Adam Boulton: After Labour and Lib Dems take by-election seats from Conservatives, what happens next?
What now?
This week’s trio of parliamentary by-elections are bound to be the biggest sampling of voter opinion in an election for Westminster this side of the next general election.
That election is most likely more than a year away. November 2024 is currently the favoured date, although the prime minister could run all the way into the buffers in late January 2025.
In truth in all three constituencies there was a significant swing in share of the votes away from the Conservatives – a 21% drop in support on average – which would have swept them out of power if mirrored across the nation.
As the polling analyst Professor Sir John Curtice put it “the results confirmed the depth of the electoral hole in which the [Conservative] party now finds itself”.
Nonetheless the results were not the total wipe-out which had been widely predicted.
Conservatives are trying to take heart from the mixed headline score of 2-1 rather than 3-0. There was something for everyone.
Each party can claim a success. The Tories held Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge. That was all Rishi Sunak talked about on his quick victory dash to a local cafe when he claimed his defeat at that general election is “not a done deal”.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats each captured a seat won by the Tories under Boris Johnson at 2019 General Election.
The Lib Dem leader popped up in Somerton and Frome with a typically naff victory stunt as he fired a cardboard circus cannon emblazoned with “Get These Clowns out of No 10”.
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Lib Dems: ‘Get these clowns out of No 10!’
Analysis:
Starmer could be even more cautious after defeat
Strap in for a vicious and bloody fight for No 10
Sir Keir Starmer headed to Selby and Ainsty to say “well done Keir” to his namesake, 25-year-old Keir Mather, the Labour victor who is now the youngest MP.
Starmer re-iterated there must be no complacency while simultaneously committing “to deliver” in the next Labour government.
With the help of the performance notes from voters in suburban London, North Yorkshire and Somerset, each party leadership will now review its route map to what it hopes will be success at the general election.
The Conservative tactics are clear. The small boat crossings have not yet stopped, NHS waiting lists are still growing and the prime minister will struggle to deliver on his economic pledges.
Rather than campaign on his record, Rishi Sunak is targeting the notional next Labour government which he says would be worse.
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Sunak optimistic despite defeats
This means totting up spending ideas which Labour has long abandoned, such as the £28bn Green New Deal and pointing to problems in public services “where Labour is in power” such as in Wales and London, without pointing out that his government still ultimately holds their purse strings.
In Ruislip the Labour Mayor of London’s scheduled extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) was a gift to the Tories, even if it resulted from politically charged interplay with central government.
Steve Tuckwell, the successful Conservative candidate, ran on the single issue of this potential £12.50 daily charge for those with older vehicles and did not bother to mention the prime minister in his victory speech.
There may have been other local factors. YouGov founder Peter Kellner points out that that Conservatives have done better in this part of the capital which “seems to be linked to Labour’s support slipping among voters with Indian heritage”.
Against the worldwide crescendo of extreme weather incidents Lord Debden, the Conservative grandee and recent chairman of the UK’s Climate Change Committee and Lord Stern, the government’s former climate change advisor, have both bemoaned Sunak’s apparent lack of interest in net zero measures.
The Tories’ narrow scrape in Ruislip, surviving by just 495 votes, is unlikely to change the prime minister’s mind. He may be more attracted to the siren call of Boris Johnson loyalist Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg that “high cost green policies are not popular”.
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‘ULEZ is why we lost in Uxbridge’
Labour never took victory in Ruislip for granted and their campaign was troubled, even without some lingering affection for Boris Johnson, their big character former MP.
Their candidate attacked the mayor’s ULEZ scheme. Extra party managers were despatched from headquarters. In the wake of the defeat the local Labour constituency chairman quit with words of praise for Jeremy Corbyn.
The former leader’s brother Piers Corbyn stood in the Uxbridge by-election and was beaten into 11th place by candidates including Count Binface and the TV actor Laurence Fox.
That will cheer Starmer, who is likely to react by strengthening his grip on the party discipline and steer policy towards the centre. Anxious to refute attempts by Sunak and his ministers to link Labour to the Just Stop Oil campaign, Starmer has already said that Labour, including London Mayor Sadiq Khan, need “to reflect” on the merits of ULEZ.
