There is not enough paint on the shelves of B&Q to gloss over how bad last night’s by-elections were for the Tories.
Voters in Wakefield and Tiverton & Honiton may not have much in common but they both agreed it was time to send their Tory MP packing.
In a night of high drama, Labour won back the Red Wall seat of Wakefield and the Liberal Democrats overturned a 24,000 Tory majority in Tiverton and Honiton.
The disastrous results will pile pressure on Boris Johnson, who has been trying to restore his battered premiership after he clung on in a no confidence vote earlier this month.
No sitting Prime Minister has lost two by-elections in a single day since Tory John Major in 1991 and there are five reasons why Tory MPs should be worried:
1: Boris unboxed
Boris Johnson has gone from being the Tories's greatest asset to ballot box poison.
The Prime Minister may want to move on from partygate but the country hasn’t.
It is not just that Johnson is personally toxic, he has started to contaminate the whole Tory brand.
Even popular policies are failing to land because they are tainted by their association with him.
2: Red Wall red flag
The loss in the Red Wall seat of Wakefield and the Blue Wall seat of Tiverton shows the Conservative electoral alliance is crumbling. The Tories won the 2019 general election by welding together a coalition of voters in their traditional shires and Labour’s former heartlands.
This pact was glued together by a dislike of Jeremy Corbyn and the desire to get Brexit done.
Corbyn has now gone and Brexit is no longer such a potent issue. The doomsday scenario for the Tories is Labour recaptures the Red Wall and the Lib Dems storms parts of the Blue Wall leaving them with just a rump of support.
3: People are voting tactically
As part of an unwritten agreement the Lib Dems took a back seat in Wakefield and Labour did the same in Tiverton.
They needn’t have bothered.
When the primary motive of voters is to give the Tories a bloody nose they don’t need instructions on how to vote tactically, they are perfectly capable of working it out for themselves.
4: Tories picking the wrong fights
In the run-up to the by-elections they played every populist card in their pack from Rwandan detention flights to reigniting the Brexit wars to union bashing without any noticeable impact on the voters in two Leave-voting seats.
Government by gimmick and culture wars do not work when people are more concerned about the cost-of-living, fuel prices and the state of their local public services.
5 Tories have not delivered on their promises
Johnson strolled to victory in 2019 pledging to level up the country.
Voters are struggling to find the evidence of where this has been achieved.
In Tiverton & Honiton the two biggest issues on the doorstep were the shortage of NHS dentists and the crumbling buildings at the local secondary school.
Voters in Wakefield also complained the Tories had not honour their promise to improve the city.
In Westminster Tory MPs now fear it may be too late to deliver on levelling up before the next general election.
