The Electoral Pendulum is Swinging in Labour’s Direction

There have so far been 21 by-elections in this Parliament with a 22nd, in Rochdale, due on 29th February. This represents the second largest number of by-elections in one Parliament, just behind the 24 held in the 1987-1992 Parliament.

For political geeks such as me, the results of the first by-election in this Parliament, in Hartlepool, and the most recent, in Wellingborough (the results of which were announced hours after Kingswood), tell the story of the seismic change in the political fortunes of the two main parties.  

The Hartlepool by-election took place in May 2021, just over a year into Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party. The result at the time was a disaster for Labour, with the Conservatives winning the seat for the first time in the constituency’s history.

With a swing from Labour to the Conservatives of 16%, the result saw Labour’s share of the vote fall by 9% compared to the General Election, with the Conservatives seeing a massive increase of 23%.  According to extracts of the forthcoming biography of Keir Starmer by Tom Baldwin in The Sunday Times, the scale of the defeat was so bad that Starmer came very close to quitting as Labour leader.

Fast forward to today, and in Wellingborough this week the result saw Labour take the seat with 45.9% of the votes cast, up 19.3% compared to the General Election, with the Conservatives on 24.6%, down 37.7%. The swing of 28.5% was the second largest swing from the Conservatives to Labour in any by-election since the second world war.

But the achievements of the Labour Party don’t end there. Of the 21 by-elections that have taken place so far in this Parliament:

  • Three were in seats already held by the Conservatives which they kept hold of.
  • One was in a previously Labour held seat which the Conservatives gained.
  • One was in an SNP held seat which the SNP subsequently kept.
  • One was in a seat the SNP had won at the General Election which Labour went on to win.
  • Four were in Conservative held seats which the Liberal Democrats went on to win.
  • Five were in Labour held seats which the party went on to retain at the subsequent by-election.
  • Six were in Conservative held seats which Labour managed to gain.

According to Adam Boulton, former Political Editor at Sky News, and now a commentator for the channel, the six seats Labour has picked up from the Conservatives beats the party’s previous best performance in the 1992-1997 Parliament.

What should worry Conservative headquarters most however is the swing seen in all six of these seats. An analysis last month for the BBC, Sky, ITV and the Press Association found that  Labour needs a national swing of 12.7% to win with just a small majority at the forthcoming General Election.

The swing from the Conservatives to Labour in all six seats has ranged from 12.7% in the Wakefield by-election in June 2022 to the 28.5% seen in Wellingborough.

Against this backdrop it is perhaps little wonder that some now speak of the Conservatives as being in a political ‘doom-loop’.  


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