End of day summary …
We are going to be wrapping up the live blog shortly. Here are the headlines …
Keir Starmer has hailed Labour’s “fantastic” results in the Kingswood and Wellingborough byelections after the party secured two victories that suggest the party is on course for a majority at the general election this year. The party secured a near-record swing of 28.5 percentage points in Wellingborough and a more modest one of 16.4 points in Kingswood, both of which would give them a secure majority if repeated at a national vote. Rishi Sunak said “Midterm elections are always difficult for incumbent governments, and the circumstances of these elections were of course particularly challenging.”
Sunak has insisted that his government can afford to cut taxes, despite the country having entered a recession, because “economic conditions have improved”. Speaking to the media, he said “our plan is working” and he can “give everyone the peace of mind that there is a better future for them and their families”.
Labour leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, urged people to vote for the party at the next general election in order to get rid of the Westminster Conservative government. He claimed Scotland would be at the heart of a Labour-led UK government, and criticised the SNP government in Holyrood for what he described as “a culture of secrecy and cover-ups”.
NatWest made its biggest annual profit last year since the 2007 financial crisis. The UK lender – which is still 35% government-owned – said pre-tax profits rose 20% to £6.2bn in the year to December.
No new proposals for general-use windfarms were submitted for planning permission in England last year, despite the government’s much-vaunted relaxation of planning restrictions.
A charity that has worked for 37 years for greater cohesion between different UK faith communities is expected to close down next week after the government signalled it will scrap its funding. The Inter Faith Network (IFN) is due to close after Michael Gove, the communities secretary, said he was “minded to withdraw” £155,000 of provisional funding over concerns about a trustee connected to the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).
People are being hospitalised for sexual health conditions that are easily treatable in local clinics, experts have warned, after some council budgets being cut by up to two-thirds over 10 years.
I wanted to say thank you so much for reading this week and all your comments while I have been sitting in for Andrew Sparrow. I’ve really appreciated them. He will be back with you next week, and I will no doubt see you around the Guardian website somewhere soon. Take care and enjoy the best weekend you can.
Keir Starmer and former prime minister Gordon Brown were among mourners today at the funeral of veteran Labour MP Tony Lloyd in Stretford.
Giving an address, Brown said “His mission was social justice, his life was given to public service, his cause was the people he represented. Fighting for Tony was not against any individual or any group, it was against poverty, inequality and injustice wherever he saw it.”
Others at the service included Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper, Lisa Nandy, Lucy Powell and Rebecca Long-Bailey. Conservative MP for Ribble Valley Nigel Evans also attended.
Rayner said “Tony was not just a politician. He was guided by a deep sense of duty and commitment to improving society in pursuit of his socialist principles. He never lost sight of his values and he also showed incredible skill in bridging divides, uniting people and trying to find common ground while making progress. He devoted himself to championing the marginalised, the silent and the forgotten.”
Lloyd died from blood cancer last month aged 73.
Josh Halliday has a report here: Tributes paid to ‘true statesman’ Tony Lloyd at Manchester service
Updated
Sky News is reporting that Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, who are co-chairs of one of the groupings of Tory backbenchers, have issued a statement saying Rishi Sunak must “change course” after the two byelection defeats on Thursday. It reads:
The results in yesterday’s byelections are unequivocal: Labour are winning because many of the people who backed us in 2019 are staying at home or voting Reform. Voters are not flocking to Labour.
They want a genuine alternative to the consensus politics of the last two decades – high taxes, low security, managed decline.
The government has made some positive steps to win back our lost voters. But all of this is plainly not enough. In 2019 the British people voted for change, and they haven’t seen it yet.
We have many good excuses – the disruptions and distractions of Brexit, Covid and the Ukraine war – but so far, we have not delivered on the promises we made at the last election. There is still time – but our party must change course.
The pair are part of “The New Conservatives” grouping, which – assuming you don’t have perfect recall of the seemingly myriad factions in the parliamentary party these days – my colleague Ben Quinn helpfully wrote about December. He said:
The New Conservatives are the newest and one of the most vocal groupings, created in May 2023 and include Lee Anderson, as well as Tories gaining more prominence such as Miriam Cates. Many are in marginal “red wall” seats.
Its MPs, who are thought to number about 25, are predominantly from the party’s 2019 intake. The group’s co-chair Danny Kruger has pressed the PM to deliver the Rwanda deportation plan by “unpicking” Britain from a range of international obligations.
“That’s what change means, that’s why change matters” has been a recurring refrain during Anas Sarwar’s speech to Scottish Labour, and he has finished his speech with a plea for people to vote Labour in Scotland to get rid of the Conservative government in Westminster.
He told delegates: “Our opponents don’t want change. They are the parties of the status quo – Scottish Labour is now the only party of change.”
Music nerds klaxon: Sia’s Unstoppable has been the opening and closing music for the speech. It’s a bop.
On energy policy, Anas Sarwar has said:
Let me be clear, oil and gas will play a role in the energy mix for decades to come – we will not turn off the taps – but we will also accelerate the transition to net zero.
We will upgrade the UK energy grid, invest in Scotland’s ports, capitalise on new technologies, and use Labour’s “British jobs bonus” to create quality supply chain jobs right here in Scotland.
We will make our country the winner in the race for the next generation of clean energy jobs and cheaper energy bills – not sell off our seabed on the cheap.
Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader in Scotland, says that the devolved government in Scotland has for twenty-five years mostly been a social policy government rather than an economic policy government. He describes the SNP as an “anti-business” party, and the Green party as “anti-growth”.
Anas Sarwar says that a Labour government for the UK would deliver “a race to the top” rather than a “race to the bottom”, and “the most transformative change in conditions for working people for a generation.”
