By-elections special: Tories face double blow, but avoid 3-0 drubbing

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘By-elections special: Tories face double blow, but avoid 3-0 drubbing’

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George Parker
The overarching mood is one of growing despair and one of foreboding on the Tory benches that this just isn’t gonna be enough to shift things.

Lucy Fisher
Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. You heard there George Parker. More from him later. Coming up, good things come in threes. At least for political geeks who love nothing more than a good by-election. But the hat trick of polls this Thursday proved a tougher affair for the Conservatives, who suffered crushing defeats in Selby and Somerton but managed to avoid an all-out three-nil drubbing by clinging on to Uxbridge. Here to dissect those results and pore over where they leave the main parties as weary MPs stagger off for their summer holidays, I’m joined by three top FT colleagues. We’ve got political editor George Parker. Hi, George.

George Parker
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And columnist Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen Bush
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And fellow columnist Miranda Green. Hi, Miranda.

Miranda Green
Hello, Lucy.

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Lucy Fisher
Now this week, we’re devoting the pod to the by-elections and we’ll also take a bit of an end-of-term stocktake. Let’s start by hearing what the winning Labour, Lib Dem and Tory candidates had to say in their pre-dawn acceptance speeches on Friday.

Keir Mather
The people of Selby and Ainsty have sent a clear message. For too long, Conservatives up here and in Westminster have failed us, and today that changes. It’s time for a fresh start.

Sarah Dyke
Tonight has been a stunning and historic victory for the Liberal Democrats. And it shows once and for all, the Liberal Democrats are back in the West Country. (Shouting and clapping)

Steve Tuckwell
OK. Wow. That’s all I’ve got to say.

Lucy Fisher
You heard there the newly elected Kier Mather for Labour, Sarah Dyke for the Lib Dems and Steve Tuckwell for the Tories. Now, we’ll get into some details so let’s take each of the by-elections in turn, starting with Uxbridge, George. We saw the Tory majority of 7,200-odd votes slashed to just under 500 votes. It was a 6.7 per cent swing to Labour, but the Conservatives did hang on. It was the surprise of the night, wasn’t it?

George Parker
It was certainly a surprise to me at 2:30 in the morning as I had to rip up my, what we call, set-and-hold story predicting three defeats, which of course is what the bookmakers and everyone else was predicting. But the Uxbridge by-election, you know, did stand out. It stood out in a way because everything else was so bad for the Conservatives. And we’ll come on to that in a minute.

We should put the context of this, it was a terrible night for Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives. But the Uxbridge result was, you know, something to cling on to. Not only did they hold the seat, but you could see in the results a glimmer of hope, I think, for the Tories and how they might think about the election campaign. First of all, it became clear that the voters of Uxbridge weren’t so drawn by the appeal of Keir Starmer and his new-look Labour party, enough to overcome their concerns about the ultra-low emission zones thing. That’s the plan by Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, to have a £12.50-a-day charge on polluting vehicles.

So that was one thing. And then I thought the other thing was the fact that because that did become the issue of the campaign in Uxbridge, you could see sort of the sketchy outlines of how the Tories might play that at the general election. The idea that the Labour party is in some way obsessed about green issues that people can’t really afford, certainly not at the pace in which the Labour party wants to introduce the reforms. And you can see how that could be a theme they could roll out across the country in an election campaign.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. Stephen, do you agree with that, that this shows the limitation of green policies and in fact the way they can spark a backlash? And in particular, I was struck by, I think it’s John Curtice, the polling guru pointing out, it suggests that Labour’s overall strategy and overall message is pretty brittle if it can be felled by a compelling local issue like this.

Stephen Bush
So actually, no, I completely disagree. I don’t think this is really so much about climate. And I actually think if the Conservatives were to take that lesson, that would be a mistake, because I think in the abstract, people love the idea of the green transition. What this exposes — and we’ve seen this play out in Australia, we’ve seen it play out in the States with coal — basically, when you get to the point where you’re no longer talking about clean air in the abstract and you’re talking about your car or your carbon tax, this becomes quite difficult.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda.

