Labour has won both the Kingswood and Wellingborough by-elections after overturning significant Conservative majorities.
Gen Kitchen was the victorious candidate in Wellingborough, becoming the first Labour MP to represent the area in nearly 20 years. She overturned a Conservative majority of more than 18,500.
The Opposition party’s Damien Egan will become the newest MP in Kingswood, with Labour overturning the Tory share by more than 11,000.
The Reform Party took at least 10 per cent of the vote in both seats.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the wins were a “fantastic result” for his party.
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He 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.
“By winning in these Tory strongholds, we can confidently say that Labour is back in the service of working people and we will work tirelessly to deliver for them.
“The Tories have failed. Rishi’s recession proves that. That’s why we’ve seen so many former Conservative voters switching directly to this changed Labour Party.
“Those who gave us their trust in Kingswood and Wellingborough, and those considering doing so, can be safe in the knowledge that we will spend every day working to get Britain’s future back.”
The swing of 28.6% in Wellingborough from Conservative to Labour is only just shy of the record 29.1% swing in 1994 in Dudley West from Tory to Labour.
The Tory vote share in the seat collapsed from 62.2% in 2019 to just 24.6%, a massive swing.
The results also mean the Government has now suffered the most by-election defeats of any government since the 1960s, surpassing the eight defeats suffered by John Major in the run-up to Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide victory.
Ms Kitchen said: “The people of Wellingborough have spoken for Britain. This is a stunning victory for the Labour Party and must send a message from Northamptonshire to Downing Street.”
Mr Egan also used his time on the winning stage to thank voters in Kingswood, saying: “Thank you for giving me your trust and for allowing me to serve the community I’m from.
“It’s a trust that I promise to repay, to show that politics can be different and can make a difference.”
The swing of 28.5% is the largest from the Conservatives to Labour since the 1994 Dudley West by-election, where a 29.1% swing presaged Tony Blair’s landslide victory three years later.
Labour’s new MP Damien Egan following Kingswood win (Image: Getty)
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Defeated Conservative candidate in Kingswood, Sam Bromiley, left the count as soon as Mr Egan had finished speaking – declining to comment to reporters.
Mr Bromiley received 8,675 votes, 34.8% of the total, while Reform UK candidate Rupert Lowe managed his party’s best result so far winning 10.4% of the vote.
This is up from the 5% and 4% the party achieved in the Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire by-elections respectively in October 2023.
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.
The twin defeat piles more pressure on the Prime Minister following the news that the UK entered a recession at the end of 2023.
Reform UK scored its best by-election results after targeting disgruntled voters on the right, securing more than 10% of the vote for the first time in a by-election.
Reform deputy leader Ben Habib won 13% of the vote in Wellingborough, while Rupert Lowe won 10% in Kingswood.
Sir Jacob Rees Mogg speaks at the launch of the ‘Popular Conservatism’ group (Image: Getty)
Conservative MP and former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, who represents the nearby seat of North East Somerset, said the result in Kingswood is “not as bad as I’d expected”.
He pointed out that if you add together the Reform UK and Conservative vote it is more than Labour’s – and that the Labour Party previously held the seat from 1997 to 2010.
Asked if Reform cost the Tories the by-election, he said: “I wouldn’t like to put it that way because a party doesn’t have a divine right to voters – we have to win them to vote for us.”
He adds: “But there is a lot of common ground between the Conservative Party and the Reform Party and therefore we need to make sure we appeal to those voters.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak facing a double by-election defeat (Image: Getty)
Sir Jacob insisted support for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s leadership is “solid” and “by-elections don’t change that”.
He says the party can be reassured to some extent by the low turnout as a lot of Tory voters appeared to stay at home.
He added: “I think a general election focuses people’s minds in a different way to a by-election.”
Sir Jacob said the Conservative Party needed to “learn from the result”.
He said: “I think we should learn from this result and look at what happened with the Reform Party vote. Conservative Party votes are most likely to come from people who stay at home or who voted Reform.
“How do we win them back to the Tory family? People who share many views and values with us. By delivering things they believe in and that means lower taxation, taking more of the advantages of Brexit, with more of the removal of EU retained law, it means doing less on the green issue that is making people cold and poor, and helping revitalise our economy.
“I think those issues will have a great appeal.”
Labour won Kingswood from the Conservatives on a swing in the share of the vote of 16.4 percentage points – some way above the 11.4-point swing the party needed to win the seat.
Mr Egan will be an MP for just a few months until the next general election as the constituency is being scrapped.
Labour’s win in Kingswood means the Conservatives have now lost nine by-elections in the course of this parliament – one more than the eight defeats suffered by the 1992-97 Conservative administration led by John Major.
It means the Conservative government has lost more by-elections in a single parliament than any government since the 1960s.