The Tories must be ruing their failure to field a nationally known candidate against Khan in next May’s London Mayoral Election.
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By-elections: What the results mean for UK politics
History never repeats itself but it does have lessons. On Friday the Conservative Chairman argued that the best analogy was with the parliament leading up to the 1992 General Election.
The Conservatives lost eight seats at by-elections but won them all back on polling day, when the technocratic new Tory leader John Major was unexpectedly kept on in 10 Downing Street as prime minister.
Independent observers note that the scale of Thursday’s victories by Labour and the Liberal Democrats more closely resemble those in the subsequent parliament of 1992 to 1997.
Opposition by-election victories then were harbingers of the New Labour’s massive landslide triumph in the 1997 General Election.
Voters were scared when mortgage rates shot up dramatically due to Conservative policy failures on Black Wednesday, and Major’s popularity never recovered in spite of an economic upturn. Liz Truss’s brief, disastrous, premiership last year may have administered a similar shock and the voters have much less time to forget.
The serial misbehaviour, venality and dishonesty of Boris Johnson’s time in office far outdo the ministerial “back to basics” peccadilloes which undermined Major’s premiership.
Recent by-elections certainly indicate that voters outside the capital have had enough of all that.
Starmer needs a swing as big as that which gave Tony Blair his majority of 165 just to have an overall majority of one seat. He also lacks Blair’s charisma too, in spite of the pair’s recent public love-in.
But the enormity of his victory in the Tory heartland of Selby suggests that the electorate may be prepared to give Starmer the size of victory he needs. His less arrogant, more cautious and painstaking approach may be better suited to the era of the cost of living crisis.
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The parties are urging their supporters to stay loyal to them come what may. The voters are ignoring them. There was large scale tactical voting against the Conservatives in these by-elections.
The Liberal Democrats lost their deposits in Uxbridge and Selby and Labour lost theirs in Somerton. In all three constituencies the Green Party got more votes than the squeezed party.
Some in Labour are blaming the “selfish” Greens and Lib Dems for costing them Uxbridge because they each had more votes than the Tory’s margin of victory. As the leading party rejecting any talk of pacts between parties, this is wanting to have it both ways. Votes are not in the gift of any party.
Meanwhile the Tories are spinning that their voters simply stayed at home and will turn out for them at the general election. Maybe.
Turnout this week was around 45% – lower than at a general election but respectable in by-elections. Besides, on past form, it takes longer than a year to coax back voters once they have changed parties or decided to abstain.
In the Wakefield by-election Labour beat the Tories in the so-called red wall.
In Selby they beat them in a North Yorkshire heartland. The swing was in their favour in Uxbridge, albeit not big enough. Keir Starmer has also lucked out with the other opposition parties.
A stronger performance by the Liberal Democrats, as suggested by their four by-election victories this parliament, will help tear down a Tory majority. The scandal-hit SNP are set to hand seats in Scotland to Labour.
These by-elections did not change the political weather. They confirmed what has been evident in local elections and by-elections since Boris Johnson and Liz Truss fell from grace and the economic clouds darkened.
What now? More of the same until the next election is most likely.
The UK’s benchmark stock index has reached another record high.
The FTSE 100 index of most valuable companies on the London Stock Exchange closed at 8,505.69, breaking the record set last May.
It had already broken its intraday high at 8532.58 on Friday afternoon, meaning it reached a high not seen before during trading hours.
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The weakened pound has boosted many of the 100 companies forming the top-flight index.
Why is this happening?
Most are not based in the UK, so a less valuable pound means their sterling-priced shares are cheaper to buy for people using other currencies, typically US dollars.
This makes the shares better value, prompting more to be bought. This greater demand has brought up the prices and the FTSE 100.
The pound has been hovering below $1.22 for much of Friday. It’s steadily fallen from being worth $1.34 in late September.
Also spurring the new record are market expectations for more interest rate cuts in 2025, something which would make borrowing cheaper and likely kickstart spending.
What is the FTSE 100?
