The Wakefield by-election: Terrible for the Tories, poor for Labour too.

The Tories lost Wakefield as expected, but with Labour actually losing votes despite winning, it's a hollow victory. The Tories will be picking up the pieces this morning after losing both of yesterday’s by elections heavily. Wakefield as predicted went to Labour, but the turnout was devastatingly low, showing apathy was a huge issue and was the real winner there. Not wanting to vote Tory again after Imran Ahmed Khan or because of Boris Johnson is one thing, but not being inspired by anyone else is quite another. Turnout was just 39.5%, that’s the lowest turnout on record and by some margin in a seat created in 1832. The previous lowest turnout was in 2001, presumably the people of Wakefield knew they’d been conned by Blair too, though he at least held the seat. Yes naysayers, I know it’s a by-election, yes turnouts are typically lower for these, but the Wakefield by election turnout in 1954 was around 63% and the 1932 by-election in Wakefield in had a turnout of 83% so that’s not always the case. Labour knew turnout was rank though, and had started playing down expectations and they were certainly right to, they actually got almost 5000 fewer votes last night, than they did when they were defeated in 2019, when Corbyn was apparently destroying the party, where Starmer sabotaged things with his people’s vote bo**ocks. The lack of Labour turnout should bother Labour here, they didn’t so much win the seat, as much as they didn’t lose quite as heavily as the Tories did and that’s despite the party throwing the kitchen sink at it, Starmer himself up there several times, he might have done better if he’d stayed away. Now getting the Tories out is one thing, but when voters are not turning to Labour in any meaningful, demonstrable way - in fact numerically have turned away from them too - even against a lying lawbreaker like Johnson, it shows Labour still have massive electability problems themselves and there’s no blaming Corbyn for that as the numbers prove. As much as people turned away from Johnson, a 17.3% swing away from the Tories, the swing to Labour was only 8.1% picking up less than half of the votes the Tories lost, shows people are not necessarily turning back to them, despite a concerted campaign of tactical voting. People’s opinion of Starmer in Wakefield is one of still to this day not knowing who he is, or just not liking him very much. That needs to worry them because you can’t help but think Labour could easily have failed to oust the Tories here if they weren’t up against someone as widely reviled as Boris Johnson is right now.