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It has been a stonking night for Labour – winning two more by-elections in safe Conservative seats on substantial swings.
The momentum of last year’s gains in Tamworth, Selby and Ainsty, and Mid Bedfordshire, which some in the party had feared would stall, has continued to accelerate in the first tests of the general election year.
Tories crash to new postwar low with double defeat – live updates
Of course, by-elections can deliver fireworks that do not directly translate into general election results, but these polls appear dramatic and consequential.
First, because they show British politics has turned on its head in just three years.
Here is a number to show the scale of the tumult – in May 2021, less than three years ago, a seemingly unassailable Boris Johnson took his party into a by-election in Hartlepool and won the seat from Labour with the biggest increase in vote share to a governing party since 1945.
28
