As the Conservative party has charted an increasingly chaotic course towards the end of the current parliament, byelection sorrows have come not as single spies but in battalions. Thursday’s twin defeats to Labour in Kingswood and Wellingborough – comprehensive in the former, utterly humiliating in the latter – were the ninth and 10th Tory losses since 2019, a postwar record. The 28.5% blue-red swing to Labour in Wellingborough was the biggest since 1994, and the second-largest since 1945. Repeatedly across the country, and in different kinds of seats, the depth of the desire for change and a new political settlement is being made crystal clear.
In the aftermath of yet another torrid night for Rishi Sunak, Tory spinners pleaded mitigating circumstances, such as a low turnout and a protest dimension to the vote that will diminish at a general election. In Wellingborough, the choice of the partner of the disgraced Conservative MP Peter Bone as the party’s candidate to succeed him clearly added insult to injury as far as many constituents were concerned. But local factors aside, the sense of a party running out of time, options and ideas to turn things around is palpable.
