Tiverton and Honiton voted in favor of leaving the EU between 58% and 42%, and the result will reduce suggestions that the party may return to winning mode by returning to the Brexit battlefield.
Johnson was almost completely absent during the campaign, making only a discreet visit during which he met no voters and did not appear in local party pamphlets.
Prior to the contest, the prime minister was already downplaying expectations that conservatives would cling to the seat and rejected questions he should resign as “crazy”.
“In general, governing parties do not win by-elections, especially not at mid-term. I am very hopeful, but you know it. That is just the reality,” he said Thursday.
Ms Hurford said before the vote that the consequences of the party and Mr Parish’s manner of resignation had made the campaign to keep the seat a struggle up.
Wakefield’s victory hints at the holes in Tory’s ‘red wall’
In Wakefield, Labor MP Simon Lightwood won 13,166 votes to defeat Conservative candidate Nadeem Ahmed, who won 8,421 votes.
Lightwood’s victory indicates a possible vulnerability of the Conservatives in the 45 constituencies of the “red wall” that turned blue for the first time in a generation in 2019.
Labor hopes the victory will be a sign that they can regain the loyalty of the northern British and the working class who left the party in the last general election.
The win is also likely to lead to more questions about whether Boris Johnson will ever be able to regain public confidence after the party scandal.