The Conservatives suffered the largest-ever drop in vote share of any party defending a seat at a by-election overnight, after losing 37.8% in Wellingborough, as Labour claimed the seat formerly held by Peter Bone.
It was one of two by-election wins for Sir Keir Starmer last night, as Damien Egan won Kingswood in south Gloucestershire following the resignation of Chris Skidmore.
Meanwhile insurgent party Reform UK stole a march on the Tories from the Right, seeing a marked 13% surge in voter share in Wellingborough and a 10.4% uptick in Kingswood.
Although it was unequivocally a terrible evening for Rishi Sunak’s party, polling mastermind Professor Sir John Curtice believes every party fielding candidates lost, really.
Voters “are not rushing to the polls” to support any candidate, according to Sir John.
Turnout in Kingswood was 34 per cent down on 2019, the fourth largest drop since the last general election. In Wellingborough, the overall turnout was 38 per cent, down from 70 per cent during its last by-election (albeit that was in 1969).
Writing in the BBC, the Strathclyde University prof wrote: “On average, turnout has fallen in all by-elections since 2019 by 28.1 points. This is slightly more than the previous record of 27.8 points in by-elections in the 1997-2001 parliament. That was followed by a record low turnout of 59% in the 2001 general election.
“It looks as though engaging the voters will be a challenge for all the parties in the coming months.”
Despite the drab turnout, Reform UK leader Richard Tice was upbeat about his party’s performance.
Richard Tice said Reform UK was a party “on the up” and expected its best two by-election results, with the party hoping to achieve double figure vote shares.
The 59-year-old told Sky News in Wellingborough: “Our early indications are that we are delighted. I think we have got our best two by-election results by a considerable margin and let’s wait and see, but we’re the party on the up and it seems like the Tories are a party on the down.”
He added: “What we heard here in Wellingborough is that people were just so disenchanted with what has happened with this Government, how they failed to take advantage of Brexit.”
The business tycoon gave a “cast-iron guarantee” that his party would not be doing any sort of deal with the Tories.