He criticises the SNP for not making the best of devolution, saying:
A quarter of a century on from when our party created the Scottish parliament, our opponents have failed to make devolution work for the people of Scotland
Devolution was never meant to be about two governments fighting with each other. Devolution was always meant to be about Scottish solutions to Scottish problems. And two governments working together when in our national interest to actually deliver for Scotland.
Scottish Labour will be “responsible” with public money if elected to be the Scottish government in 2026, Anas Sarwar said.
He told Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow:
The SNP is being reckless with your money, and Scots shouldn’t be forced to pay the price for their incompetence. Because people work hard, pay their taxes, and expect government to be responsible with their money – it shouldn’t be too much to ask.
We will end the culture of financial mismanagement, we will end the secrecy, and we will open the books to public scrutiny, to restore people’s trust in our politics. We will be responsible with every penny of public money – that’s what change means and that’s why change matters.
Turning his attention back to the Conservatives and London, Sarwar said “I don’t support independence. And I don’t support a referendum. But I understand why people want to run a million miles from a Tory government”
He implored people to go “on this part of the journey” together to end the Conservative government in Westminster as the first step.
Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader in Scotland, has attacked the Conservative government in London for being in thrall to a “right-wing crankfest” and culture wars, and promised that a Labour government would end corruption and get back money lost during the pandemic and through cronyism.
He said:
The Tories are so mired in scandal and division and chaos, that their MPs are too busy trying to find a way to save their own skin rather than focusing on the huge challenges facing our country.
And while they seek to divide communities from each other, they also seek to divide us between haves and have-nots. They have crashed the economy – and put the UK into recession.
Imagine five more years of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel, Lee Anderson, Liz Truss, Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak. What an unbearable nightmare.
He has also been highly critical of the SNP, saying a culture of cover-up and secrecy has enveloped the Scottish government. He said that by voting Scottish Labour, Scotland would be at the heart of the next UK government.
Anas Sarwar has said statehood for Palestine is “not the gift of a neighbour”.
Here are the quotes from slightly earlier in the speech with have just appeared on PA:
The loss of innocent life in Israel and in Gaza is an absolute travesty.
On 7 October, we saw the largest loss of Jewish life in any single day since the Holocaust – it was unimaginable, unforgivable, and unjustifiable.
And we were right to show our solidarity with the Jewish people, and with the people of Israel in the face of that terror.
And as I have been clear, the collective punishment of 2.2 million innocent citizens of Gaza is not – never can be – a justifiable response to the horror inflicted by Hamas.
Describing himself as a “proud son of Glasgow”, Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader in Scotland has introduced his children, and said he is proud to be bringing up his children there. He has criticised the Scottish government for concentrating too much power in Holyrood.
He says that two years ago conference paid tribute to those in Ukraine, and says they do again. He says they also show solidarity with the people of Israel after the 7 October attack which he described as “unforgiveable”, going on to say the collective punishment of 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip cannot be the right response. He says “the fighting must stop now”, calling for the end of fire going into and out of Gaza, the release of all hostages, the delivery of humanitarian aid, and for world leaders to work on an enduring path to a two state solution.
Sarwar says a collective failure of the international community to strive for peace has led to this situation because only when there is a safe and secure Israel side-by-side with a safe and secure Palestinian state will there be peace.
He says that people must separate Hamas from the Palestinian people, and separate the Israeli people from the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, and that the peaceful aspirations of the people of both Israel and Palestine are being poorly served by bad faith actors.
He says there must be a zero tolerance for antisemitism and a zero tolerance for Islamophobia, and that the Labour party will always stand shoulder-to-shoulder with both communities.
Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader in Scotland is opening his Scottish Labour conference speech by saying Scottish Labour is “back on the pitch and winning again” after the year they’ve had since their last conference.
Sarwar has described this year’s vote as “the most important general election for a generation”. He appealed to activists to remember the goosebumps they felt when Michael Shanks was elected, and talks of watching Labour MP after Labour MP being elected and the electoral map turning red and a Labour prime minister being elected.
“That’s the change we are fighting for, and the change our country so desperately needs,” he said.
Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP Michael Shanks is warming up for Anas Sarwar at the moment in Glasgow at the Scottish Labour conference. He is telling conference it is great that “Labour gain” is back in their vocabulary in Scotland, has made jibes at the SNP’s leadership election and iPad expenses scandal, and joked about Ian Murray, Labour’s only other MP in Scotland, having to now share his office in Westminster after Shanks was elected in October last year.
Labour’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, is about to address the Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow. You can watch it here.
Keir Starmer said the results from the Kingswood and Wellingborough byelections – where two Labour parliamentary candidates took seats from the Conservatives – show people want change.
On X, next to a clip from his BBC Breakfast appearance this morning, he said:
The message from Kingswood and Wellingborough is clear – people are crying out for change.
As we approach a general election, Labour will work to earn every vote, so we can deliver this change across the country.
The message from Kingswood and Wellingborough is clear - people are crying out for change.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) February 16, 2024
As we approach a general election, Labour will work to earn every vote, so we can deliver this change across the country. pic.twitter.com/8Fi80TPPd9
Updated
Ed Miliband has been speaking at the Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow, and said that basing the proposed new GB Energy company in Scotland would help make the country the UK’s “clean energy capital”.
Saying this would be part of a “just transition” away from industries such as oil and gas, he added: “I’m old enough to remember when the SNP made this promise, seven years ago they promised a publicly owned energy company. They have failed to deliver. We will deliver on that promise.”
