Liz Truss became the highest-profile casualty on Friday in a crushing election defeat for the Conservative Party.
It’s the first time Labour won the constituency after losing it to the Tories 60 years ago.
With 648 out of 650 seats declared on Friday morning, the Conservative Party has lost around 225 seats while Labour won an overall majority with at least 206 gains compared to the state of parties just before Parliament was dissolved in May.
Ms. Truss blamed the result on the Conservatives’ failure to deliver on tax and immigration, while acknowledging she was “part of that.”
Mr. Jermy, a businessman and Labour councillor, won South West Norfolk with 11,847 votes, or 26.5 percent. In 2019, Labour’s vote share in the constituency was 18.1 percent.
Ms. Truss came second with 11,217, or 25.1 percent, of votes, down from 69 percent (35,507) in 2019.
The result appears reflective of a split among supporters on the right, with voters being largely swayed by two new contenders.
Truss: Tories Failed to Deliver
Commenting on the result, Ms. Truss told the BBC that her party “haven’t delivered sufficiently on the policies people want.”“And that means keeping taxes low, but also particularly on reducing immigration,” she said, adding that immigration was the “number one issue” her constituents raised.
Asked whether she accepted some responsibility for that, the former prime minister said: “I agree. I was part of that. That’s absolutely true.
“But during our 14 years in power, unfortunately we did not do enough to take on the legacy we’d been left, in particular things like the Human Rights Act that made it very difficult for us to deport illegal immigrants. And that is one of the reasons I think we’ve ended up in the situation we are now.”
The former prime minister, who recently launched the Popular Conservatism campaign, didn’t gave an answer on whether she wanted to stay in Tory politics, saying, “I’ve got a lot to think about.”
A Liberal Democrat-turned-Tory, Ms. Truss held ministerial roles in a number of departments before winning the leadership contest to succeed Boris Johnson in 2022.
However, her ill-fated premiership was marked with death of Queen Elizabeth II and a controversial mini budget that made her the shortest-serving prime minister in history.
