Labour has retained Stretford and Urmston in a by-election, with a 10.5 percent swing against the ruling Conservatives in the second electoral test of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
On Friday, Andrew Western won the Stretford and Urmston constituency, a safe Labour seat in Greater Manchester, with a majority of 9,906, getting 69.65 percent of the votes, with a 10.5 percent swing from Conservatives to Labour.
A swing is an indication of the scale of voter change between two political parties.
Labour has held on to the seat since it was created in 1997. Thirty-seven-year-old Western succeeded Kate Green, who resigned last month after being nominated as deputy mayor of Greater Manchester.
‘Strong Message’
“There has been a strong message sent with the result this evening,” said Western.“And the people of Stretford and Urmston do not just speak for this constituency but for millions more people up and down the land, who know that this Government has been letting us down for the past 12 years.
“It is clear from this result tonight, and indeed the result two weeks ago in Chester, that people are ready for a Labour government, and let the message go out tonight that Labour are ready to govern. Thank you,” he added in his victory speech.
Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at Kings College London, Anand Menon told The Epoch Times by email that there was still a “long way to go.”
“The good news for Labour is that the outcome broadly suggests current polling is right, but it is still tough for them to win a majority given where they are starting from, and there’s a long way to go until a general election,” said Menon.
James Johnson, former chief pollster at 10 Downing Street under former PM Theresa May and now co-founder of J.L. Partners, told The Epoch Times by email that he wasn’t “sure we can read too much into this by-election result.”
“It was a smaller swing than needed to dominate a general election, but that is because it is in an already very safe Labour seat, so there is less room for big swings as there will be a natural ceiling to the Labour vote,” he said.
Two By-Elections
Polling expert Sir John Curtice told The Epoch Times that the Labour Party is at its strongest position for over a decade.“It is nearly always the case that by-elections held in safe Labour seats, when Labour are in opposition in the polls, that the swing to Labour usually tends to be less than in national polls, particularly true of a constituency like this,” he said.
Curtice is well-known for his expert research and polling methods in electoral behaviour.
“This is basically about the safest Labour seat to have had a by-election in quite some considerable time. The expectation was, that Labour won’t do as quite as well as they did in Chester, but they should certainly be doing better in most other by-elections in the course of recent years and that’s exactly what happened, the swing is less than Chester,” he said.
Samantha Dixon, the leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council, won 17,309 votes, with the Conservative candidate Liz Wardlaw trailing way behind with 6,335 votes.
Later Dixon said: “Chester is often described as a bellwether constituency and I think the voters have shown that they decisively trust Labour today.”
“Basically, the conclusion is that put these two by-elections together, and they are consistent with the message of the polls, which the Labour Party is in a stronger position actually than they have been at any stage since 2010,” said Curtice.
“But notice the phrase ‘consistent with’ does not ‘prove that,’” he added.
‘Sunak Bounce’
Asked if predicting was difficult in uncertain political times, Curtice said: “If we were talking 12 months ago and we were having a conversation about what we think is going happen and ‘I said that we were going to have three Prime Ministers next year’ you probably would have said that’s so off the wall I’m not going to publish it.”He added that Conservatives have found themselves “consistently” 20 points behind on the polls for the last four weeks but “there’s been something of a ‘Sunak bounce’ but that by no means doesn’t eradicate all the damage that was done under Truss and what happened in the Partygate.”
“They face very difficult economic circumstances,” he said.
He added that the plus side the Tories have is that Sunak personally is still competing with Labour leader Keir Starmer for who is the best person on the economy because of the PM’s record as a Chancellor.
“There’s a big gap between people’s perceptions of Sunk and their perceptions of his party. Unless he can persuade people to take notice of his record and not that of his party, then it’s going to be a very difficult task to turn things around,” said Curtice.
