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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suffered a major blow on Friday when Labor won the once-safe Conservative seat of Kingswood in what the opposition party hopes is a harbinger of victory in a general election due this year.
The Labor Party overturned the Conservatives’ majority of 11,000 in Kingswood, South Gloucestershire, and expects to confirm their victory in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, in the next few hours.
While byelections do not always provide an accurate picture of what will happen nationally, the results point to growing disaffection with the Conservatives. Labor got 11,176 votes, while the Conservatives got 8,675. Reform UK came third with 2,578.
Labor has secured a string of byelection victories in recent months, having taken four seats from the Conservatives since July. Keir Starmer, leader of the Labor Party, said the Kingswood result “shows that people are ready to put their faith in a Labor government”.
“By winning in this Tory stronghold, we can confidently say that Labor is back to serving working people and we will work tirelessly to deliver for them,” he said.
The results will come as a relief to Starmer, who has had one of the most challenging fortnights of his leadership.
The Labor leader faced harsh criticism for abandoning a pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green investment, and then sparked anger from the left and right of his party after he hesitated before suspending two of his party’s candidates. party for critical remarks towards Israel.
A Savanta poll published on Wednesday showed Labour’s lead over the Conservatives falling by seven points, to its lowest level since June 2023.
The results cap a busy couple of days for the Conservatives, who spent Thursday battling accusations that they were responsible for pushing the UK into recession.
The Conservatives, who trail the Labor Party by around 18 percentage points in polls, were absent from the campaign in both Kingswood and Wellingborough, even though they had held both seats for at least two decades.
Damien Egan, the new Labor MP for Kingswood, was the former mayor of Lewisham, south London.
His new seat will be abolished at the general election as part of a reorganization of constituency boundaries and he will contest Bristol North East instead.
The Kingswood by-election was called after former MP Chris Skidmore, an outspoken environmentalist, resigned in protest at the Government’s decision to grant new oil and gas licences.