Kingswood by-election: Labour takes seat from Tories in key vote
Labour has taken Kingswood from the Conservatives, in another by-election victory for Sir Keir Starmer’s party.
Damien Egan won 11,176 votes, while Tory candidate Sam Bromiley polled 8,675, giving Labour a majority of 2,501.
The seat in Gloucestershire had been held by Tory MP Chris Skidmore since 2010, but he quit in January in protest over government legislation to boost North Sea oil and gas drilling.
By-election results live: Follow updates here
The former energy minister had increased his share of the vote at each of the four elections in the past 13 years, from 40% in 2010 to 49% in 2015, 55% in 2017 and 56% in 2019.
Sir Keir said: “This is a fantastic result in Kingswood that shows people are ready to put their trust in a Labour government.
“By winning in this Tory stronghold, we can confidently say that Labour is back in the service of working people and we will work tirelessly to deliver for them.
“To those who have put their trust in us, you can be safe in the knowledge that the Labour Party will deliver on your priorities. Labour will give Britain its future back.”
Notably, Reform UK – previously the Brexit Party – came in third place, winning 2,578 votes – the first time their vote share at a by-election has surpassed 10%.
This means that the total of the Conservative and Reform vote equates to more than the Labour vote.
A Labour source told Sky News they believed they had won the seat at around 1.30am – the results were announced at around 1.50am.
Before 2010, Labour had won the seat at every general election since 1992.
The turnout this time was 24,905 – which equates to around 37.1% of eligible voters in the constituency.
This is a significant drop of 34 percentage points from the 2019 general election.
To win, Labour needed a swing in the share of the vote of 11.4 percentage points – equivalent to a net change of 12 in every 100 people who voted Conservative in 2019 switching sides.
Provisional calculations show the swing ended up being 16.4 from the Conservatives to Labour.
In total, the Conservative Party’s vote share fell by 21.3 percentage points, meanwhile the Labour Party’s vote increased by 11.5 percentage points.
The Liberal Democrats vote fell by 3.4 points, and the Green Party went up by 3.4 points.
Votes are counted for the Kingswood by-election at the Thornbury Leisure Centre, Gloucestershire. Pic: PA
Speaking after his election, Mr Egan said: “Thank you for giving me your trust and for allowing me to serve the community I’m from.
“It’s a trust that I promise to repay, to show that politics can be different and can make a difference.”
He added: “Fourteen years of Conservative government have sucked the hope out of our country.
“There’s a feeling that no matter how hard you work, you just can’t move forward, and with Rishi’s recession we are left once again paying more and getting less.”
While the Kingswood seat is disappearing at the next general election due to boundary changes, Mr Egan is standing for Bristol North East, which contains much of the same electorate.
Mr Bromiley left the hall where the vote was being counted within seconds of the declaration, with the door shut behind him to prevent journalists from following him.
Politics
‘Shy’ Reform voters in Labour areas led to Farage’s party winning by-election, Harriet Harman says
“Shy” Reform voters in Labour areas led to Nigel Farage’s party winning the Runcorn by-election by just six votes, Labour peer Harriet Harman said.
The Runcorn and Helsby seat, created in 2024, went to Reform UK’s Sarah Pochin who defeated Labour candidate Karen Shore by six votes.
Reform overturned a 34.8% majority gained by former Labour MP Mike Amesbury last year before he stood down earlier this year after he punched a constituent on a night out.
It is the closest by-election result since records began in 1945.
Read more: Badenoch apologises to Tory councillors
Labour peer and former minister Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast: “If we’d have known it was so close, I, myself, would have gone on extra time there and got those six votes.
“So, there’s a real level of frustration and I’m sure there’ll be a post-mortem, but I think there’s a lot of talk about shy Reform voters in Labour areas.”
In the local elections, running at the same time, the Conservatives lost control of all 18 councils it was contesting, with Reform taking eight of those.
The party also won two of the six mayoral contests – Reform’s first two mayors.
Harriet Harman on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast
Baroness Harman said Labour now has “got to get on with delivering on the health service” and pointed out the minimum wage increase and breakfast clubs are only just being rolled out.
But she said the government also needs “more of a story” instead of just telling people to “bear with us” while it fixes what the Conservatives did.
“It seems to be that Farage has got no delivery, as yet, and all the story, whereas the government is really getting on with delivery, but it hasn’t got a big enough story about what that fits,” she said.
Read more: Reform’s political earthquake is now shaking our political system
An installation represents a bus stop during Reform UK’s local elections campaign launch in Birmingham. Pic: Reuters
She added that “Blue Labour” MPs – a socially Conservative wing of the Labour Party – “will be emboldened to press for further action” on issues like immigration, which they want to see a tougher stance on.
“There’s been grumbling about the big salience of the concerns of the winter fuel payment, but I don’t see there being any change on that,” she said.
Baroness Harman said she does not think the by-election and local election results were “utterly predictable” and will not lead to any splits or instability within the party.
Kemi Badenoch has apologised to Tory councillors who lost their seats after Reform made massive gains at the Conservatives’ expense in Thursday’s local elections.
The Conservative leader said she knew it was “disappointing” and that she was “sincerely sorry”, but added: “We are going to win those seats back – that is my job now.”
The Tories lost overall control of all 18 councils they had been in charge of that were up for election. There were 23 councils in the race in total.
Politics latest: Sky News analysis shows Reform surge in estimated national vote
A particularly bad loss was Buckinghamshire, which has been under Tory control since 1973 when local government was reorganised. The Conservatives lost overall control by just one seat after losing 29 seats.
Reform, which has never run in local elections before, gained eight councils from the Tories, one that had no overall control previously and one from Labour – the only Labour council up for grabs in this election.
Nigel Farage with the new Runcorn and Helsby MP Sarah Pochin. Pic: Reuters
The Lib Dems won Shropshire from the Tories, as well as Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire – both of which had no overall control before.
The Conservatives had one win, with Paul Bristow being voted in as Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayor, previously held by Labour.
Reform’s first major win of the election was the Runcorn and Helsby by-election where Labour lost to Reform by six votes. It was triggered by ex-Labour MP Mike Amesbury resigning after his conviction for punching a constituent.
Sir Keir Starmer said he “gets” why his party suffered defeat there and the results show “we must deliver that change ever more quickly, we must go even further”.
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Tories suffer heavy defeats
Addressing the Conservatives’ abysmal results, Ms Badenoch said: “Other parties may be winning now, but we are going to show that we can deliver and that we are on course and recovering.
“But they [the public] are still not yet ready to trust us,” she added.
“We have a big job to do to rebuild trust with the public.
“That’s the job that the Conservative Party has given me, and I’m going to make sure that we get ourselves back to the place where we are seen as being a credible alternative to Labour.”
Read more:
Reform’s political earthquake is now shaking our political system
Reform wins two new mayoral contests
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Farage: ‘This is Reform-quake’
Ms Badenoch said Labour’s election results showed Sir Keir Starmer “is on course to be a one-term prime minister”.
However, when asked if she would still be leader at the next general election, Ms Badenoch dodged the question and said: “I’m not playing all these questions that the media loves to ask about my future.
“This is not about me.”
She insisted she was the right person to lead the Conservatives, as she was chosen by the party’s members.
“I told them it wouldn’t be easy, I told them it would require a renewal and rebuilding of our party,” she said.
“That doesn’t happen in six months. I’m trying to do something that no one has ever done before, which is take their party from such a historic defeat back into government in one term.”
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