There is no such thing as a “safe” parliamentary seat. Last July, Labour won Runcorn and Helsby with a majority of 14,696 and more than 50% of the vote. This week it was lost to Reform UK. Dramatic byelection swings are not new, and often overinterpreted. If Labour had won seven more votes, the outcome in Runcorn would have been different and the story, breathlessly narrated in Westminster, would have a different inflection. But on the same day, Reform took scores of council seats and comfortably won the newly created mayoralty of Greater Lincolnshire. The surge is real.
Parties led by Mr Farage have done well before. Ukip and then the Brexit party made headlines with strong performances in local and European elections throughout the 2010s. But those parties were associated with a single demand – leaving the EU. Mr Farage was not bidding for nationwide power. Now he is.