Miliband said “We’re going to have GB Energy, a publicly owned energy company, headquartered here in Scotland investing billions of pounds. We’re going to have a British jobs bonus. We want to end the grotesque situation where we have massive offshore windfarms off the coast of Scotland but not a piece of them is built here in Scotland. We are going to change that.
“We will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the industries that will power our future – hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, floating offshore wind. These are the technologies. We are going to succeed where the SNP and the Tories have failed.”
Polly Toynbee has her column today on the byelection results, arguing that the voters of Wellingborough and Kingswood said one thing with one voice: the Tory era is over.
Here is a video clip of Rishi Sunak delivering his verdict on the byelection results in Wellingborough and Kingswood.
Here is what prime minister Rishi Sunak had to say specifically about the byelection defeats in Wellingborough and Kingswood:
Midterm elections are always difficult for incumbent governments, and the circumstances of these elections were of course particularly challenging.
Now, I think if you look at the results, very low turnout, and it shows that we’ve got work to do to show people that we are delivering on their priorities and that’s what I’m absolutely determined to do, but also shows that there isn’t a huge amount of enthusiasm for the alternative in Keir Starmer and the Labour party, and that’s because they don’t have a plan.
And if you don’t have a plan, you can’t deliver real change. And when the general election comes, that’s the message I’ll be making to the country. Stick with our plan, because it is starting to deliver the change that the country wants and needs.
Sunak refers to the byelections as midterm, although they come right at the end of the current five year parliament, with a general election set to take place within months.
David Frost has posted to social media to say that he believes it is not too late for the Conservatives to change course and still win the next election. The peer said:
I will have more to say in Telegraph later, but in brief these byelections show the same story as previous ones: former Conservative voters are simply not coming out and voting Conservative. The Labour vote isn’t going up, but ours is collapsing. To get voters back we need a shift to more conservative policy, on tax and spend, immigration, net zero, public sector reform, and more. It’s late, but not – yet – too late.
I will have more to say in @Telegraph later, but in brief these by-elections show the same story as previous ones: former Conservative voters are simply not coming out and voting Conservative.
— David Frost (@DavidGHFrost) February 16, 2024
The Labour vote isn't going up, but ours is collapsing.
To get voters back we need a…
I mentioned earlier that Rishi Sunak is in Harlow this morning, meeting local police. As well as commenting about his party’s two byelection defeats [See 9.49 GMT], the prime minister has been speaking to the media about knife crime and policing policy.
He was shown a series of more than half a dozen blades that had been confiscated by officers, and spoke about plans to increase patrols in areas affected by antisocial behaviour.
Sunak said:
I’ve been here in Essex talking to the police about that plan and how it’s working, and the good news is that it is working and making a real difference.
Through the increased use of hotspot policing, drug testing on arrest, dispersal powers, on-the-spot fines, we’ve seen antisocial behaviour fall by up to 50% in the areas where we’ve trialled this new plan.
That’s why we’re now going to roll it out across the country with more funding so that everyone can benefit from these improvements and it just shows that if we stick to the plan we can deliver a brighter future for everyone.
Yesterday, home secretary James Cleverly posted to social media about plans to role out what the government calls “hotspot policing”.
Our pilot of hotspot policing has more officers out on the beat to drive down antisocial behaviour.
— James Cleverly🇬🇧 (@JamesCleverly) February 15, 2024
From April, we’re rolling it out to every police force in England and Wales.
That means up to 900,000 extra hours of targeted patrols in communities up and down the country. pic.twitter.com/Tp2M9cEZ57
Keir Starmer said that he had made a tough decision to drop the party’s support for Azhar Ali in the Rochdale byelection, but he was “satisfied” with Labour’s “robust due process”.
He told BBC Breakfast earlier:
I did something that no leader of the Labour party has ever done before, which is to remove a candidate in a byelection where they cannot be replaced, because I was so determined to take decisive action in relation to antisemitism.
It was done within days. We are giving up a Labour seat. That’s the right thing to do. But what it shows is, when there’s tough decisions to be made I take those decisions.
I’ve put in place in the Labour party a robust due process exercised for every single candidate. We must continue to fight antisemitism wherever we are in organisations, in political parties.
Richard Tice, fresh from Reform UK’s best ever byelection performances, has been on GB News arguing that the prime minister and the Conservative party should “step aside” and let him and his party challenge Labour at the next election.
He told the broadcaster:
I think people are realising the Tories are tired, that they are old and they are toxic. They’ve had the chance - they’ve blown it, frankly, they should stand aside now having messed up. My message to them is let me take on Keir Starmer and beat him. You’ve got to be optimistic. I’ve got loads of it.
He added that there was no chance that Reform UK would step aside from contesting Conservative seats, as forerunner the Brexit party did in 2019.
No way. [The Conservative party] had a chance before. No one believes a word they say anymore. They said that last time and we fell for it. We’re not falling for that nonsense again. No one trusts them. I’ve still got the scars on my back from last time. A week tomorrow we will be releasing the draft of our election contract with the people which will cover all of these areas in great detail, including costings.
Updated
Yesterday I mentioned that the Conservatives had taken a four second clip of London mayor Sadiq Khan misspeaking during an interview and used it on social media to imply he had said that the Labour party was “proud to be both anti racist, but also antisemitic”.
The social media post was widely criticised for being misleading, as the Conservatives had edited out Khan immediately correcting himself to say he was proud of the way the party was tackling antisemitism.
They accompanied the four second clip with the caption “Sadiq Khan says the quiet part out loud”. Miriam Mirwitch, who is national secretary of the Jewish Labour Movement, condemned it as “cynical political point scoring [that] will only hurt British Jews like me.”
