The more I see of the recent by-election results, the more interested I become in seeing just how the next general election plays out. I was surprised to see Labour win in both Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire, and I was particularly surprised by Mid Bedfordshire.
I know that by-elections do not typically favour the ruling government, and that they also often aren’t reflective of the picture at a general election due to lower turnout and such. However, a seat that’s been a Tory seat since the 1930s, with a huge Tory majority at the last election, is one where I would typically have had a Tory victory down as a near foregone conclusion. As such, I think that the loss of a safe Tory stronghold like Mid Bedfordshire does not bode well for the party’s electoral prospects in marginal swing seats, particularly seeing as this is far from the first safe Tory seat that has been lost in such a manner during this Parliament.
While it’s not a safe Tory seat in quite the same way, Tamworth also isn’t a seat where you would necessarily have had a Labour win down as a foregone conclusion. The area voted heavily in favour of Brexit in 2016, had a pretty significant Tory majority at the 2019 election, and had been a Tory seat for a number of elections in a row prior to yesterday’s by-election, so Labour were certainly up against it in some regards when it came to winning the seat.
Personally, I live in a constituency where for the last few elections, any vote other than a Conservative vote has seemed somewhat redundant. The Tories received 60% of the vote here in the Forest of Dean in 2019, nearly 60% of people here voted for Brexit in 2016, and the seat has been Tory for years; it was even a Tory seat during the last Labour tenure, if I’m remembering correctly. However, I’m becoming increasingly confident that a left-wing vote might not be quite so redundant around here at the next election; if the Tory majority in a seat like Mid Bedfordshire can be overturned, then I think overturning the Tory majority here in the Forest of Dean might not be so hard after all.
One thing I do think that the left-wing parties should consider for the next election, however, is some kind of electoral pact. I feel that it would be a really good idea if Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party all agreed to only put forward one candidate in each seat, with the party putting a candidate forward being the one who either holds the seat already or is best placed to unseat the Conservatives. The right-wing parties did this very effectively at the last election, with the Brexit Party standing aside in all 317 prior Conservative seats, and with there being so many prominent left-wing parties compared to right-wing parties, there might be a risk of splitting the left-wing vote if the parties aren’t careful. While Labour did win both seats last night, the majorities weren’t huge, so if the Liberal Democrat or Green vote share were to be higher in certain seats, the Tories would be voted back in in those seats.
