2023 by-elections: Conservatives hold Boris Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Published

10 months ago

July 21, 2023

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The Conservatives have won Boris Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip following a by-election.

The vote was triggered after the former prime minister stood down as an MP last month. Mr Johnson’s decision to leave the Commons shortly before it was recommended he be suspended for 90 days was enough to have potentially triggered a vote anyway.

Conservative Steve Tuckwell, a local councillor, has now been elected as the MP for the West London constituency – seeing off Labour’s Danny Beales.

Follow by-election coverage live: Tories hang on in Uxbridge after ULEZ backlash

The Uxbridge and South Ruislip results in full

Danny Beales – Labour Party – 13,470
Steve Tuckwell – Conservative Party – 13,965
Blaise Baquiche – Liberal Democrats – 526
Sarah Green – Green party – 893
Laurence Fox – Reclaim Party – 714
Piers Corbyn – Let London Live – 101
Cameron Bell – Independent – 91
Count Binface – Count Binface Party – 190
Richard Hewison – Rejoin EU – 105
Rebecca Jane – UKIP – 61
Enomfon Ntefon – Christian People’s Alliance – 78
Leo Phaure – Independent – 186
77 Joseph – Independent – 8
Kingsley Hamilton – Independent – 208
Ed Gemmell – Climate Party – 49
Steve Gardner – Social Democratic Party – 248
Howling Hope – Official Monster Raving Loony Party – 32

The Conservatives won 13,965 votes, Labour 13,470 and the Liberal Democrats 526 – meaning the majority is 495.

The swing was 6.7 from Conservative to Labour – but not enough to change the party in charge.

The race was understandably overshadowed by Mr Johnson, although the Tories wanted to focus on the expansion of London’s Ultra-low Emission Zone (ULEZ), being championed by Labour mayor Sadiq Khan.

Sources within the Labour Party admitted after polls closed that the controversial measure played a sizeable role in the election and came up frequently on the doorstep.

Speaking after his victory was announced, Mr Tuckwell said that Mr Khan “lost Labour this election”, and called for the mayor and Sir Keir to “sit up and listen” and change tack on the ULEZ.

This is a seat the Labour Party would have expected to win, given the circumstances.

It means Rishi Sunak has avoided a by-election clean sweep on a night where he faced three votes – Uxbridge and South Ruislip in west London, Somerton and Frome in Somerset and Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire.

Mr Tuckwell is a lifelong resident of the area, and has been a councillor since 2018.

Ahead of the election, Camden councillor Mr Beales held an eight-point lead in the polls over his Conservative opposition.

He had campaigned on the government’s record in office, including rising mortgage rates and the cost of living crisis, as well as local issues like the state of local hospitals.

Mr Beales had also criticised the expansion of the ULEZ, saying it’s “not the right time” to enlarge the zone – but this seems to have been futile.

Thangam Debbonaire, Labour’s shadow leader of the House of Commons, told Sky News that the swing they achieved in Uxbridge and South Ruislip was enough to be the largest party of government across a general election – although this would not secure them an overall majority.

A Labour spokesperson said: “This was always going to be a difficult battle in a seat that has never had a Labour MP, and we didn’t even win in 1997.

“We know that the Conservatives crashing the economy has hit working people hard, so it’s unsurprising that the ULEZ expansion was a concern for voters here in a by-election.”

There was a long list of 17 candidates in the election, which is not uncommon in a former prime minister’s seat.

South Ruislip is the Tory heartland within the constituency, and a growing Asian community has also been more willing to vote Conservative.

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Bitfinex database breach ‘seems fake,’ says CTO

Published

21 hours ago

May 5, 2024

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Politics

Labour taking ‘Tory crown jewel’ feels like a momentum shift

Published

24 hours ago

May 5, 2024

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Labour taking 'Tory crown jewel' feels like a momentum shift

It was a wafer-thin victory, but a huge win.

The symbolism of Labour taking the West Midlands mayor, a jewel in the Tory crown, could be felt in the room as Labour activists gathered in Birmingham to celebrate the win with their new mayor Richard Parker and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.

There are moments on election journeys when the momentum shifts – and this win felt like one of them.

“We humbly asked [the voters] to put their trust and confidence in a changed Labour Party and they did. And that is a significant piece of political history that we’ve made here today,” said Sir Keir at his victory rally.

“So the message out of these elections, the last now the last stop before we go into that general election, is that the country wants change.

“I hope the prime minister is listening and gives the opportunity to the country to vote as a whole in a general election as soon as possible.”

This win gave them the boost that was missing when they won the Blackpool South by-election on a massive 26-point swing, but then failed to pick up the hundreds of council seats they were chasing.

This win, on just 1,508 votes or 0.25 per cent of the vote, was a body blow for a Conservative party that believed they could just about cling on. Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, is now the last Tory standing.

For Labour, then a moment to bookmark.

Just as Boris Johnson’s Hartlepool by-election win in 2021 was a low point for Sir Keir – he told me this week that he considered resigning over the loss because he thought it showed he was the barrier to Labour’s recovery – this too will feel devastating not just for Andy Street but for the PM too.

Labour has beaten him in a street fight. He’s bloodied with Sir Keir now emboldened.

“This was the one result we really needed,” said one senior Labour figure. “It’s been our top focus for the past week and symbolically a very important win.”

And Labour needed the boost, because, as Professor Michael Thrasher pointed out in his Sky News’ national vote share projection calculated from the local election results, Sir Keir was not picking up the sort of vote share that Tony Blair was winning in the run-up to the 1997 Labour landslide.

His latest calculation of a 35% vote share for Labour and 26% for the Tories, put Sir Keir winning a general election but short of a majority.

What the West Midlands mayoral win did for Sir Keir was to give him a clear narrative that he is coming for the Tories and will do what he needs to take them down.

It raises inevitable questions about what is next for Rishi Sunak. The prime minister had nowhere to go today, not one win to celebrate. The worst performance in council elections in 40 years, was already pretty much as bad as it gets before the loss of Andy Street. The former Conservative mayor was magnanimous towards the prime minister, saying the loss was his alone.

But colleagues will not be so generous. One former cabinet minister said this loss was “devastating”. “We’re done and there’s no appetite to move against him,” said the senior MP. Many Tories tell me they are now resigned to defeat and believe Mr Sunak and his team needed to own it, rather than the rest of the party.

The coming days might be bumpy, the mood will be stony. But Tories tell me not much will actually change for them.

For Sir Keir, he now needs to sell not the changed Labour Party, but his vision for changing the country. The West Mids mayor’s win was dazzling, but it could have so easily gone the other way. And as Mr Sunak fights to survive, Labour still has to fight hard to win.