“An Election Will Be A National Moment Of EXORCISM!” – Ex-Labour Adviser On Historic Loss For Tories

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said the circumstances surrounding the Wellingborough and Kingswood by-elections were “particularly challenging” after the Tories suffered a double defeat to Labour at the polls.

The twin blows will compound the Prime Minister’s woes, coming the day after it was officially announced that the UK had entered a recession at the end of 2023, and mean the Conservatives have suffered more by-election defeats than in any single Parliament since the Second World War.

Labour overturned majorities of 11,220 and 18,540, delivering the Government’s ninth and tenth by-election defeats of the current Parliament and securing its second largest swing from the Conservatives ever.

Gen Kitchen secured Wellingborough with 45.8% of the vote, while Damien Egan won Kingswood with 44.9% of the vote.

The results provided Labour with a boost after a U-turn on the party’s pledge to spend £28 billion on green projects and an antisemitism row that forced it to drop its candidate for another by-election in Rochdale in two weeks’ time.

Reacting to the victories, Sir Keir said: “These are fantastic results in Kingswood and Wellingborough that show people want change and are ready to put their faith in a changed Labour Party to deliver it.

Former Labour adviser John McTernan and chief political correspondent at The Times Aubrey Allegretti join David Bull and Rosie Wright to discuss.

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Well for more political analysis we can speak now to the former adviser to Tony Blair John murnan and also Chief political correspondent for the Times Aubrey alrti is with us as well Aubrey will’ll come to you in a moment because John has been sat in the studio laughing

Nodding I mean definitely it’s something to celebrate we should cave at this a little bit some of the analysis out this morning is yes this is brilliant news for the labor party but actually The Wider picture maybe this is worst news for the conservatives and not great for

Labor because the people who are voting for labor are choosing not to vote conservative rather than to say do you know what I really think K sta has a plan I vote for him do you know do you know what we don’t care about the motivation as long as the Tores get a

Thrashing and they got you do care about the motivation it’s not going to win a general election you say we don’t care about people’s motivation for why they vote for us what I tell you what we’ve seen today uh overnight we’ve seen the settled will of the British people is to

Get shot of the conservative government uh where they want a national moment of exorcism that’s where the general election is going to be it will be getting rid of the conservatives and the labor party has to be to be step out of the way don’t get between the voters and

The object of their wrath this you don’t get the second biggest swing in history to the labor party without there being something fundamental the tectonic plates are shifting um and it’s okay for for for you I know why Jacob Reese Mar is trying to keep his spirits up a chunk

Of the Kingswood seat is going into his constituency he’s got a safe Tory seat on paper at the moment that now looks like a marginal seat and that’s going to be the feeling amongst all the Tories and I’m sure Aubrey’s been speaking to tories in uh a lot about what they feel

About this result next week when the Tories come back after recess there will not be a bunch of happy bunnies uh Aubrey let’s bring you in here John says it’s a national exorcism it’s time to get rid of the conservative party is that true or is it actually about

Kicking the conservatives to say sort it out before the general election I think there’s three things that I would sort of point out here that make this different from your sort of run-ofthe-mill government getting a kicking in the middle of a parliament first of all this is now the 10th loss the conservatives

Have suffered at byelection this Parliament that’s the highest number of byelections that they’ve lost since the Second World War secondly you have the swings um as John was pointing out there in Wellingborough the second highest Tory to labor swing again this side of the second world war

And the third point is that the conservatives are finding themselves increasingly sort of outflanked if you like on the right by another rival party and we’ve seen the damage that that can do obviously if all the reform voters switch to the conservative party which is never going to happen then you would

Still have um labor R in so it doesn’t just suggest that reform is the only problem here for the conservatives but all three of those things I think taken together suggest that this is not just a sort of expected set of results I know just it’s for the

Conservatives today they’ve got to try and shift the dial Aubrey and tell the public we were we were hearing earlier there aren’t that many sort of big moments to come with the economy going into recession uh yesterday um maybe Rishi sunak will be able to get planes

Off the ground to but what do you think their strategy is going to be now to try and it may be go back to the drawing board and say okay we’ve got to we’ve got to change our pitch to the public because so far it’s not cutting

Through it’ll be hard for them to go back to the drawing board because they have obviously tried sort of multiple strategies and resets over the last year those big moments didn’t have the impact that senior people in number 10 expected whether we’re talking about Tory conference last Autumn uh the C it

Reshuffle in November and then The King’s Speech as well they haven’t really failed they haven’t really managed to move the dial significantly now from what I understand uh conservative campaign strategist Isaac leido gave his talk to conservative MPS a couple of weeks ago he was basically

Trying to offer them a glimmer of hope give them a pathway to some sort of success and his point was that if around sort of A fifth or a quarter of undecided voters plumped for the conservatives then they close the gap massively and put labor in hung Parliament territory which would enable

The conservative party to sort of make the argument more potently that people it was a straight up and down fight between the conservatives and labor to try and reduce the risk from reform and also to argue that by voting labor people would be voting for a minority government potentially and all the sort

Of risks that that might entail now that is the hope the message that’s being delivered to conservative MPS by the sort of strategist at the top of the party but whether or not it really sort of manifests itself well conservative MPS were told over a year ago that there

Was a narrow path to Victory and I think they can see with the evidence of their own eyes today that that narrow path is increasingly hard to navigate it’s interesting isn’t it uh that that actually the conservative party has turned its guns on reform UK because they believe they’re stealing their

Votes you’ve you’ve actually seen campaign saying don’t vote reform which isn’t very positive just in terms of the labor party though we’re running this poll this morning about starma is it is it that people have bought into the to the labor narrative and do they buy into Kier starma because from what our