Miranda Green
Steven’s absolutely right about that. But I do think there’s actually a really important wider lesson for the Labour party here. I mean, for example — and this is one of the most significant parts of their entire platform for the general election — they are hoping to win back significant Scottish seats on the basis of a massive transition to clean energy jobs in Scotland and it’s a little tiny bit sketchy. So really, I think this is a wake-up call for the Labour party. They need to go over every single policy that could be described as green with a fine-tooth comb and be absolutely clear that what they’re promising can be delivered and is a concrete benefit to people because, as Stephen said, once the lofty ideals about net zero collide with costs to people, and if those can come through to actual costs in terms of losing a job and a new one not being there for you, it’ll be an utter disaster for the party.

George Parker
And you can see already that Keir Starmer recognised this by retreating somewhat on the £28bn a year of borrowing they intended to undertake to fund this green prosperity plan. They recognise it’s a problem and the Tories are already on to that, aren’t they? ’Cause they can see a way of combining people’s scepticism about what green issues might mean for themselves and their personal budgets. And the idea that Labour party might break the bank to pay for it as well. So it’s those two things together.

Miranda Green
There’s quite a powerful sort of elites message as well, Lucy, don’t you think? You know that old Brexity tune for the Tory party to play that the Labour elites want you to pay for their green plans could be quite powerful.

Lucy Fisher
I think that’s one reason we’ve seen Keir Starmer, as well as resigning from the financial commitment to £28bn a year, has sort of slightly shifted away from talking about this being solely about a green transition to jobs precisely to your point, Miranda. I’m interested the point you made, Stephen, though about this being about cost to voters in a cost of living crisis, because something I picked up on the ground in Uxbridge when I went twice was in actual fact it’s only a tiny proportion of vehicles. I think maybe as few as 5 per cent that are non-compliant and that would invoke this charge. And yet everyone seemed to be up in arms. Even . . . I spoke to students, a couple of 19-year-olds who said they were furious. I thought, blimey, if you’re not the kind of the green champions. So I just want to ask you, Stephen, what happened here in Uxbridge? Did the Tories successfully build a campaign of fear that, you know, it’s either will affect you or your friends and your family’s friends or that people will, nonetheless, even if they don’t own polluting vehicles themselves, might see higher costs from paint decorators, plumbers, other small businesses and sole traders that would have to pass on the cost of using these polluting vans to their customers.

Stephen Bush
So I think it was a couple of things. One, what it really reminded you of — and I only went once — it reminded me of the election in 2015 where, you know, I’m sure we all at one point were vox-popping someone outside a perfectly lovely two-bedroom semi or whatever, but they would say something in one of those London suburban marginals was like, I don’t want to have to pay a mansion tax. And obviously, you would . . .

Lucy Fisher
(Laughter) You didn’t want to disabuse them.

Stephen Bush
(overlapping audio) You would just politely nod. You didn’t want to be like well, mate, there’s not much prospect of this being eligible for a mansion tax anytime soon. But I think it is exactly like that. And it was exactly the same dynamic that we saw when Boris Johnson introduced the smaller Ulez. Many more people who than were ever going to pay it feared that they would.

And in some ways, what we’re seeing here is a classic example of misaligned political cycles, right? If you’re Sadiq Khan, you’re doing your unpopular tax rise because that’s what it is, let’s face it, in an off year, so the next year he will hope and he’ll do what all of those councils did with low-traffic neighbourhoods where they sail to victory because the people who are angry about it have got over it and the people who like it are still grateful for it colliding with a Labour by-election that is very much not in an off year. Now, of course, Sadiq Khan may turn out to be catastrophically wrong in his re-election, may be imperilled, but of course, it is worth noting that they did better in Uxbridge in this set of results than they did in the mayoral election. So you can see how it’s kind of working for him, even though it’s not working for the Labour party in London, as it were.