This morning Calum Macdonald tried to challenge Tory chair Richard Holden about it when he appeared on Times Radio. Holden absolutely refused to engage with the argument that the party was spreading misinformation, instead saying it wasn’t the main issue, and arguing about the semantics of whether the video was “edited” or “clipped”.
The exchange is excruciating – you can watch it here:
“It's not been edited. It was clipped.”
— Times Radio (@TimesRadio) February 16, 2024
Chair of the Conservative Party Richard Holden defends the use of a “clipped” video of Sadiq Khan on the party’s social media.@CalumAM | @RicHolden | #TimesRadio pic.twitter.com/QKS2iQVjHX
Sunak: we can afford to cut taxes during a recession
Rishi Sunak has insisted that his government can afford to cut taxes, despite the country having entered a recession, because “economic conditions have improved”.
Speaking to the media, he said “our plan is working” and he can “give everyone the peace of mind that there is a better future for them and their families”.
He said tax cuts were possible “because of our plan to halve inflation, which has been successful over the past year, and because economic conditions have improved. We have already been able to start cutting taxes for people.”
He continued:
We delivered a significant tax cut at the start of this year, cutting the rate of national insurance from 12% to 10%, now that means someone on an average earnings of about £35,000 is seeing a tax cut worth £450 that hit their payslips in January.
Now that will benefit everyone in work, it demonstrates that our plan is working. And if we stick with that plan, I can give everyone the piece of mind that there is a better future for them and their families ahead, and we can all have a renewed sense of pride in the country.
Sunak is in Harlow today, where he has been meeting the local police force.
He told the media that he was making progress on his five key pledges. He said:
We’ve clearly been through a lot over the past couple of years as a country, but I genuinely believe at the start of this year we’re pointing in the right direction.
Now we’re not out of the woods yet, but across all the priorities that I set out we’re making progress.
Inflation has been more than halved, the economy out-performed expectations last year, debt is on track to fall, we’ve cut the number of illegal migrants coming by a third and we’re making progress on the longest waits in the NHS.
Updated
Starmer: Labour are 'credible contenders' for next election, but 'that is all'
Labour leader Keir Starmer said that his party has achieved a decade’s worth of work turning the party around after the last election result to become “credible contenders” at the next one, but added “that is all we are.”
He told BBC Breakfast:
I’m proud of the work I’ve done as leader. The progress we’ve now made from the worst results since 1935 to being now credible contenders – and that is all we are – for the 2024 election.
I have to say, when I took over as leader most people shook my hand and said: “Good luck Keir,” and in the next breath they said: “You will never do this in one five-year parliamentary term.”
We are trying to do, if you like, what Kinnock, what Smith and Blair did, over 13 or 14 years, in four short years.”
Sunak: a vote for anyone other than Conservatives at general election 'is just a vote to put Keir Starmer in power'
Rishi Sunak has said the next general election is a choice between himself and Keir Starmer as prime minister, and that a vote for any party other than the Conservatives was a vote to put Starmer in power.
He told reporters:
A vote for anyone who isn’t the Conservative candidate, whether that’s Reform or anyone else, is just a vote to put Keir Starmer in power.
That’s the actual choice at the general election, between me and him, between the Conservatives and Labour.
Now I believe our plan is working. At the start of this year we’re heading in the right direction, taxes are coming down, inflation is falling, and if we stick with that plan we can deliver everyone a brighter future.
This week the UK went into recession.
Steven Morris is in Kingswood for the Guardian
Interesting comments from the Labour MP Chris Bryant who led the campaign in Kingswood and has been celebrating in the park with the successful candidate. He told the Guardian the sense of relief at the win was “massive”.
“At 6pm yesterday evening, I thought, oh, no we’ve lost it. It had been tipping with rain. Would voters turn out? At the beginning of this campaign everyone was saying, Labour’s bound to win this. I never thought that – so yes, massive sense of relief, massive achievement.”
He said it was a boost to Labour’s chances of winning in the south and south-west of England. “This shows we’re on track. A lot of people think it’s time for a change and that is replicable across lots of constituencies.”
Bryant also pointed out that a chunk of the Kingswood constituency (which is abolished at the next general election) goes into Jacob Rees-Mogg’s.
Rees-Mogg’s response to the result has been to say that the combined Tory and Reform UK vote was larger than the Labour one. “But that’s not how it works. How patronising can you be to voters? You just go, they’re really ours, they’re not. He lost badly and I got the feeling this was very much his campaign.”
Bryant also criticised the Tories’s campaign for being “just rude” about the Labour candidate, Damien Egan, continually claiming he wasn’t local, though he was raised in Kingswood.
He took a swipe at the Tory candidate, Sam Bromiley, for his swift exit from the count hall.
“The Tory party used to be the party of manners. It is rude to the voters just to run away at the end, not even make a little speech of concession. They all need to go back to finishing school.”
Bryant said Labour’s troubles over comments made about Israel this week weren’t mentioned on the doorstep, though the U-turn on green energy did surface. “If anything people were saying fair play to the Labour party, they are telling it like it is and being upfront before the election.”
A lot of chatter about low turnout is around, so I thought I would just go back and look at the turnout figures at byelections for the last couple of years. You can see there are a few outliers there, and every constituency had its own circumstances around the vote, but here is a list if you find it helpful to put the Wellingborough and Kingswood figures into some context.
