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Tiverton by-election: Tories lose a safe ...

Tiverton by-election: Tories lose a safe seat to the Liberal Democrats, but Labour sink to

Jun 24, 2022

Seismic win for the Lib Dems decimating a massive Tory majority, but Labour may as well have not turned up. The Tiverton & Honiton result last night is actually the one that should terrify the Tories far more than what happened in Wakefield as a much more successful campaign of tactical voting played out. That the Lib Dems were the beneficiaries, still standing on their platform of being the least worst choice of a bunch of establishment options notwithstanding, particularly when you consider they’re still led by a former Tory coalition minister. The disgust the General Public have right now at Boris Johnson for his lying, his law-breaking and his running away and hiding every time things get slightly tricky for him; the collapse of standards, the economy, cost of living, his desire to change the law every time he’s stopped from doing what he wants and not obeying said laws himself means the public at large really have had enough of him. That has showed itself in this by election with the Tories losing a seat by a 30% swing to the Lib Dems. In 2019 the Tories won 60% of the vote, had a majority of more than 24,000 and the Lib Dems have blown that away, now having a 6,000 vote majority of their own. Now this is very much an anti Boris Johnson vote. Although the current constituency boundaries have only existed since 1997, the area has been Tory since 1885, so this is an absolutely monumental loss, the 11th biggest by-election swing in UK political history and records like this do not bode well historically for the party leader on the losing end. What makes this result all the more remarkable is that the Lib Dems weren’t even the second placed party in 2019 there, they were third. Labour came second so how did their night go? The swing against Labour in Tiverton and Honiton was almost as big as the swing against the Tories in Wakefield, just 2% difference. Roughly half of the gains made by the Lib Dems here in effect, came from Labour and not the Tories. In 2019 Labour got almost 20% of the vote, last night they got less than 4%, won less than 2000 votes. Now people will mention some kind of electoral pact between Labour and the Lib Dems there and with Labour previously second, them not trying to win this seat very hard, Starmer in fact telling frontbenchers not to go there, does lend weight to a backroom deal there. The Tories losses were more than 20%, but with a reduced turnout, albeit still far larger than in Wakefield, it appears a lot of Tory voters just stayed at home and that does bring into question the Lib Dem chances of holding the seat going forwards. At the end of the day though, a massive Tory majority just got crushed, a seat that never changes hands has done so and that is going to make a lot of Tory MP’s consider their own seats and how much of a liability Johnson now is to them personally.

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