Conservatives lost two seats in the parliamentary by-elections in Britain this week. Conservative victory from Boris Johnson’s old set of Uxbridge and South Ruislip has come as a face saver for the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. With this victory Sunak could avoid a 3-0 drubbing.
Notwithstanding Conservative leaders nursing strong feeling that the supporters of Johnson have played mischief and ensured the defeat of their party candidates from these constituencies, the fact cannot be denied that Sunak has lost his credibility and people have started questioning his claim of providing a good governance.
Though the aides of Sunak claim that he continues to enjoy the popular support, which got reflected in party candidate’s win in Uxbridge, the trend of votes does not endorse their assertion. While Labour won the constituency of Selby and Ainsty from the Conservatives by 4,000 votes after an ally of Johnson resigned in solidarity; Labour’s winner a youthful Keir Mather, demolished the more than 20,000 majority and replaced it with a 4,000-vote majority; and Liberal Democrats managed to win Somerton and Frome in southwest England, the Conservative won the Uxbridge by mere face saving 495 votes. This is the biggest majority the Liberals have got since World War Two.
The Liberal Democrats won Somerton and Frome in Somerset with a swing of 28 per cent, securing more Tory seats in the south-west. This stunning victory shows the Liberal Democrats are firmly back in the West Country. The Lib Dems’ Sarah Dyke won 21,187 votes in Somerset and Frome, easily beating the Conservative candidate’s 10,179. The victory of LD from this seat which is close to Sunak’s own seat is a cause of concern for him. It sends a strong message of change in the voters’ mood and perception.
The Labour victory has acted as morale booster for its leader Keir Starmer who said “This is a historic result that shows that people are looking at Labour and seeing a changed party that is focused entirely on the priorities of working people with an ambitious, practical plan to deliver”.
These results point to a possible landslide defeat for the Conservatives in 2024 parliamentary elections. But, contradicting the narrative, the ruling party hung on in a third: Uxbridge and South Ruislip in outer west London. According to Rishi Sunak the Uxbridge result showed how the general election is not a “done deal”. Commenting on the results Conservative party’s chair, Greg Hands, said; “What I’m hearing on the doorstep is that people are giving Rishi Sunak a chance”.
What has turned the people hostile to Conservative, particularly to Sunak is handling of the issue of Green Belts, which are a buffer between towns, and between town and countryside. The green belt designation is a planning tool and the aim of green belt policy is to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open; however, there is not necessarily a right of access there. Different section of the people nurse different views.
A significant section of the Conservative MPs have urged Sunak to bounce back from a night of parliamentary by-election carnage and water down some of the party’s green pledges. They nurse that it was his insistence on green gelt that provided the opportunity to Boris Johnson to take revenge. The defeats have convinced the Conservative leadership and also the MPs that party would met with water loo at 2024 elections under Sunak’s leadership.
Nevertheless Sunak insists that a Tory defeat at the next general election was “not a done deal”, despite suffering two crushing losses in the previously safe seats of Selby and Ainsty in northern England and Somerton and Frome in the south-west. The leaders feel that the lesson of the election is surely that green policies are very unpopular when there’s a direct cost to people. Craig Mackinlay, chair of the net zero scrutiny group of Conservative MPs, warned Sunak against pursuing “overbearing costs, charges, taxes” associated with Britain’s plan to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The Tories are trailing Labour by 20 percentage points in opinion polls, and are dogged by high inflation, failing public services and the recent chaos of the Johnson and Liz Truss premierships. In spite of these challenges and ordeals Sunak is sure of turning things around. He is planning a cabinet reshuffle, maybe in September but possibly next week.
Significantly while Sunak has pledged to protect the green belt in England, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer too is not opposed to it but holds that it should be built on “where appropriate” to make housing more affordable. He said: “On the green belt, I was very clear over the summer what I was going to do, which was move away from a system of nationally imposed top-down housing targets on local areas. I don’t think that is the right approach.”
However the Tory rebels forced Sunak to remove the target of 300,000 new homes a year from the levelling up and regeneration bill. The bill is also changing planning law to allow councils not to consider green belt land for development even if it would be the only way to reach their advisory new home numbers.
Since 2006, the green belt has shrunk by about 1%, according to analysis by the House of Commons library. During his first leadership campaign, Sunak’s team vowed to stop councils appealing to the Planning Inspectorate to declassify patches of green belt land by updating their local plans. He pledged to end this practice by updating the national planning policy framework, and scrapping the possibility of “inappropriate” development on the green belt “in very special circumstances”
Nevertheless the Labour leaders are not sure that how far this issue will help the party to win the election. Starmer does not possess a new idea about it. In case Sunak listens to the suggestions of his party colleagues and moves to exploit voter concerns about the costs of green measures at a national level the Labour would not succeed in its effort to win over the voters on this count.
Craig Mackinlay, chair of the net zero scrutiny group of Conservative MPs, warned Sunak against pursuing “overbearing costs, charges, taxes” associated with Britain’s plan to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. He added: “There’s a lot to learn from Uxbridge — that a way to create some significant blue water between us and Labour is to rethink these charges and the net zero pathway.”
The Tories are trailing Labour by 20 percentage points in opinion polls. The situation has been complicated by the dissident’s owing allegiance to Johnson. But Labour leadership is not willing to give credit to Sunak for winning Uxbridge seat. They attribute it to Mayor’s Syed Khan’s planned extension of London’s ultra-low emissions zone, a charge on polluting vehicles, to outer boroughs in the capital. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said it was “clear” the Conservatives won the seat because of Ulez and that the mayor needed to “reflect” on the issue.
These defeats do not have ideological implication, it has tactical orientation and simply reflects the urgency of removing Sunak from office and bringing Johnson once again to the power house. Conservatives retaining Uxbridge seat obviously implied that Johnson still enjoys support. The loss of two seats exposed the Conservatives vulnerabilities on two fronts: the loss of a rural seat in the north of England where it performed strongly in the past, and one in the southwest, a traditional stronghold.(IPA Service)
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