Southend West, Feb 2022, 24.0%
Birmingham Erdington, Mar 2022, 27.0%
Wakefield, Jun 2022, 39.1%
Tiverton and Honiton, Jun 2022, 52.3%
City of Chester, Dec 2022, 41.2%
Stretford and Urmston, Dec 2022, 25.8%
West Lancashire, Feb 2023, 31.4%
Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Jul 2023, 46.2%
Selby and Ainsty, Jul 2023, 44.8%
Somerton and Frome, Jul 2023, 44.2%
Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Oct 2023, 37.2%
Mid Bedfordshire, Oct 2023, 44%
Tamworth, Oct 2023, 35.9%
Wellingborough, Feb 2024, 38%
Kingswood, Feb 2024, 37.1%
Conservative chair Richard Holden has cautioned against extrapolating byelection results to a general election, telling listeners of BBC Radio 4 that “People know in a byelection they’re not voting to change the Government, so I think to extrapolate from that to a general election isn’t quite right.”
He’ll be absolutely furious if he ever finds out what David Cameron was saying when the Conservatives won Norwich North in 2009 …
Steven Morris is in Kingswood for the Guardian
Labour activists have been in a damp Kingswood park to celebrate their byelection win in South Gloucestershire. Pleasingly – and by sheer coincidence - the spot on the mapping system What3words is “reason anyway vote”.
Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, said the results in Kingswood and Wellingborough had been “fantastic” and were a “mark of the progress we have made in recent years and stand testament to the desire of voters to see change.”
McFadden said he hoped the Tories would act courageously and call a general election. He said that Keir Starmer had acted “decisively” when he suspended Azhar Ali and contrasted this with “long drawn out Tory scandals” involving Peter Bone and Owen Paterson.
The new Kingswood MP, Damien Egan, said:
The issues people talked about time and time again was the NHS – nowhere in Kingswood can you get an NHS dentist, how hard it is to find a doctor, the cost of living crisis, which is so much more than a slogan – mortgages up by £400 a month, people having to worry about what they put in their trolley, keeping their house warm in winter, families cancelling holidays. Safety on our streets – people want to see police back in our community. The hard work starts now.
Starmer: Labour must fight like they are five points behind in the polls
Keir Starmer says he has told his team that the Labour party must fight for the next general election “like we are five points behind”.
Appearing on BBC Breakfast and asked if he took the Wellingborough and Kingswood victories as a personal endorsement of his leadership, he said “I don’t tend to personalise it. I’m very proud of that result. I’m proud of the work that I’ve done as leader. I’ve changed the Labour Party, and we brought in a very good result last night. I don’t want to get into the warm bath of saying: ‘Job done.’”
The Labour leader then said he had told his team to “fight like we’re five points behind”.
He told BBC Breakfast:
I think the country is crying out for change. Everybody knows that. Things aren’t working. Their NHS isn’t working. They’ve got a cost of living crisis. I think they’ve concluded that the Tories have failed after 14 years.
They can see now the Labour party has changed. It’s a different party to the party in 2019. And they can see that we’ve got the answers to their problems, and I was very pleased last night to see that we were clearly getting Tory switchers, in other words, people who hadn’t voted for the Labour party before coming out last night and voting for the Labour party.
He added: “But I would say this particularly to my team, there is more work to do. There is always more work to do.”
Labour's Pat McFadden praises 'fantastic results' but says 'real test is to come later this year'
Pat McFadden, Labour campaign manager, has said that the byelection results in Wellingborough and Kingswood were “fantastic results” but that “the real test is to come later this year”.
Speaking from Kingswood, he told viewers of Sky News:
We had a fantastic result last night, overturning a Tory majority of around 11,000 and in Wellingborough an even bigger victory overturning a majority of 18,000. These results are a mark of the progress that the Labour party has made in recent years under Keir Starmer’s leadership. We are back on the pitch in a credible way. So they were fantastic results. But of course, we also know the real test is to come later this year and the general election.
He said Labour’s chance to show what it would do in power “can only come when the prime minister stops sitting in Number 10, waiting for something to turn up, and actually calls the general election that will give people the choice over the country’s future.”
He said that people didn’t need statistics to see that the country was in a poor state. He said “people can see it in terms of the cost of living. They can see it in terms of public services. And they can see it in terms of the difficulty of paying the bills.”
Pressed on what Labour would do differently with the economy, he said:
First of all financial stability: no repeat of that disastrous Tory mini-budget that crashed the economy and put everybody’s mortgages up.
Secondly, change the planning laws to get the economy moving again, making it easier for people to invest in the UK and get Britain building again.
Thirdly, make a success of the green transition. We’re going to set up GB energy, and have a national investment fund to really drive forward this green transition that will give us more energy security and in the long term, reduce people’s bills.
These are the kinds of things that we need to do to get the economy moving again, because without getting economic growth, it is really difficult for people’s living standards to increase. We know the Tories have failed on that.
Here is my colleague Mark Sweney on the news that retail sales in Great Britain rebounded strongly after their Christmas slump.
It isn’t just all byelection news this morning – the Telegraph reported overnight that Jeremy Hunt has shelved plans for a 2p cut to income tax at next month’s Budget.
It cited a Treasury source saying that after the UK fell into recession this week: “The world has changed. Everything you thought was going to happen [at the Budget] may not now happen.”
The paper writes Hunt had considered “reducing National Insurance employee contributions by two percentage points as an alternative”, but:
New forecasts showing the high costs of servicing government debt mean that Mr Hunt has less money to spend than expected. The Telegraph understands he has therefore deemed both moves unaffordable for now.
Political correspondent Kiran Stacey offers this analysis this morning:
If Kingswood is more representative of national opinion, it suggests the Labour lead is softening slightly after three byelections last year where the swing was more than 20% on each occasion.
Recent polls suggest the party has dropped in the polls since Starmer’s decision to scrap his £28bn-a-year green spending plans – though none have been conducted since Thursday’s announcement that the country entered a recession at the end of last year.
