By-election triumph for Labour – but Starmer still has a mountain to climb

The Stretford and Urmston result wouldn’t deliver a landslide for Starmer, says Sean O’Grady

Labour’s Andrew Western speaks after winning the Stretford and Urmston by-election in Manchester in the early hours of Friday (PA)

On the face of it, Labour’s performance in the Stretford and Urmston by-election was nothing short of magnificent. The party achieved its highest share of the vote since the constituency was formed for the 1997 election. The Tories, on a 15.9 per cent share, slumped to far below the consistent 27 per cent or so usually recorded by the party in the seat. Labour’s vote went up by almost as much as the Tory vote went down, suggesting substantial direct switching to Labour. If the Tories were hoping that the low turnout – only 25.8 per cent – might help them, because their voters are more likely to make the effort to go to the polls, they will have been disappointed.

The small Liberal Democrat vote might have been squeezed by a little tactical voting for Labour, though this doesn’t seem to have been the case with the slightly bigger Green vote. Reform UK didn’t advance from the modest showing by its predecessor Brexit Party in 2019, but it probably nibbled a little bit more from the Tories than the other parties. In a seat such as Stretford and Urmston, that obviously isn’t going to change the outcome, but in more marginal seats it might be enough to prevent a Conservative MP from enjoying a further parliamentary term.

So we have a big swing to Labour, at about 11 per cent; the Tories doing broadly as badly as they have been doing lately in comparable seats (Chester saw a slightly bigger swing to Labour a few weeks ago); some traces of anti-Conservative tactical and protest voting; and a certain loss of power for the Tories if the Stretford result were to be replicated in a general election.