Political column - July 22

Everybody wins, everybody loses. Triumphs and disasters all round.

Objectively the Tories top the catastrophe count, with two major morale-sapping reverses.

If there is any comfort to be had for Rishi Sunak, it is that he avoided becoming the first Prime Minister to lose three by-elections in one day since Harold Wilson in 1968, a humiliation which some commentators had thought likely.

Before digging in, let's hail the plucky performance of our local skin in the game. Take a bow, Piers Corbyn, who like his more famous brother Jeremy used to live on the outskirts of Newport.

A little while back somebody who lived near the Corbyns told me that Piers, who had developed an interest in the weather while at school, built a massive barometer up the side of the house. It was filled with water, which probably explains why it had to be so big – it was about 30ft high – as water is a lot less heavy than mercury.

Piers must have gone back on a nostalgic visit a few years ago, because he said in one interview that the marks were still on the wall of the house. For all I know, they still are.

Anyway, he was among the mammoth list of 17 candidates at the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. Think of all the money made through those lost deposits. His personal campaigning efforts (he was standing as the Let London Live candidate) were not attended with electoral success, as he got a modest 101 votes.

That was only four fewer than the candidate who stood on a ticket for rejoining the European Union. That's interesting as it suggests that, at least as things stand, the rejoin cause is going to need major party backing if it is to get serious electoral traction.

And both got considerably fewer than Count Binface, who garnered 190 votes.

But it is the disasters we all want to wallow in, and the cream of the crop came at Somerton and Frome for the Conservatives, who got a right kicking, with a 29 per cent swing to the victorious Liberal Democrats, not far short of their famous win in Owen Paterson's old seat at North Shropshire a little while back, where the swing was 34 per cent.

"The Liberal Democrats are back in the West Country," declared the new MP, Sarah Dyke. "In the West Country" is an important caveat, because the party's showing in the other two by-election results underline what the Lib Dems already know, that they have highly localised strongholds at which they concentrate their resources.

The West Country is obviously a special area. The Labour vote there was less than one twentieth that of the successful Lib Dem candidate.

However, it is what happened at Uxbridge and South Ruislip which will bring sweat to Sir Keir Starmer's brow.

Sir Keir has the demeanour of a politician on the march to victory in the next general election. All that he, and Labour, need to do is play things safe, don't drop the ball, and it will be in the bag.

Unless, unless...

It was that Sadiq Khan wot was to blame. He did a silly thing. He adopted a policy.

Granted, a local policy – to do with emissions in London – but a firm policy nevertheless, and an evidently unpopular one to boot.

The consequence was that in the former seat of Boris Johnson, a Prime Minister who had been found to have misled the House of Commons, a seat that Labour should have walked, they instead managed to blow it, not for the first time shooting themselves in the foot.

This missed opportunity was counterbalanced by the delight of the result at Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire.

According to polling expert John Curtice, Labour's victory there was on the back of the second biggest swing ever from Conservative to Labour in post war by-election history.

After this hat-trick of results, the Lib Dems have renewed hope of a resurgence. Labour has proof it can win the next general election. And Tory MPs have a helpful indicator that many of them will soon be looking for alternative jobs.