Labor Party leader Keir Starmer hailed his party’s victory in a by-election for the northern parliamentary seat of Selby as a “historic” demonstration of “powerful demand for change” among voters. File Photo by Tolga Akmen/EPA-EFE
July 21 (UPI) — Britain’s ruling Conservative government took a hammering Friday losing another two seats to opposition parties in parliamentary elections with just over a year to go until a general election.
Labor and the Liberal Democrats overturned large Conservative majorities in the rural constituencies of Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire and Somerton and Frome in the west country — but the Conservatives narrowly held onto former Prime Minister Boris Johnson‘s suburban-London seat.
The contest in the west country, traditionally a Lib Dem stronghold, saw a 29% vote swing back to the party to secure it a more than 11,000 vote majority.
Selby saw a record 23.7% swing to Labor which picked up more than 24,000 extra votes, eclipsing the record for the largest Tory majority it had overturned at a by-election since 1945 while in Somerton the Liberal Democrats.
In Uxbridge and South Ruislip, the seat vacated by Johnson when he quit as an MP ahead of being sanctioned by parliament for deliberately misleading it over Downing Street lockdown parties, the Conservative Party saw the more than 7,000 majority Johnson won in the 2019 general election slashed to just 495.
Labor had been forecast to take the seat but the Conservative candidate Steve Tuckwell was able to capitalize on voter anger over the inclusion of the area in a ultra-low emissions zone established by London’s Labor mayoral administration that would require them to replace “dirty” older vehicles or pay a $16 daily fee.
Labor leader Keir Starmer hailed his party’s win in Selby as “historic” saying it was a demonstration of “just how powerful the demand for change is.”
But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insisted the Conservative’s poor showing did not mean the outcome of the upcoming general election was a “done deal.”
“The message I take away is that we’ve got to double down, stick to our plan and deliver for people,” he said.
Sunak added that the Uxbridge result proved that when faced with the “reality” of Labor wielding power voters would vote Conservative.
Selby’s new MP Keir Mather, who at 25 becomes the youngest lawmaker in the House Commons said “thousands of votes were in Labor’s box for the first time.”
“In this campaign, we have rewritten the rules on where Labor can win,” he said in a victory speech to his supporters.
Selby marks the second seat Labor has picked up from the Conservatives since the December 2019 elections after winning the South Yorkshire seat of Wakefield in June 2022.
The Liberal Democrats’ Somerton candidate, Sarah Dyke, said she was very thankful to voters, many of whom had never voted for any other party than Conservative, for voting for the Lib Dems for the first time.
Party leader Ed Davey said the victory showed the Lib Dems were “firmly back in the West Country”.
The 80-seat majority won by Boris Johnson in his landslide 2019 victory has now been chipped away at down to just 60.