Rishi Sunak’s Tories hold ex-PM Boris Johnson’s seat but lose in Southwest

By Emily Ashton

Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives unexpectedly held onto Boris Johnson’s old parliamentary seat in a special election, but lost another seat in southwest England to the Liberal Democrats in a result that will worry the prime minister.

The Tories held off the opposition Labour Party in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in northwest London by just 495 votes after a recount, while Somerton and Frome in Somerset fell to the Liberal Democrats, who overturned a huge Conservative majority of over 19,000 votes.

They were two of three by-elections being held on Thursday, with Selby and Ainsty in northern England still to declare. The Conservatives had been downplaying their chances, arguing that even winning in one contest would represent a victory given governments are traditionally given a kicking in mid-term votes.

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Sunak is seeking to prove he can turn around his party’s slump in the polls, which began under Johnson — who was premier from 2019 to 2023 — and has barely recovered from Liz Truss’s disastrous seven-week premiership last fall.

Steve Tuckwell became Conservative MP for Uxbridge, winning 13,965 votes compared to 13,470 for Labour’s Danny Beales. There was a 6.7 percentage point swing from Conservative to Labour, according to PA analysis. Labour had needed a 7.6 point swing to take the seat.

Keir Starmer’s party pointed to local factors in the district that prevented its candidate making headway. Faced with an expected drubbing, the Tories worked to turn the vote into an unofficial referendum on controversial plans to charge vehicles in the district in an effort to reduce pollution, known as the Ultra Low Emission Zone. That program is being pushed by Labour’s mayor of London Sadiq Khan, causing a political headache for Beales as he was forced to back away from the plan.

“We know that the Conservatives crashing the economy has hit working people hard, so it’s unsurprising that the ULEZ expansion was a concern for voters here in a by-election,” a Labour spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Johnson first won Uxbridge in 2015 and held the seat in 2019 with 53 per cent of the vote, when he also led the Tories to a landslide national victory. But he was forced out as prime minister last year and quit as an MP in June, after a panel found he lied to Parliament about rule-breaking parties in Downing Street during the pandemic.

Meanwhile Sarah Dyke became Lib Dem MP for Somerton and Frome, winning 21,187 votes compared to 10,179 for Conservative candidate Faye Purbrick. That dramatic swing of 29 percentage points away from the Tories will be hailed by Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats as proof the Tories are vulnerable in their traditional stronghold across southern England.

That puts pressure on Sunak because it reinforces the view the Tories are being squeezed on multiple fronts, as Starmer Labour builds a formidable lead in national surveys. In her victory speech, Dyke said the result proved tactical voting can be used by progressive parties at elections to beat the Conservatives.

In an emailed statement, Davey said the people of Somerton and Frome had “spoken for the rest of the country who are fed up with Rishi Sunak’s out-of-touch Conservative government.”