Britain’s Conservatives managed to avoid the very worst that could have happened to them in Thursday’s three by-elections, in the formerly safe Tory seats of Selby and Ainsty in Yorkshire, Somerton and Frome in Somerset and Uxbridge in the London commuter belt. Their fear had been that they would lose all three. In the event they lost two, holding on to Uxbridge by a slim margin.
In spite of the positive spin that was coming from the leadership yesterday, the degree of comfort the Conservatives can take from these results is limited.
It is not unusual for a government party to lose by-elections. The scale of the defeats in Selby and in Somerton is, however, notable. Labour took the former with a swing of 24 per cent, overturning a 20,000 Conservative majority. The Liberal Democrats won Somerton with 11,000 votes to spare on a huge swing of 29 per cent, perhaps an indication that they are regaining the strength they once enjoyed in southwestern England.
The most notable feature of the results, apart from the unpopularity of the government, was the readiness of the electorate in both these rural constituencies to vote tactically. The Liberal Democrat vote was minimal in Selby, as was Labour’s in Somerton, the traditional voters of each party seeming to have no problem backing the candidate thought most likely to beat the Tories..
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Uxbridge, which was fought by the Conservative candidate almost entirely on opposition to restrictions on vehicles with high emissions, gave the party its only crumb of comfort. Ironically, in a tight result, the small vote for the Green Party may have spelled the difference between a Labour and a Tory win.
Labour’s failure to take Uxbridge is likely to make it even more cautious about policies which, however admirable, may involve pain for sections of the public. It is also almost certain to encourage the Tories, already more comfortable fighting ‘the culture wars’ than defending their record, to mount a populist campaign against environmentalist policies.