Labour has overturned a near 20,000-vote Conservative majority in Tamworth, winning the area for the first time since a bellwether byelection in 1996.
Labour’s Sarah Edwards received 11,719 votes ahead of Andrew Cooper, the Tory candidate, who received 10,403 – a majority of 1,316 for Labour. It was a 23.89% swing to Keir Starmer’s party. Voter turnout was low at 35.87%, little more than half the 2019 figure. Thursday night proved to be a signal occasion for Labour which also swept away a huge Tory majority to win Mid Bedfordshire, the former seat of Nadine Dorries.
The victory in Tamworth will further bolster predictions that Labour stands to win a large majority at the next general election. The almost 24-point swing is greater than the 22-point swing Labour won in a 1996 byelection in the area by under Tony Blair, a year before the party won a landslide victory in the 1997 general election.
In her victory speech, Edwards said the voters of Tamworth had “sent a clear message to Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives that they have had enough of this failed government, which has crashed the economy and destroyed our public services.
“The people of Tamworth have made it clear. It’s time for change.”
Cooper, the Conservative candidate, was late to arrive to the counting hall. The other candidates were stood waiting on stage for the results to be announced. In the moments before he arrived, council officials warned Conservative party operatives that the declaration may go ahead without him. One Tory staffer was overheard saying Cooper got lost in the car park. He eventually rushed on stage after entering the counting hall through a back door.
After the result, while Edwards was making her victory speech, Cooper rushed off stage and dashed out through the fire exit.
The byelection was called when Chris Pincher, a former deputy chief whip, quit the House of Commons in September after losing an appeal against an eight-week suspension from parliament for groping two men at a private members’ club last summer.
The scandal hastened the downfall of Boris Johnson, who resigned as Conservative leader eight days after the allegations were first reported, during which time the former prime minister denied but later admitted to knowing of separate allegations made against Pincher before making him deputy chief whip.
Cooper came under fire this week after it emerged he had shared a Facebook post in 2020 telling jobless parents who cannot feed their children to “fuck off” if they still pay a £30 phone bill. Rishi Sunak refused to condemn Cooper’s comments at prime minister’s questions, saying he was proud of the government’s record on supporting families during the cost of living crisis.
On Wednesday, Cooper defended sharing the post, telling the Daily Mirror: “There are too many people on out-of-work benefits and there needs to be improved incentives to get people into work.”
Before the byelection on Thursday, the Conservatives held all 12 parliamentary seats in Staffordshire. In 1997, nine of the 12 MPs in Staffordshire were Labour. This remained the case until 2010, when only four Labour MPs remained. The Tories gained another seat in 2017. In 2019, the Conservatives gained the last three remaining seats held by Labour.
Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said: “This is a phenomenal result that shows Labour is back in the service of working people and redrawing the political map. To those who have given us their trust, and those considering doing so, Labour will spend every day acting in your interests and focused on your priorities. Labour will give Britain its future back.”
In local elections held in May, the Conservatives lost overall control of Tamworth borough council after Labour won eight out of 10 seats up for contention.
The Tamworth constituency was created in 1997. Prior to some minor boundary changes, the constituency was called South East Staffordshire and was held by the Tories from 1983 to 1996, when Labour won a byelection to take the seat in a 22-point swing. The result was seen as a bellwether for the following year’s Labour landslide.
The Labour candidate in that byelection, Brian Jenkin, remained in the seat until 2010, when Pincher won the seat for the Tories. The constituency became one of the strongest Tory seats in the country, with the party winning 66% of the vote with a nearly 20,000 majority in the 2019 general election. The same proportion of voters in the constituency voted to leave the EU in 2016.
