Tories lose two more by-elections – but don’t believe Labour’s propaganda
Labour has won two more by-elections – but don’t be fooled by the party’s propagandists; Keir Starmer’s cronies only took the seats because disillusioned Tory voters stayed away from polling stations.
The polls were held in Wellingborough and Kingswood, after the recall of Peter Bone and resignation of Chris Skidmore (both of the Conservative Party) respectively.
Wellingborough has an electorate of 79,376 people – but only 30,145 turned out to vote in the by-election. That’s about 38 per cent – less than half the total.
How can an election result based on such a low turnout be said to represent the will of the majority? The majority didn’t want to vote for any of the candidates!
Turnout was also 21,768 down from the 51,913 in the 2019 general election.
Looking at the numbers for each party, we see that Labour had 13,844 votes on February 15, 2024 – up from 13,737 in 2019… by just 107 votes. As a proportion of the total electorate, that represents a swing to Labour of just 0.1 per cent from 17.3 per cent of the electorate to 17.4 per cent.
So we can see that the reason Labour won, as has been the case in many recent by-elections, is not because that party has become more popular but because the Conservative vote collapsed. In 2019, 32,277 people voted Tory (41 per cent of the electorate), compared with 7,408 on February 15 (nine per cent). So that’s a percentage drop of 32 per cent.
As for Gen Kitchen, the new Labour MP: she cannot claim to represent a majority of Wellingborough’s electorate because 82.6 per cent of that electorate – 65,532 people – did not want her to be their MP.
Let’s move on to Kingswood, where the result was even worse – for both main parties.
The electorate is said to be 65,543 people but only 24,905 turned out to vote on February 15 – so, again, that’s about 38 per cent of the total. It’s a fall of 40,638 voters.
And the vote for both Labour and the Conservatives collapsed. The only reason Labour’s Damian Egan won is that his party’s vote didn’t fail quite as badly as the Tories’.
In 2019, Labour had 16,492 votes (24 per cent of the electorate at the time). On February 15, this fell to 11,176 votes (17 per cent of the electorate). That’s a fall of 5,316 votes (seven per cent)
But the Conservative vote fell from 27,712 (40.2 per cent) to 8,675 (13.2 per cent) – a massive 19,037 (27 per cent) drop.
Again, it may be said that, with 62 per cent of the electorate not turning out and 83 per cent not voting for that party’s candidate, Labour cannot be said to have a mandate in that constituency. Can it?
And people know.
Look at the comments on ‘X’:
The two by-elections. @UKLabour gained 107 votes in one – over 2019!!! – and lost 5,316 votes in the other. Winning party, my arse. 😂😂😂
The Tory party suffered a very embarrassing Boner, which seemed to put their voters off in their tens of thousands! 😂😂😂#Corruption pic.twitter.com/6U9bbt2IMG
— MerryMichaelW ☭ 🎗 #Socialism #Equality 🇵🇸 (@MerryMichaelW) February 16, 2024
Observation: Tory voters are sitting on their hands.
— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) February 16, 2024
No amount of spin will change the fact that it was a terrible night for the @CONservatives.
— James Foster (@JamesEFoster) February 16, 2024
Number crunching for Kingswood.
Labour won Kingswood with 5,316 fewer votes than they won in 2019 and 8,078 fewer than they won in 2017.
Labour didn’t win Kingswood. Tories lost it. @UKLabour , again, not attracting any of the Tory votes. pic.twitter.com/Mx6cofEB9I
— Simon Attwood #TransformPolitics #ANewHope 🟠🌤 (@SimonAttwood) February 16, 2024
What a disaster for democracy.
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sir keef is justblblairs’s puppet
By contrast:
Staffordshire South East by election 1996: Labour vote up 4,000 on the 1992 general election.
Wirral South by election (Feb 1997): Labour vote up 5,000+ on the 1992 general election.
It may be that some Conservative voters are switching to Labour this time but this would seem to be on a small scale. And that would suggest that some Labour voters are not voting for the current Labour Party. It would also be reasonable to think that the Conservatives disproportionately lost votes to Reform.
There are reports that the Conservative Party may have decided not to put in too much effort into recent by-elections. This may be in case the experience leads MPs to force a leadership challenge.