Keir Starmer’s Labor Party has snatched two seats from the Conservative Party in the special elections held in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, traditionally considered strongholds of the toriesin a new and double electoral blow for the premier Rishi Sunak.
Labor managed to turn the polls with a 23.9% turnaround in the final vote, while the Conservatives experienced the second largest loss of popular support in a special election since 1945. According to analyst John Curtice, the results allow us to predict a “sweep” of the Labor Party in the 2024 general election comparable to that achieved by Tony Blair in 1997.
“We have had one of the most incredible nights in the politics of this country,” Starmer declared as soon as he heard the results in the middle of the night. “Britons are crying out for positive change. “The party of the future is the renewed Labor Party.”
The president of the Conservative Party, Greg Hands, attributed the double debacle of the tories to “Boris Johnson’s legacy”, although several MPs have publicly expressed their discontent and They have directly asked Sunak for “a change of direction” after the humiliating results.
The special election was held to cover the losses of Chris Pincher, the former spokesman for the tories implicated in a sex scandal, and Nadine Dorries, Boris Johnson’s close ally who achieved a very large majority of 24,000 votes in 2019 in Mid Bedfordshire.