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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

Kingswood by-election full results

  • Damien Egan – Labour Party – 11,176
  • Sam Bromiley – Conservative Party – 8,675
  • Rupert Lowe – Reform UK – 2,578
  • Lorraine Francis – Green Party – 1,450
  • Andrew Brown – Lib Dems – 861
  • David Wood – UKIP – 129

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.

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“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.
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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.

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US government announces ChatGPT integration across agencies

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US government announces ChatGPT integration across agencies

US government announces ChatGPT integration across agencies

The deal was announced in response to the White House’s recent policy strategy to make the United States the AI capital of the world.

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Nomura’s Laser Digital to launch first regulated OTC desk for crypto options in Dubai

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<div>Nomura's Laser Digital to launch first regulated OTC desk for crypto options in Dubai</div>

<div>Nomura's Laser Digital to launch first regulated OTC desk for crypto options in Dubai</div>

Nomura’s crypto arm gains regulatory green light in Dubai to offer institutional OTC crypto options, expanding the UAE’s footprint in global digital derivatives.

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Jess Phillips condemns ‘idiot’ councils that don’t believe they have grooming gang problem

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Jess Phillips condemns 'idiot' councils that don't believe they have grooming gang problem

Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has told Sky News that councils that believe they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs are “idiots” – as she denied Elon Musk influenced the decision to have a national inquiry on the subject. 

The minister said: “I don’t follow Elon Musk’s advice on anything although maybe I too would like to go to Mars.

“Before anyone even knew Elon Musk’s name, I was working with the victims of these crimes.”

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Elon Musk. Pic: Reuters
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Elon Musk. Pic: Reuters

Mr Musk had called Ms Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” in one of a series of inflammatory posts on X in January and said she should go to jail.

Mr Musk, then a close aide of US President Donald Trump, sparked a significant political row with his comments – with the Conservative Party and Reform UK calling for a new public inquiry into grooming gangs.

At the time, Ms Phillips denied a request for a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham on the basis that it should be done at a local level.

But the government announced a national inquiry after Baroness Casey’s rapid audit on grooming gangs, which was published in June.

Asked if she thought there was, in the words of Baroness Casey, “over representation” among suspects of Asian and Pakistani men, Ms Phillips replied: “My own experience of working with many young girls in my area – yes there is a problem. There are different parts of the country where the problem will look different, organised crime has different flavours across the board.

“But I have to look at the evidence… and the government reacts to the evidence.”

Ms Phillips also said the home secretary has written to all police chiefs telling them that data collection on ethnicity “has to change”, to ensure that it is always recorded, promising “we will legislate to change the way this [collection] is done if necessary”.

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Operation Beaconport has since been established, led by the National Crime Agency (NCA), and will be reviewing more than 1,200 closed cases of child sexual exploitation.

Ms Phillips revealed that at least “five, six” councils have asked to be a part of the national review – and denounced councils that believed they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs as “idiots”.

“I don’t want [the inquiry] just to go over places that have already had inquiries and find things the Casey had already identified,” she said.

She confirmed that a shortlist for a chair has been drawn up, and she expects the inquiry to be finished within three years.

Ms Phillips’s comments come after she announced £426,000 of funding to roll out artificial intelligence tools across all 43 police forces in England and Wales to speed up investigations into modern slavery, child sex abuse and county lines gangs.

Some 13 forces have access to the AI apps, which the Home Office says have saved more than £20m and 16,000 hours for investigators.

The apps can translate large amounts of text in foreign languages and analyse data to find relationships between suspects.

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