The Tories tried to put a gloss on the defeats on Friday, highlighting the low turnout in both seats.
Just 37% of voters turned out in Kingswood, and 38% in Wellingborough – below the mid-40s seen in recent byelections in Mid Bedfordshire, Somerton and Frome, and Selby and Ainsty. In both seats, the increase in Labour support was just half the drop in the Conservatives’ vote, suggesting that the opposition party is not fully capitalising on the government’s unpopularity.
If the Conservatives can persuade their voters to come out at a general election, party officials have said, they can still keep hold of power.
Read more of Kiran Stacey’s analysis here: Labour can celebrate byelection victories, but low turnout could indicate larger threat
Tory chair: Reform UK 'want to see Keir Starmer in Downing Street'
Earlier Jacob Rees-Mogg tried to strike a conciliatory tone with people who voted for Reform UK in these byelections, saying the night had been a good one for what he termed the Conservative family of voters. He suggested that the way to bring them back into the fold was “lower taxation, taking more of the advantages of Brexit, with more of the removal of EU retained law” and “doing less on the green issue that is making people cold and poor, and helping revitalise our economy.”
Tory chair Richard Holden has taken a rather different approach this morning, telling BBC Breakfast:
Their ambition is to block Conservatives winning seats and therefore put Keir Starmer into Downing Street. They’ve made it very clear, you’ve read out that statement from them, that’s what Reform UK want to do, they want to see Keir Starmer in Downing Street and not have a Conservative government.
Reform aren’t challenging realistically for seats. This general elections is going to be a battle between the Conservatives and the Labour party. All Reform are going to do, as they’ve said themselves, is help put Keir Starmer and Labour into Downing Street.”
If the right of the British politics and the centre and centre-right – that broad church which is the Conservative Party – doesn’t unite, then we will see a Labour victory.
I believe we have every opportunity to win the next general election, I think we definitely can do it, but that means we have got to come together as a party, unite in the best interests of the country, deliver those things that we’ve promised, work together as a party to do that.
PA Media are carrying a few more words from Gen Kitchen, who is the new Labour MP for Wellingborough after her victory in the seat which disgraced former MP Peter Bone had held since 2005. She said:
This shows that people are fed up, they want change, they want competency, they want pragmatism and they want politicians to under-promise and over-deliver, which is what I am hoping to do.
It shows how much hard work we put in and the real positive message we were putting out. There is a real appetite for a fresh start and change.
There’s a lot of try before you buy, a lot of people lending their votes. I have to make sure they buy again, so I will be out door-knocking, campaigning and delivering on our pledges.
I will be working incredibly hard to secure their votes whenever the general election comes. And I will be working really hard on our casework that we have picked up on at the doors.
We have had so many people say they haven’t had a politician knock on their doors in the last 20 years. It means we have to make sure we deliver on the promises we have made.
Keir Starmer has reiterated his message that yesterday’s byelection results show people want change, posting to social media to say:
The Kingswood and Wellingborough results show that people want change and are ready to put their faith in a changed Labour party to deliver it. The Tories have failed, Rishi’s recession proves that. Labour is back in the service of working people.
The Kingswood and Wellingborough results show that people want change and are ready to put their faith in a changed Labour Party to deliver it.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) February 16, 2024
The Tories have failed, Rishi's recession proves that.
Labour is back in the service of working people.
There is some economic news this morning away from the byelection. The ONS says that retail sales jumped by 3.4% last month. It was the largest monthly rise in close to three years, and offset a record 3.3% fall in December, bringing volumes back to November levels. The numbers will bring a touch of cheer for Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, who both this week claimed the economy was heading in the right direction despite official figures showing the UK had entered a recession.
The chair of the Conservative party has said that voters concerns on the doorstep during the campaign were about the cost of living crisis. He said he wanted to see inflation fall further, and for the Bank of England to cut interest rates soon after that.
Asked about the performance of the Reform UK party, which secured its best performance at a byelection in this parliament and since it rebranded from the Brexit party in 2021, Richard Holden said they had not scaled the heights that Ukip did in the 2010s.
He told Sky News:
I remember those byelections back in the mid 2010s, where we saw the predecessor’s predecessor to Reform UK, Ukip, get 45% for 50% of the vote in some cases, in Clacton and Rochester and Strood back in the day, so we’re not in that sort of circumstances at the moment.
Sitting MP Douglas Carswell took 59.7% of the vote for Ukip in the October 2014 Clacton byelection after he switched from Conservatives to the party. A month later Mark Reckless took 42.1% of the vote in Rochester and Strood for Ukip under similar circumstances.
Holden said the Tories needed to appeal to voters more broadly, and needed an upturn in economic news, saying:
It’s very important that we have to appeal to voters from right across the piece. The turnout was very much down, and it’s very clear that that turnout was down particularly amongst people who voted Conservative
It’s really up to us to take the message out to them, to show that clarity of our plan for the future. We’ve got inflation are falling now, but we’ve got to do more, and really highlight why people should be voting Conservative when it comes to the general.
When I spoke to people who were voting for different parties on the doorstep [their concerns] were very similar in a lot of them, based around the cost of living, worried about that. They want to see further falls in inflation. The Bank of England is predicting that inflation will be falling within the year. I want to see interest rates cuts following that.
Richard Holden has told Sky News that the night was “disappointing” for the Conservatives. The chair of the party stressed the low turnout yesterday, and the individual circumstances of each byelection with one of their MPs being forced to stand down after a recall petition, and another MP resigning over the government’s environmental policy.