Lucy Fisher
Well, maybe that’s a good moment to turn to Selby and Ainsty in Yorkshire where Labour really did have a good result. They achieved a colossal 23.7 per cent swing, overturning a 20,000-vote majority in a largely rural seat. It broke their record for the biggest Tory majority that the Labour party has overturned in a by-election since world war two. That’s reason to be happy for Keir Starmer, isn’t it, Miranda?

Miranda Green
Yes, it is. And he’s got a new baby of the house, also called Keir, like a sort of mini-me to introduce to other MPs when he takes up his seat. Yes, it’s a very, very good result for Labour. It’s an absolutely huge swing and a huge Tory scalp and majority to take. But I think also they will be really heartened because it’s that deindustrialised northern seat, which was very, very Brexity. And it’s shown that they can win that territory back. So I think they will be really, really pleased with that sort of result. And also just the scale of the swing that was required to take it is extremely healthy, you know, at this close to a probable general election next year.

Lucy Fisher
George, what did you read into Selby?

George Parker
Well, it was the biggest majority Labour party has ever overturned in a by-election and it was a swing of over 21 per cent. So this is the kind of result that Tony Blair was getting in the 1990s ahead of his general election win in 1997. So I agree with Miranda. I mean, it’s, you know, if it hadn’t been for the dark cloud of the Uxbridge by-election, this would have been the sort of centrepiece of a great night for Keir Starmer. So, you know, it’s good news. It’s close to Rishi Sunak’s Richmond constituency. It’s partly rural, it’s partly deindustrialised, as Miranda said. And so that gives them a great deal of encouragement that they can actually, if they put the effort into those seats, they can win them. They don’t need to win Selby to win the next election. So it’s a great result.

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, did you think it was fair for Johnny Mercer to describe 25-year-old Keir Mather, newly elected, as a member of The Inbetweeners?

Stephen Bush
Seeing as it felt to me that was a perfectly serviceable line to take, which is, yes, this reflects the national picture now, but we’ve seen that when we find the right issue, we can undermine the Labour path, yada yada yada. Why would you instead go for this, this thing where, because as well as it being ungracious, it made him look like a loser? And I do think an underrated factor in politics is not to look like a loser. And yeah, I thought it was remarkably bad-tempered and ill-judged.

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Lucy Fisher
Well, let’s move on to Somerton, a huge boon for the Lib Dems where they overturned a 19,000-vote majority with a whopping 29 per cent swing. George, this is the fourth by-election that they’ve won since 2019. But at the same time, it doesn’t seem to translate into momentum in the national polls, does it? Well, just to remind listeners, the Lib Dems are roughly on 11 per cent compared with 26 per cent for the Conservatives and 46 per cent for Labour.

George Parker
Now, that’s absolutely true. It is a paradox that they seem to be stuck at. I mean, they’ve been stuck around 8 to 11 per cent for virtually the whole of this parliament. But the Lib Dems thrive on the momentum that by-elections give them, and the idea that if you vote Lib Dem, it’s actually a vote that can produce change. And I think that’s absolutely vital for them in the south of England, but particularly the south-west of England. I’ve still got to try and find out how my dad voted in that by-election, by the way. (Lucy laughs) Refused to say. But it’s Somerton and Frome is a seat they used to win. They need to remind people that they used to win in the south-west heavily. You know, I remember when the Lib Dems won every seat in Cornwall, for example. That was only until quite recently. They were eviscerated in the south-west, first of all, by the coalition and then by Brexit.

And the fact they’ve won big, not just in Somerton and Frome this week but in Tiverton and Honiton last year, gives people an idea that even seats with massive Tory majorities that you want to get the Tories out, you can vote Lib Dem to do it. And I think that the other thing that Rishi Sunak would be very worried about putting together the Selby and Somerton by-elections was the massive anti-Tory tactical voting that was going on. You’re looking and the Lib Dem victorious candidate in Sarah Dyke in Somerton and Frome said that Labour and Green votes had lent her their votes. And if you look at the results in Somerton and Frome, the Labour candidate got 1,000 votes. In Selby, the Lib Dem candidate got 1,000 votes. So micro levels of support and that’s because of this tactical voting and that’s a real problem for Sunak ’cause It means he’s fighting on two fronts.

