Keir Starmer: Labour is ‘redrawing the British political map’ following by-election victories

Keir Starmer, the leader of the British Labour Party, said his party had “made history” with its two by-election victories over the Conservatives. Labour candidates overturned huge Tory majorities in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire to take the seats.

“Voters here put their trust and their confidence in a changed Labour Party, and we will repay them for that trust and confidence,” Starmer said.

“I know there are people who probably voted Tory in the past who voted for a changed Labour party because they despair at the state of their own party. I’m glad that they see that our party is changed.”

Sir Keir claimed Labour was “redrawing the political map” by taking seats which had been comfortably Conservative ahead of a British general election expected next year.

In Tamworth, Labour’s Sarah Edwards defeated Tory Andrew Cooper by a majority of 1,316. The Conservatives were defending a 19,634 majority, but a 23.9 percentage point swing to Labour saw that eradicated.

The result, announced shortly at 2.45am, was the second-highest ever by-election swing to Labour. Just half an hour later there was even better news for Starmer when Mid Bedfordshire saw the largest majority overturned by Labour at a by-election since 1945.

The Tories had held Mid Bedfordshire since 1931, with a 24,664 Conservative majority in 2019. But Alastair Strathern took the seat with a majority of 1,192 over his Tory rival Festus Akinbusoye, with a swing of 20.5 percentage points to Labour.

Strathern said his victory showed “nowhere is off limits for this Labour Party”, while Edwards called on Rishi Sunak to go to the polls. “Get in your government car, drive to Buckingham Palace, do the decent thing, and call a general election,” she said.

Both contests were triggered by the high-profile departures of their previous MPs. Former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries quit – eventually – as Mid Bedfordshire’s MP in anger at being denied a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.

In Tamworth, Chris Pincher resigned after being found to have drunkenly groped two men in an “egregious case of sexual misconduct” at London’s exclusive Carlton Club last year, an incident which helped trigger Boris Johnson’s exit from 10 Downing Street because of his handling of the situation.

The Conservatives sought to portray the by-elections as mid-term blips, exacerbated by the difficulties surrounding the previous MPs. But elections expert Professor John Curtice said the two results were “extremely bad news” for the Conservatives, and suggested Sunak was on course for general election defeat.

He warned the Tories risked seeing votes drift to Labour on the left and Reform UK on the right. Reform secured 1,487 votes in Mid Bedfordshire and 1,373 in Tamworth, in both instances more than Labour’s majority over the Conservatives.

“No government has hitherto lost to the principal opposition party in a by-election a seat as safe as Tamworth,” Curtice said.

The Tamworth result echoes Labour’s victory in a by-election in its predecessor constituency South East Staffordshire in 1996. The Conservatives went into that contest defending a large majority, only to see Labour win the seat on a swing of 22.1 percentage points before a general election landslide the following year.

The results were announced a year to the day after Rishi Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, resigned as prime minister.