Saying there was no need to shy away from how bad the results were for the party, he told viewers:
I think one of the most disappointing things for me was the turnout in the elections was so significantly down compared to the previous general elections in both seats, and I want to see people actively positive participating democracy. I think we’ve got to look at these both these by elections and the context in which they happened as well.
The Kingswood and Wellingborough byelections are the topic of our First Edition newsletter today, with Archie Bland speaking to Kiran Stacey and Sammy Gecsoyler. Here is an excerpt:
This morning’s results will feel like relief from a rough spell for Keir Starmer. Are they more than that? “It depends on where you look,” Kiran Stacey told me. “Wellingborough is right up there as a byelection result. But it’s a bit of an anomaly because of the circumstances there. In Kingswood, the swing is plenty for an overall majority, but it’s considerably less than the last three byelections. That tells us there’s a slight softening in Labour’s lead.”
On a low turnout, Gen Kitchen got 13,844 votes against 7,408 for Helen Harrison. “It’s a massive result for Labour, considering the week they’ve had,” said Sammy Gecsoyler, who was covering the count. “It does suggest that in seats like this, their chances haven’t been hampered significantly.”
Even at the count, Sammy said, “the Tories were pretty absent – you couldn’t really see them”. Bone didn’t show up himself. The only Tory MP there, Amanda Milling, declined interviews on the fairly flimsy basis that she was a government whip.
If all of that coupled with the dismal national picture added up to a rough night for the Tories, there was more bad news in the shape of 13% of the vote for the Reform UK candidate, Ben Habib – its best result yet and more than half the Tory vote count. “Richard Tice [Reform’s leader] was there to capitalise on it,” Sammy said. “They were very happy. Habib called it a stepping stone for the party.”
Read more here: Friday briefing – Labour hand the Tories two painful byelection defeats
Veteran Labour MP Chris Bryant said the result in Kingswood was partly down to a lot of voters going directly from Conservative to Labour.
Speaking from the Kingswood count, Bryant said, “one man said to me today he was 65 and had voted Conservative all his life, including during the Tony Blair years, and today was the first time he voted Labour.”
Asked what the two byelection results meant for the Labour party, he said: “Keir Starmer is a winner. I think I am right in saying that if Keir Starmer wins both byelections tonight, he will be the most successful Labour leader in byelections in our history.
“For Jacob Rees-Mogg this is a bit of problem because 50% of this seat goes into his seat,” he said.
If I were him, I wouldn’t be happy. They also ran a very nasty, negative campaign. We ran a campaign based on Damien’s plan and what he wanted to get done for Kingswood and what he wanted to campaign for. Undoubtedly the biggest thing of all is the Rishi recession because you didn’t need to have it announced on the news – people felt it in their pocket.”
Speaking from the Kingswood election count, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg congratulated Damien Egan on winning.
“Does it tell you anything about the general election? Almost certainly not,” he said.
“Byelections are an opportunity for people not to turn out, to protest, and at ensuing general elections they don’t give a consistent guide to what happens.”
The MP for North East Somerset said: “From the point of view of Kingswood, I think the Conservatives can be more pleased than they might have expected. I certainly thought this result would be worse.”
Rees-Mogg said the Conservative party needed to “learn from the result”.
Conservative party votes are most likely to come from people who stay at home or who voted Reform. How do we win them back to the Tory family … By delivering things they believe in and that means lower taxation, taking more of the advantages of Brexit, with more of the removal of EU retained law, it means doing less on the green issue that is making people cold and poor, and helping revitalise our economy.”
Updated
The public 'want change', says Keir Starmer
Speaking after the Wellingborough result was announced, Labour leader Keir Starmer said “by winning in these Tory strongholds, we can confidently say that Labour is back in the service of working people and we will work tirelessly to deliver for them.”
He said the byelection results show the public “want change”.
“Those who gave us their trust in Kingswood and Wellingborough, and those considering doing so, can be safe in the knowledge that we will spend every day working to get Britain’s future back.”
Both wins will temper fears that a testing week for Labour has significantly threatened its electoral prospects and will further bolster predictions that the party stands to win a large majority at the next general election.
Updated
Labour’s wins in Kingswood and Wellingborough mean the Conservatives have now lost 10 byelections in the course of this parliament – two more than the eight defeats suffered by the 1992-97 Conservative administration led by John Major.
It means the Conservative government has lost more byelections than any previous government since the 1966-70 Labour administration of Harold Wilson, which endured 15 losses.
The size of the majority Labour overturned at Wellingborough – 18,540 – is the third biggest Tory majority the party has overturned at a byelection since the war, behind those in Mid Bedfordshire in October 2023 (24,664) and Selby & Ainsty in July 2023 (20,137).
Here’s a selection of images from the evening’s votes.
Updated
Wellingborough win is second largest postwar byelection swing from Tory to Labour
Labour won Wellingborough from the Conservatives on a swing in the share of the vote of 28.5 percentage points. It was just short of the largest postwar byelection swing from Tory to Labour, which was 29.1 percentage points at the Dudley West byelection in December 1994.
Labour won Kingswood on a swing in the share of the vote of 16.4 percentage points – some way above the 11.4-point swing the party needed to win the seat.
Biggest Con-Lab by-election swing since 2019 and second biggest since 1945.
— Tamara Cohen (@tamcohen) February 16, 2024
Thanks to @DanielJDunford for these excellent and speedily-produced graphs pic.twitter.com/xXS5UeUY0b
Prof John Curtice told the BBC that the Conservatives share of the vote was down by “nearly 38 points compared with the general election. That is the biggest ever drop that the Conservatives have suffered in a post-war by-election in a seat that they were trying to defend.”