Lucy Fisher
Well, I want to come back to tactical votings. I think that is absolutely, as you say, George, one of the fascinating trends across the by-elections this week. But just sticking to the Lib Dems’ performance for a moment, Miranda, they were cock-a-hoop even before the results came out, with Ed Davey saying we’re gonna need a bigger tractor, referring to (Miranda laughs) the classic Lib Dem stunt, I think, at the last by-election, he drove a tractor through a sort of toy set, a blue wall. The issue with the Lib Dems is that they’re very good at pouring into a seat in a by-election. Lots of enthusiasm, doing well. But when those resources have to be spread across, say, 30 target seats in a general election, it’s gonna be harder for them, isn’t it?

Miranda Green
Well, this is the key question, which is how many do they now target, which is a very active conversation in Liberal Democrat circles, because actually, even after those big by-election wins last year, they had very, very conservative ambitions for the coming general election. They were saying it would be an extremely good night if they could even get 20 seats. After this week’s result in Somerton and Frome, they will be having another look at that and they will be actually thinking, OK, that West Country territory that we thought was pretty much a goner for the reasons that George has outlined, the double whammy of unpopular coalition plus Brexit, if they can start to look at that territory again as promising, that brings another chunk of seats back into play. And that’s actually a controversial conversation in the Lib Dem campaigns department for the reason that you explained, which is if you spread yourself too thinly in a general election, you can end up, as they have done actually in the last three general elections, disappointing results on the night. So targeting those resources, working out where you can really get the tactical message across to unseat the Tory — and in most cases it will be targeting a Tory seat — you know, that’s a very, very active conversation right now.

George Parker
I think the geography of the Lib Dems is quite interesting down in the south-west. I used to work on Western Morning News and covered Devon and Cornwall; that was their stronghold. The further west you went, generally the more that the Lib Dems have done. This time around, I think the Lib Dems are targeting seats like Somerton and Frome, which are actually a bit closer to London, where some of the seats are slightly more prosperous. We’ll have some people who’ve moved down from the south-east as well, bringing their London ways with them. So that sort of outer south-east rings a place up around into Wiltshire as well, around Bristol, those areas. So are these slightly different? I think it’s harder for them . . . 

Miranda Green
I think you’re right. The demographics are actually quite different on it. For example, Cornwall, which has a lot of poverty . . . 

George Parker
Yeah.

Miranda Green
And which has gone quite heavily Labour.

Stephen Bush
The big political change is they have effectively, at least for the moment, kind of become a rich-people party. They are still a party that is stronger in areas where there are loads of people who are living in rural poverty than the Labour party, which is for a variety of reasons, struggled to win those voters over. But yeah, this is the really fascinating thing, right? Because some people would say, this is great, this is a much more coherent coalition. It would mean if we did go into some form of power-sharing agreement in the future, we wouldn’t end up facing both ways and we wouldn’t get shellacked like we did last time. And then some people feel like it’s a sign that the party has lost its soul and it needs to kind of go back to the days when it did win over some of those, you know, much poorer areas that it is currently struggling in. That is actually the backdrop to . . . some of our listeners may have heard Sarah Dyke, the now victorious Liberal Democrat MP, basically having a bit of an implosion when she was asked about poverty in her constituency in The Guardian, and lots of people will have thought, what’s that about? Why is this such a difficult question? Well the reason why it was so difficult for her is it went right to this heart, not just about who the type of voters they should target, but what type of party the Lib Dems should be. And that’s why she found it so difficult to answer.

