This week’s trio of byelections are a pivotal opportunity in politics to gauge a government’s popularity in the fag end of this parliament. The seats, all held by the Tories, represent three very different English constituencies in the nation’s capital, North Yorkshire and the south-west. For Rishi Sunak, the prospects look grim: scandals involving three Conservative MPs – including the disgraced former prime minister Boris Johnson – triggered the contests, which ominously look like a dry run for the next general election.
The Tories don’t deserve to win this week in any of the seats. The five pledges by which Mr Sunak invited the public to judge his government when casting their ballot are not on track to be met. People are struggling to get by, public services are falling apart and the state’s safety net has holes so large whole families are falling through.
But do the opposition parties deserve to win the contests? For the Liberal Democrats, the party with the best chance in Somerton and Frome, the answer is yes. The party has won three astonishing byelection victories against the Conservatives. It has tapped into a rich vein of discontent over collapsing NHS services, while burnishing its national standing as the champion of constitutional reform. Winning a rural seat with a 19,000 Tory majority will not be easy, but it is essential if the party is to recapture its English south-west strongholds and deprive the Tories of enough seats to give Labour a chance of forming the next government.
The mood in the country is against the Tories but it is not unequivocally for Labour – yet. The party has found the going tough in London’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, where the right policy of charging polluting vehicles is proving unpopular. Sir Keir backs both his mayor, Sadiq Khan, who is bringing in the payments, and his parliamentary candidate who opposes them. Perhaps this uncomfortable position is why Labour MPs have been directed to North Yorkshire’s Selby and Ainsty, where Sir Keir aims to create history by overturning a 20,000 Tory majority.
As Labour’s poll leads have grown, so has Sir Keir’s criticism of the policies he stood on to become Labour leader. This has proved too much for many. Jamie Driscoll, the serving leftwing mayor of the North of Tyne, has decided to leave Labour to run as an independent after being excluded from the race for the north-east mayoralty.
Sir Keir appears unconcerned if critics on the left leave. They should stay and fight, like Labour MP Meg Hillier, so that he finds it hard to keep his promise to retain a cruel policy that caps benefits after the second child, keeping 250,000 children in absolute poverty. No other country has enacted such a policy. Its architect, the former Tory chancellor George Osborne, claimed it would discourage poorer families from having children. Instead it has made families poorer. If Sir Keir wins a byelection or two, it will have nothing to do with his decision to sacrifice the wellbeing of poor children on the altar of debilitating electoral caution.
The Labour leader should not be happy to play a game whose rules have been determined for him by his opponents. The government is forecast to borrow £217bn over the next two years. The general election is Labour’s to lose. But the party risks defeating itself if it cannot spend a hundredth of the current fiscal deficit to reverse an ineffective austerity measure that hurts the poorest people.