The index is made up of many mining and international oil and gas companies, as well as household name UK banks and supermarkets.
Familiar to a UK audience are lenders such as Barclays, Natwest, HSBC and Lloyds and supermarket chains Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s.
Other well-known names include Rolls-Royce, Unilever, easyJet, BT Group and Next.
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FTSE stands for Financial Times Stock Exchange.
If a company’s share price drops significantly it can slip outside of the FTSE 100 and into the larger and more UK-based FTSE 250 index.
The inverse works for the FTSE 250 companies, the 101st to 250th most valuable firms on the London Stock Exchange. If their share price rises significantly they could move into the FTSE 100.
A good close for markets
It’s a good end of the week for markets, entirely reversing the rise in borrowing costs that plagued Chancellor Rachel Reeves for the past ten days.
Fears of long-lasting high borrowing costs drove speculation she would have to cut spending to meet self-imposed fiscal rules to balance the budget and bring down debt by 2030.
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They Treasury tries to calm market nerves late last week
Long-term government borrowing had reached a high not seen since 1998 while the benchmark 10-year cost of government borrowing, as measured by 10-year gilt yields, was at levels last seen around the 2008 financial crisis.
The gilt yield is effectively the interest rate investors demand to lend money to the UK government.
Only the pound has yet to recover the losses incurred during the market turbulence. Without that dropped price, however, the FTSE 100 record may not have happened.
Also acting to reduce sterling value is the chance of more interest rates. Currencies tend to weaken when interest rates are cut.
UK
Nazi-obsessed terrorist Callum Parslow jailed after trying to murder asylum seeker at Worcestershire hotel
A Nazi-obsessed man has been jailed for attempted murder after he stabbed an asylum seeker in a terrorist attack.
Callum Parslow was handed a life sentence and will serve a minimum of 22 years and eight months in prison after he knifed the man at a Worcestershire hotel on 2 April last year, as a “protest” against small boat crossings.
The victim, Nahom Hagos, from Eritrea, said it was a “miracle” he survived after being stabbed in the chest and hand.
Parslow, 32, has Hitler’s signature tattooed on his arm and used a £770 knife he had bought online to attack Mr Hagos when he was eating in the conservatory of the Pear Tree Inn at Hindlip.
During sentencing, the judge, Mr Justice Dove, told Parslow: “You committed a vicious and unprovoked assault on a complete stranger Nahom Hagos who suffered devastating injuries as a result of your violence.”
The judge also said Parslow, from Worcester, was “motivated by your adoption of a far-right neo-Nazi mindset which fuelled your warped, violent and racist views”, and added: “This was undoubtedly a terrorist attack.”
He was found guilty of attempted murder in October last year.
Callum Parslow. Pic: West Midlands Police/PA
Leicester Crown Court heard at the time that Mr Hagos, who used to live at the hotel, was visiting a friend and was stabbed after Parslow asked him for directions to the toilet.
CCTV from the scene showed Mr Hagos fleeing to a car park and being chased by Parslow. He was able to run back into the main reception area, where the hotel manager locked the front door.
Parslow later re-entered through another door apparently searching for further victims, the court heard.
The hotel manager and a builder used a van to take Mr Hagos to hospital in Worcester, as they felt he was losing too much blood, where he was found to have an 8cm-long wound which had not penetrated any of his vital organs.
After trying to kill Mr Hagos, Parslow ran towards a canal and was spotted with what appeared to be blood on his hands.
Officers found blood containing a DNA profile matching that of the victim on the blade of the knife abandoned by Parslow.
The knife belonging to Parslow. Pic: West Midlands Police/PA
Failed manifesto post
After the stabbing and as police closed in, Parslow tried to post a “terrorist manifesto” on X, tagging Tommy Robinson and politicians including Nigel Farage, Suella Braverman and Sir Keir Starmer.
He wrote that he “just did my duty to England” and had tried to “exterminate” Mr Hagos. However, it failed to send as he copied in too many people.
Others on his list included Laurence Fox, Lee Anderson, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and various news organisations.
Nazi memorabilia at bedsit
During the trial last October, the court heard an axe, metal baseball bat and a second knife were found at Parslow’s bedsit in Bromyard Terrace in Worcester.