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Lucy Fisher
Let’s just return to tactical voting which you brought up, George, which I think is this fascinating just how much it worked in these by-elections. Labour was pushed into fifth place in Somerton while the Lib Dems, where Labour won, were pushed into sixth place in Selby, and in both instances the losing parties failed to get even 5 per cent of votes, so they actually lost their deposits. I guess my question is, is this going to hold at a general election?

George Parker
Well, I thought it was very interesting here, Greg Hands, the Tory chairman, saying this was good news for the Conservatives in some way that these parties had lost their deposits. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Miranda Green
He hadn’t had much sleep, George, (laughter) in his defence because he couldn’t. . .

George Parker
Nobody.

Miranda Green
He wasn’t thinking straight at that point.

George Parker
I don’t think so, it’s a sign of very widespread tactical voting. And yes, I do think it will hold, provided the public still feel angry enough about the Conservative government that they want to cast their vote as a protest. But I think that is the main determinant of the next election. This is the time for change argument and if you decide that it’s time for change, the British voters have shown themselves incredibly sophisticated at every election in casting the vote in such a way that they can achieve that change.

Stephen Bush
This is the thing which I think was really interesting, even in Uxbridge, right? The Lib Dem vote went way down. And basically, clearly what we’re seeing at the moment is what political scientists like to call negative partisanship, which is where voters form their opinions not based around the party they’re voting for, but the parties they want to vote against. And visibly, what is happening at the moment in British politics is you either pull the blue lever or you pull the not-blue lever. So clearly, they don’t need to be as worried as perhaps what I said minutes ago, suggested about the three different threats they face of Lib Dems, Greens, Labour, because if they can successfully push voters away from one of those three, it looks like, or at least it has throughout much of this parliament, that voters will broadly flow from the Conservatives or away from the Conservatives. And if they can just repel people from Keir Starmer and the Labour party, that will, you know, fix their Ed Davey problem kind of for itself.

Miranda Green
There are a few caveats we should mention. One is that historically, even in 1997 when tactical voting delivered hugely brilliant results for both the Labour party and the Lib Dems on the night, it’s easier to get Lib Dems to vote tactically for Labour in those seats than it is to get Labour people to vote tactically for the Lib Dems in those seats. So they’re gonna have to sort of work on that.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah, interesting. I also wonder whether it could backfire if Labour and the Lib Dems are seen to be in cahoots with each other, with even semi-formal pacts. I just get this sort of sense that voters don’t like the ideas of parties in Westminster cooking up plots over their head. There’s a sort of arrogance with that. . .

Miranda Green
There won’t be any plots or pacts. They know that. They’ve learned lessons this 2019. . .

Lucy Fisher
But not formally, but they will work out. I don’t know. Perhaps do go slows.

George Parker
There hasn’t been the case so far. I mean, what we’ve seen is the two parties basically targeting resources where they’re best deployed to win seats. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that in the I think of the main 50 top target seats of both the Lib Dems and Labour, only two seats see the two parties up against each other, which I think I’m right in saying is Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, two big university seats.

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Lucy Fisher
Let’s just finish off by looking at where we stand. We’re just over halfway through this year. And of course, it’s the end of the parliamentary term, and peace have sloped off now for six weeks. George, we were talking last night about how it’s been, it’s felt a really long parliamentary session since last September, hasn’t it? But do the Tories really have that much to show for it?

George Parker
Yeah, we were having our end of term debrief in The Red Lion pub when...

Lucy Fisher
We were.

George Parker
That was a very pleasant evening and yeah we would sort of looking back at them, it’s been an incredible term. You’re thinking back to the beginning of September when all this started for three prime ministers since then, obviously. What do they have to show for it? Well, look, I mean, they’ve re-established, I think, a sort of stability in government. They are now displaying some sort of technocratic abilities. Rishi Sunak is probably on the way to meeting some, if not all, of his promises later in the year, which I don’t think is a sufficient success at all but he’s making some progress. But the overarching mood is one of growing despair and one of foreboding on the Tory benches that this just isn’t going to be enough to shift things, and leaving aside Uxbridge, the by-election results this week, I think will just send the boy in quite a depressed mood into the summer.

