Campaign posters in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, before a key by-election erupted after Conservative MP Imran Ahmed Khan was convicted of sexually assaulting a minor.
Daniel Harvey Gonzalez / In Pictures via Getty Images
LONDON – The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, has suffered a double blow at the polls when his party lost two key parliamentary elections in Wakefield and Tiverton.
The vote, at opposite ends of England, had been seen as a test of Johnson’s position after a series of scandals, including the parties at Downing Street during the Covid-19 blockades, and a spiral cost of living crisis.
The double defeats led to the immediate resignation of Conservative Party President Oliver Dowden, whose resignation letter said party supporters were “distressed and disappointed by recent events” and that “someone must take responsibility.”
Wakefield
The main opposition Labor Party regained its former bastion seat in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, from the Conservative Party that ruled Johnson. Labor candidate Simon Lightwood defeated Conservative candidate Nadeem Ahmed by 4,925 votes, as the Conservatives saw a 17.3-point drop in their share of votes in the 2019 general election.
The Conservatives won Wakefield in 2019 for the first time since 1932, and the city became one of 45 historically Labor seats that changed in the last general election. The “Get Brexit Done” slogan and Johnson’s “oven-ready” Brexit deal were pivotal to the campaign that tore down Labor’s “red wall” at its traditional working-class center in 2019 .
Johnson’s party entered the Wakefield election on Thursday with a slim 7.5-point majority.
The by-elections were triggered by the resignation of Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan following his conviction for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy at a party in 2008.
Labor leader Keir Starmer said the result showed the country had “lost confidence in the Conservatives”.
Tiverton and Honiton
By contrast, the Tiverton and Honiton constituency in Devon has historically been seen as a “safe” seat for the Conservatives, with the party winning 60% of the vote in 2019.
But the center-right Liberal Democrats, England’s third-largest party, stormed victory on Thursday to overturn a Conservative majority of more than 24,000 votes. Lib Dem candidate Richard Frood defeated Conservative candidate Helen Hurford by more than 6,000 votes, recording a swing of almost 30%, one of the largest partial electoral changes in British history.
The by-elections were triggered by the resignation of Conservative MP Neil Parish, who admitted to having seen pornography in Parliament.
The constituency had become a target of significant campaign resources for the Liberal Democrats, who hoped to replicate the 34-point change that saw the party take North Shropshire from the Conservatives in December 2021.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey told the BBC the result was “a wake-up call for all those Conservative MPs who support Boris Johnson”, adding that “they cannot afford to ignore this result “.
What about Johnson?
Before the polls closed in Wakefield and Tiverton, the prime minister rejected the idea that he would resign if he lost the seats as “crazy”.
After Thursday’s results, he said he would “listen to voters,” but promised to “continue,” despite the apparent decline in his electoral strength.
Johnson narrowly survived a vote of confidence among his own MPs earlier this month, after a compelling report revealed the extent of non-compliance on Downing Street and the government building of nearby Whitehall during the pandemic.
Now, the results of the by-elections and the swift resignation of party chairman Dowden are likely to further increase the heat of the assaulted leader.
The main complaint from voters appears to have been the “partygate” scandal, which sparked national anger among political divisions and saw Johnson and Finance Minister Rishi Sunak receive police fines for breaching the blocking rules.
The British newspaper The Telegraph reported earlier this week that campaign leaflets and conservative announcements related to the by-elections in both West Yorkshire and Devon had completely omitted or made very few references to Johnson.
Helen Hurford, the Conservative candidate in Tiverton, was booed by voters in a town hall last week after dodging a question about the prime minister’s moral character.
Matt Singh, election analyst and founder of Number Cruncher Politics, stressed in a tweet on Friday that the tactical vote aimed at overthrowing the Conservatives, rather than supporting Labor or the Liberal Democrats in particular, had been a major factor in the outcome. .
“The workers lost their deposit in Tiverton and won Wakefield with a decent swing. Lib Dems lost their deposit in Wakefield and won in a big swing in Tiverton. It’s an industrial-scale tactical vote, and it’s a big problem, ”Singh said.