Police also discovered a swastika armband, a Nazi-era medallion and copies of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf.
Nazi memorabilia which was seized at Parslow’s bedsit in Worcester. Pics: West Midlands Police/PA
Jurors were also told Parslow had Hitler’s signature tattooed on his arm “in order to demonstrate his affiliation to the ideals of the leader of the German Nazi party”.
He also pleaded guilty to an unconnected sexual offence and two charges of sending electronic communications with intent to cause distress and anxiety at the time.
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‘The pain feels unbearable’
Mr Hagos told the court in an impact statement he continues to feel “excruciating pain” in his hand after the attack by Parslow.
Read out by the prosecution on Friday, he said: “The pain is unbearable and keeps me awake all night long.
“The pain feels like an electric shock going through my hand and I now have insomnia.”
He then said he had been “living and pursuing a happy life before the incident,” but added: “I feel lonely and don’t feel safe on the street.
“My life has been turned upside down.”
UK
Missing sisters in Aberdeen made earlier visit to same bridge where they were last seen, CCTV shows
Two missing sisters in Aberdeen made an earlier visit to the bridge where they were last seen hours before they disappeared, CCTV footage has revealed.
Police Scotland said a text message was also sent to the women’s landlady on the morning they vanished, indicating they would not be returning to the flat.
Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both aged 32, were last spotted in the city’s Market Street at Victoria Bridge at about 2.12am on Tuesday 7 January.
The siblings – who are part of a set of triplets and originally from Hungary – were seen crossing the bridge and turning right on to a footpath next to the River Dee in the direction of Aberdeen Boat Club.
Their disappearance has sparked a major search operation.
The Huszti sisters. Pic: Police Scotland
In an update on Friday, Police Scotland said the sisters were seen at the same bridge at around 2.50pm on Monday 6 January – around 12 hours before they were last seen.
The force said the siblings, who were both wearing rucksacks, spent five minutes at the footpath and the Victoria Bridge but did not engage with anyone else.
Officers are now appealing for anyone who may have seen the sisters at this earlier time to come forward.
Police have been searching the River Dee
Pic: PA
After visiting the bridge, the women were then seen on CCTV making their way through the city centre, via Union Square shopping centre, back to their flat in the Charlotte Street area.
Police Scotland said there is “nothing to indicate” that the siblings left their flat again until shortly before they were last seen at the River Dee in the early hours of the following morning.
A text message was sent from Henrietta’s mobile phone to their landlady at the same time they were last seen, indicating they would not be returning to the flat.
The phone was then disconnected from the network and has not been active since.
The following day, the sisters’ personal belongings were found inside in the flat and the landlady reported her concerns to police.
The Huszti sisters were captured on CCTV before their disappearance on 7 January. Pic: Police Scotland
Superintendent David Howieson said: “We have carried out a significant trawl of public and private CCTV footage as we try to establish the sisters’ movements.
“We have had a positive response from the public to our appeals and I would like to thank everyone who has already come forward.
“I would again urge anyone with any information which could help find Eliza and Henrietta to get in touch.
“We remain in regular contact with Eliza and Henrietta’s family in Hungary and we will continue to provide them with support at this very difficult time.
“Searches will continue in the coming days and our officers will continue to do everything they can to find Eliza and Henrietta.”
Read more:
How the case of the missing sisters is just as mysterious a week after they disappeared
The search team has included specialist advisers, emergency service partners, a police helicopter, and the force’s dog branch and marine unit.
Police Scotland previously said there has been “no evidence” of the missing sisters leaving the immediate area.
Henrietta Huszti. Pic: Police Scotland
Eliza Huszti. Pic: Police Scotland
Officers are keeping an open mind about what happened to the women but said they have not found anything to suggest any “suspicious circumstances or criminality”.
It previously emerged the sisters did not tell their relatives they were “immediately” going to move out of their rented flat.
In a statement released through Police Scotland earlier this week, the women’s family said: “This has been a very worrying and upsetting time for our family.
“We are really worried about Eliza and Henrietta and all we want is for them to be found.”
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