Sunak braced for pain from trio of by-election results

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Rishi Sunak was braced on Friday for the prospect of becoming the first British prime minister for over 50 years to lose three parliamentary by-elections on a single day, in what would be a major blow for his ruling Conservatives.

Sunak’s allies said they expected to lose the trio of contests “horribly”, sending Tory MPs off for their summer holidays in a sombre mood with a general election looming next year.

Sunak’s party is trailing the opposition Labour party by 20 points in opinion polls, and is dogged by high inflation, failing public services and the recent chaos of the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss premierships.

Labour was confident of overturning a 7,210 majority in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat in west London vacated by Johnson, who quit as an MP after he was found to have lied to MPs over Covid lockdown parties.

Labour, which hopes to return to power at next year’s election for the first time since 2010, was also upbeat about the prospects of gaining the Yorkshire seat of Selby and Ainsty from the Tories, who won it in 2019 by a margin of 20,137.

Bookmakers also expected Sunak’s party to surrender a 19,213 majority in the South West seat of Somerton and Frome, with the centrist Liberal Democrats set for victory.

A “3-0” defeat in the by-elections would be the first such humiliation for a British prime minister since Labour’s Harold Wilson lost three contests on a single day in 1968.

Some Conservative MPs believe such results would be a portent of a potentially calamitous general election defeat next year, although Sunak insists he can still turn things around and secure a fifth consecutive election win.

In a message to Tory MPs on Wednesday night, the prime minister attempted to raise his party’s morale, pointing to this week’s sharp fall in inflation as a sign that a tide of bad economic news may be turning.

Jonathan Gullis, a Tory MP, said: “He was asking all of us to unite behind him when we come back in the autumn. We need to be one team. A united party wins, a divided party loses.”

Three by-election defeats on a single day would be ominous, even if British voters tend to treat such contests as a chance to cast a protest vote against the government of the day.

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Uxbridge is the kind of suburban seat the Conservatives need to hold on to if they are to retain their grip on power, while Selby is usually regarded as a rock-solid rural Tory stronghold.

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats would see victory in Somerton and Frome as a sign that they are making a comeback in the West Country, which is overwhelmingly represented by Tory MPs.

Sunak has vowed to stage an autumn comeback, offering a new “long-term vision” for the country. An autumn financial statement and the King’s Speech legislative package will be crucial moments for the prime minister.