The public has learned that Rishi Sunak’s policies saw him labelled Dr Death by the government’s scientific advisers during Covid. His week has got worse. The twin defeats inflicted on Mr Sunak’s government in Thursday’s byelections suggest he is in danger of destroying the Tories at the next general election. The contests were each triggered by grubby events, but the losses signal significant discontent in two wings of the coalition that won the Conservatives the general election in 2019.
In Staffordshire’s Tamworth, which registered one of the biggest leave votes in the Brexit referendum, the 23.9% swing from Conservative to Labour was the second highest in postwar byelection history. One of the bluest of blue seats, Mid Bedfordshire has never had a Labour MP since its creation in 1918. It does now. This is landslide territory, and Mr Sunak knows it.
Turnout was low in both byelections. It might be argued that the Tories lost these seats, rather than Labour winning them. But the Conservatives have to ask themselves why they could not convince two-thirds of their 2019 voters to turn up, while Labour’s vote held up. With a general election likely within a year, the Tory vote showed signs of fragmenting. In Mid Bedfordshire, the rightwing Reform party siphoned off enough votes to prevent a Conservative victory, while the Lib Dems, polls suggest, were effective at winning over disillusioned Tories.
Conservatives are deluding themselves if they think their problems are just about getting their vote out. Labour is achieving byelection swings on the scale last seen under Tony Blair during the mid-1990s, when turnout fell just as heavily. That is an ominous historical precedent for Mr Sunak to be following. Tory MPs are deeply divided about what to do. Many of their leading lights have closed their minds to new ideas and lack tolerance for opposing views. The result is an intellectual bankruptcy. The Conservative party is exhausted, politically rudderless and in desperate need of a period of renewal outside government.
But Labour risks being consumed by a furore over the position the party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has taken over events in the Middle East. Labour has distinguished itself from the Tories in the past by having an ethical foreign policy. However, Sir Keir junked this approach when he was asked whether Israel was right to lay siege to Gaza – cutting off power and water – following Hamas’s massacre of civilians. He rightly condemned the horrors of 7 October. His immediate response was also to apparently agree that Israel had the right to besiege civilians, rather than say that its actions may constitute a war crime.
This answer might have been instinctive, but it has damaged trust in his judgment, especially among Muslim voters who have felt taken for granted as Sir Keir jettisoned past positions. Labour looks unsympathetic to Palestinians. MPs with large numbers of Muslim voters are beginning to worry. Sir Keir attempted to make amends by “clarifying” his remarks. But rather than withdrawing his comments, he said his critics had got it wrong. In response, Mish Rahman, a Muslim member of Labour’s ruling national executive committee, wrote: “Stop gaslighting and apologise.”
Sir Keir should be bigger than this. Labour’s byelection wins were in leafy parts of Britain that are untouched by this debate. But his comments are damaging his party’s wider moral standing. Saying sorry now would go a long way to calming a storm that could hit Labour hard as the death toll mounts in Gaza. It’s said that voters have long memories, but sometimes they can be surprisingly short. Britons are in a mood to turf the Tories from office. Labour’s internal rows should not prevent the public from doing so.
