leave-voting Devon constituency. Yet the Lib Dems won North Shropshire in Tory farming heartland against similar odds last December. Then, as now, the former Conservative MP was locally popular but forced to resign after a parliamentary scandal. The Lib Dems’ message that Mr Johnson doesn’t care has struck a chord in left-behind rural England, which suffers long ambulance waits and dilapidated schools. The prime minister is seen as so untrustworthy that the party’s own candidate in Devon won’t say he is honest. A win for the Lib Dems next week would be a step towards rebuilding the party in the south-west, a stronghold that the Tories captured in 2015.