Reform UK secures strongest byelection results in this parliament
Ben Habib, the deputy co-leader of the Reform UK party has secured 13% of the vote in the Wellingborough byelection, marking the party’s best performance at a byelection in this parliament and since it rebranded from the Brexit party in 2021.
Habib had said he hoped to emulate the party’s national polling level, which has been hovering around the 10% mark in recent months.
Standing on an anti-net zero platform, the former London MEP for the Brexit party had said he had been encouraged by people waving and tooting support at him while he campaigned on the party’s battle bus around the constituency.
While winning the constituency was seen as a two-horse race between the incumbent Tories and Labour’s Gen Kitchen, a key subtext of the campaign had been the extent to which disillusioned Conservative voters might defect to a party further to the right.
In Kingswood, Reform candidate Rupert Lowe finished in third place with 10% of the vote, marking the party’s second-best performance in a byelection in this parliament, behind Wellingborough.
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg told reporters that if you add together the Reform UK and Conservative vote in Kingswood it is more than Labour’s. “If we can reunite the right in politics there’s a real opportunity for us,” he said.
Rees-Mogg also highlighted the poor turnout of 37.1%. “If you’re a Tory and you stay at home, Rishi Sunak will still be prime minister in the morning,” he said. “I certainly thought this result would be worse. Bear in mind a lot of the postal votes would have been back before Labour’s problem with antisemitism was in the public.”
Gen Kitchen, the new MP for Wellingborough, said she was “ecstatic” at the result, adding that the double byelection win for Labour shows that people are “fed up” and want change.
“The people of Wellingborough have spoken for Britain. This is a stunning victory for the Labour party and must send a message from Northamptonshire to Downing Street,” she said.
After the result was announced, Conservative candidate Helen Harrison was swarmed with cameras while leaving the counting hall and declined to say whether her loss was Sunak’s fault, instead saying she was “disappointed”.
The byelection in Wellingborough was triggered when voters recalled the former Tory MP Peter Bone after he received a six-week suspension from the Commons when an inquiry found he had subjected a staff member to bullying and sexual misconduct.
Harrison is the partner of Bone and there was controversy when she was selected as the Conservative candidate.
High-profile Tory MPs have been absent in the constituency and not a single frontbencher endorsed Harrison. Last month, Rishi Sunak dodged the opportunity to endorse her after he was asked whether he was “proud” she had been selected given her connection to Bone. He said it was up to local members to select their candidate.
Harrison stayed firmly out of the spotlight in the run-up to the byelection. She refused all national media interviews and has not posted on the social media platform X since 11 January, when she announced her selection.
Damien Egan used his victory speech in Kingswood to thank voters, saying: “Fourteen years of Conservative government have sucked the hope out of our country. There’s a feeling that no matter how hard you work, you just can’t move forward, and with Rishi’s recession we are left once again paying more and getting less.”
Asked if he had been worried that the turmoil in Labour this week could have put the result in jeopardy, he said candidates worried about everything, including the heavy rain that fell on voting day.
He said Labour’s troubles had not come up on the doorstep. “The things that our residents are telling us are the things that Keir and the Labour party have been talking about – the NHS, cost of living crisis, community policing. Kingswood feels neglected after 14 years of Conservative government.”
The defeated Conservative candidate, Sam Bromiley, left the count as soon as Egan had finished speaking, declining to comment to reporters.
North East Somerset Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg was left to speak to reporters. He highlighted the poor turnout of 37.1%.
“If you’re a Tory and you stay at home, Rishi Sunak will still be prime minister in the morning,” he said. “I certainly thought this result would be worse. Bear in mind a lot of the postal votes would have been back before Labour’s problem with antisemitism was in the public.”
Labour overturns majorities in Kingswood and Wellingborough
Labour has claimed victory in the Kingswood and Wellingborough byelections, dealing a double blow to Rishi Sunak’s government.
Labour candidate Gen Kitchen overturned a Tory majority of more than 18,000 to secure victory in Wellingborough, making it the first win for Labour in the seat since the 2001 general election.
Kitchen won the seat with 13,844 votes, beating the Conservatives’ Helen Harrison who received 7,408 votes.
The byelection in Wellingborough was triggered when voters in the constituency recalled the former Tory MP Peter Bone after he received a six-week suspension from the Commons when an inquiry found he had subjected a staff member to bullying and sexual misconduct.
In the South Gloucestershire constituency of Kingswood, Labour overturned a majority of more than 11,000.
Damien Egan, who resigned as the mayor of Lewisham in south-east London to contest the seat even though it is being abolished at the next general election, won by 11,1176 votes to 8,675 for his nearest rival, the Conservatives’ Sam Bromiley.
The byelection was called after Chris Skidmore, a leading Tory voice on green issues, resigned in protest against the government’s dash for oil and gas.
Over the last half century, Kingswood has swung between the Tories and Labour. Skidmore won the seat in 2010 and had built up an 11,220 majority by 2019.
As the constituency is abolished at the next general election, Kingswood voters will be divided among four constituencies. Egan had previously been selected as the candidate for one of these, Bristol North East, a key Labour target.
Welcome and opening summary
Good morning and welcome to the UK politics live blog as we look at reaction to two byelections with huge implications for the party leaderships of Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.
Here are the headlines:
Labour has overturned Tory majorities in Kingswood and Wellingborough to claim victory in two byelections overnight.
The byelections took place as the UK slipped into a recession under Sunak’s government, breaking one of his five pledges: to bring growth.
The newly reconvened executive in Northern Ireland has agreed an allocation of £685m for public sector pay.
Aside from reaction to the byelections, it should be a quiet day in UK politics. None of the Commons, Lords, Scottish parliament, Senedd or Stormont assembly are sitting today.