Lucy Fisher
And just to put you on the spot, do you think there will be a reshuffle this side of the summer?

George Parker
Well, by the time this goes to air, who knows, Lucy? I’m really hoping not, because I’ve not had very much sleep in the last 24 hours. So let’s have the one that hasn’t happened by the time listeners listen to this podcast. I mean, I think it depends what you want to achieve from a reshuffle. If you want to signal a bit of a fresh start and a bit of new momentum, surely you’re better off doing it at the start of term rather than at the fag end of a term where anything that’s done in the next 24, 72 hours will only be written up by people like us as, you know, desperate prime minister moves the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Lucy Fisher
And Stephen, let’s think about Labour, where they stand going into the summer. Obviously, Keir Starmer maybe didn’t perform as well as expected, failing to take Uxbridge. Manifesto process is going to get under way. And coming up in the immediate horizon is the national policy forum.

Stephen Bush
Yes, actually; at the point when we are going to air the first one of their wranglings this year in Nottingham over what actually goes into the manifesto and the person who is going to be having the most miserable time of it will be John Ashworth, the shadow welfare secretary, because obviously that is an area where obviously the government spends a lot of money. The Labour party does not want to go into the next election saying it will spend a lot of money on it and activists feel very strongly about all of the cuts to the social security budget over the last 13 years. There’s not been as much of the late arm twisting than there sometimes is, but I think over welfare in particular, there will be a lot of amendments and an awful lot of kind of going back and forth between Ashworth and the various trade union leaders and the various member delegates to this very complicated body, because for many, many people in the Labour party, they got into politics to reduce poverty and for a lot of people it’s a case of well, if we’re not doing this, what’s the point? And I do think it has the potential to be a running sore for them.

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Lucy Fisher
Well, that’s almost all we’ve got time for this week. But before we go, we are, of course, the FT so I think it’s about time we started to offer some political stock tips. So George, who are you buying or selling as we come to the end of this summer term?

George Parker
Well, this might be a little bit obscure, Lucy, but the person I put some money on getting a leg up in the reshuffle when it happens is John Glen, Treasury chief secretary. Constituency includes a lot of military bases. He is very keen indeed to replace Ben Wallace at the Ministry of Defence. And given the fact he’s a big Rishi Sunak supporter, very active in Sunak’s campaign, I’d put a bit of money on him to go into the cabinet as defence secretary.

Lucy Fisher
Great tip. Miranda?

Miranda Green
Well, counter-intuitively, after the Uxbridge result, I’m actually going to say buy Sadiq Khan, because although his policy went down like a bucket of cold sick with the voters in the by-election this week, when you look at who the other parties are putting against him in the mayoral race coming next year, I think he’s probably safe.

Lucy Fisher
Stephen.

Stephen Bush
I’m going to sell Tobias Ellwood.

Lucy Fisher
Yes.

Stephen Bush
Who this week posted a, may actually make not only become the first defence select committee chair to be no-con since the introduction of elections to that body. He posted this video saying that we should reopen diplomatic ties with the Taliban. He’s since deleted it and some members of the select committee want him gone and I suspect they will achieve that task.

Lucy Fisher
So maybe buy Mark Francois, who looks to be the main challenger to him for that top role.

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Well, that really is it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. Many thanks to my guests George Parker, Miranda Green and Stephen Bush. Unlike MPs who get six weeks’ holiday from Westminster, we’ll be here as usual throughout the summer to bring you the best up-to-date analysis and delve deeper into specific policies. If you like the podcast, do subscribe. You can find us through all the usual channels to receive episodes as soon as they’re released. We also appreciate positive reviews and ratings. It really does help spread the word. You can find FT articles linked to today’s podcast topics in our show notes, and for a limited time, those articles are free to read for all Political Fix listeners. The podcast was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced this week by Philippa Goodrich. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT global head of audio. We’ll meet again here, same time, same place next week.