I know Labour and commentators sympathetic to Starmer will attempt to dismiss the shock Uxbridge by-election win for the Tories as a freak outcome caused by local factors (ie. the unpopularity of Sadiq Khan’s Ultra Low Emission Zone). As I write this, the results of the other two by-elections have yet to be announced, but it looks virtually certain that the Tories will lose both, including Selby, which was a much tougher nut for Labour to crack.
But ask yourself this – would Labour have failed in any by-election in a relatively marginal seat like Uxbridge in the mid-90s when Blair was heading for power? Of course they wouldn’t. No matter what the local difficulties, Labour would have stormed through effortlessly because the public had simply decided that they’d had enough of the Tories, that they liked Labour enough, and that they wanted a change of government. Something is very different this time, notwithstanding the opinion polls, because somehow the Tories are still able to get a hearing and don’t have to scratch too hard to find a way to win in a constituency that Labour should easily have taken on a uniform national swing.
And of course this is also a huge psychological blow for Labour in the here and now, because it will drain away the momentum that Starmer would otherwise have generated from the Selby result. One result offsets (perhaps more than offsets) the impact of the other, and that will perhaps be something of a relief for the SNP and the rest of the Scottish independence movement. It’s also, rather comfortingly, a horrific setback for the Labour Right’s behind-the-scenes wannabe Robespierres, most notably the grotesque Luke Akehurst.
Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election result (20th July 2023):
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