Viewers are telling us they don’t think stammer is the right man to be prime minister well what your viewers who choose to vote in a poll on YouTube are telling you so it’s a tiny sample unrepresentative the most recent poll in the in the times the yugov poll that was

Published yesterday gives labor a 20po lead well in fact well the Savant poll actually shows the leaders Dro from 25 points to 12 points yeah but the times published the ug the UGA poll and the polar pole you like that PO better no no the polar polls cuz the the the

Financial times runs a PO regular polar polls every day and the polar polls shows labor at 18 to 20 points ahead and it’s been it’s been growing slightly since and this is the issue Aubrey’s talking about it um Isaac L is a great strategist I I’ve got I’ve deep respect

For him um he also when he T them told them about there’s a way to get to uh get to narrowing the Gap with labor he also said divided parties never ever Thrive and the Tory party are divided and what happens when you get bad election results like this is people

Come back in a panic and the thing about panicking parties is panicking parties lose their discipline and in the end if you think about it the Tories are stuck with two strategies and you need to have one they’re saying um we have to challenge labor but actually we have to

Try and bring reform back bringing reform back means appealing to the right center voters labor have 44 45% of votes in Britain you need to get the middle ground voters back so the Tories have to appeal to the right and to the middle ground and there’s a tension there and

It’s really hard for them to navigate that that I think is is the CH Big Challenge you just used two phrases to describe the conservatives panicked and lack of discipline arguably both of those two phrases could have been leveled at the labor party this week with what’s happened over the suspension

Of Alazar the candidate who’ be siging in at the rochell by elction and talking about the public sentiment one big problem looming for K St the latest yugov poll in the time today says it’s just 3% believe that starm has completely completed the job in tackling

Anti-Semitism just 3% and we we now see discipline from the labor party we saw all that big muddle when initially they said he said sorry he kind of got caught up in a conspiracy and know we still support him and then later on oh no

Sorry we we can’t do that we’re going to withdraw we’re going to withdraw our support this problem has in Years Gone by loomed really large over the labor party party and K starma what do you think his strategy is going to be to effectively be able to convince more

Than 3% of the public that he’s handled the issue of anti-Semitism no this they the Highlight in the in the times ignores the the large number of people who believe he’s made good progress and the thing is about tackling a problem that was brought into the labor party by

Jeremy Corbin is it was never going to be done in one cycle most of the people uh who who’ve been expelled and load of the people have left have shown that kir starmer uh is really serious about ripping out anti-Semitism by the roots from the labor party but the issue is in

The end and I’ll look I’ll come back and comment on the Rochdale by elction which I think is going to be very interesting because there are now three former labor account two former labor MPS and one former labor candidate fighting there the thing is the these results the

Swings on these results show that basically the national opinion polls the the poll uh which that you’re citing from that gives labor a 20 point lead that yugov poll that is consistent with the country wanting to get rid of this government to have a clean break to

Start over and I think that’s what labor has to lean into and labor has to uh show what the change is going to be towards um and that’s really where Kier has to come back and do that you should just say about rdale we’ve got a full

List of all the candidates who be standing in that by elction about a week and a half’s Time on the talk TV website another b elction as well Aubrey can I just bring you in again the pressure on Tac will be mounting if I remember rightly the party gave him until March

The 6th to turn this around he’s clearly not turning it around did they ditch him as well do we go for five in five years it’s difficult I mean today is obviously a day of great pain for the conservative party and there are obviously MPS who are feeling very

Vulnerable about their own seats looking at the sorts of swings that were achieved and recognizing of course that these were byelection results so they’re unlikely to be repeated at quite the same size election but they they know that this is an issue that affects the whole conservative party so the question

Is if you’re unhappy with Rich what do you do now this week we have seen labor sort of starting to turn in on itself having some um sort Rouse some false steps some unforced errors as some labor empties have categorized them to me over

The last week or so and that has sort of helped if you like tool conservative employees and think look what we can achieve if we’re all sort of in together and pointing in the same direction at the same enemy so that means that I think it’s unlikely we get a sort of

Huge explosion for calls for Rich scen act to resign even from those who think that actually it might end up being the best thing overall so then you look ahead you’ve got the budget on the sixth of March as you obviously rightly pointed out there then you’ve got the

May local elections in uh in Spring that potentially being another quite difficult moment for the party where they suffer losses um you know at a local level across uh wider spread of the country and then there’s the issue of whether or not you can get the the

Flights to Rwanda up before the summer all of those things I think are moments more where the conservatives are likely to wait and potentially launch a push then I think today auy auy Ju Just in just in terms of the big beast of the conservative party they’re not going to

Sit there and think I I’ll wait until my majority disappears and I lose I was just looking at who could lose their seats Jeremy Hunt would be out for example Penny morn in Duncan Smith grants CH Lee Anderson could be out Johnny Mercer could be out even s John

Redwood would be out do you honestly think they’re going to sit there and say y it’s fine we’re going to opposition I think that some of them are prepared to wait longer than others I mean obviously Jeremy Hunt the chance left so it’s hard he’s gonna turn around

And S of say Ry and some of the others on that list have certainly been making noises to the effect of saying that they’re not sort of totally happy John redward and in and Smith certainly in the sort of group calling for lower taxes so we’ll have to see basically how

They respond after the March budget but I think that they realize that the window to sort of move is not open fully yet so they’re going to wait at least another few weeks before deciding what to do yeah well let’s see what happens in that budget as well thank you both so

Much AUB alrti from the times and former labor adviser John murnan it’s been a pleasure to speak to both of you