This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
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After North Shropshire, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer should be worried
By: []
Date: 2021-12
Boris Johnson is losing his grip on power. Only a third of those who voted Conservative in North Shropshire at the last election turned up to support his party in yesterday’s by-election. The supporters he could once rely on are leaving.
A combination of apathy, disgust, tactical voting and protest votes saw an historic 34% swing to the Liberal Democrats – the seventh-largest swing in any by-election since World War Two.
Yet this should have been solidly Conservative territory: a Leave-voting, rural shire seat of small, picture-postcard market towns, which has elected Tory MPs since 1904.
In fact, this was the 76th-safest Conservative seat in the country – meaning that another 288 seats won by the party in 2019 are now vulnerable to similar swings.
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The problem for Johnson is that the coalition of Brexit supporters he forged is unravelling. At the last general election, in 2019, the prime minister won a thumping majority and smashed Labour heartlands by promising to “get Brexit done”. But with Brexit now completed, recent events have overtaken, with the government engulfed in sleaze scandals and criticisms of how it has handled the pandemic.
Political scientist Matt Goodwin – who normally talks up Johnson’s prospects – recently highlighted that more than half of Leave voters no longer align with the Conservatives. The result was seen in yesterday’s election: in a heavily Eurosceptic constituency, farmers who have suffered from the loss of EU funding ended up supporting the most pro-European of all the main political parties, while Europe itself was barely mentioned in the campaign.
The results are even worse than national polls suggest. Recent surveys say the Conservatives are trailing the Labour Party by around 5%-9%. By historic standards, that actually isn’t too bad for a mid-term government; when John Major was prime minister in the 1990s, his ratings trailed Labour’s by 25%. Against this backdrop, the loss of such a safe Tory seat is even more sensational.
The campaign
At the last election, the Conservatives won a solid 22,949 majority in North Shropshire, meaning that few punters yesterday were expecting a defeat of this magnitude.
Little attention was initially paid to Lib Dem claims of being on the brink of a breakthrough (this is, after all, what Lib Dems often claim, in almost every seat).
But it was clear that the wheels were falling off the Conservative campaign. Fury at the Downing Street parties was palpable. One Tory canvasser told me he had yet to meet anyone in the seat who wasn’t voting Lib Dem. He later corrected his statement, after he met a lone Tory voter – although it turned out this voter also happened to be the wine merchant for the local Conservative Association.
The Lib Dems, for their part, were keen to avoid any controversy. After her win was announced, the party’s new MP, Helen Morgan, was abruptly bundled away by aides, determined for her to avoid questions from journalists. The Conservative candidate wasn’t so lucky.
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