Wellingborough and Kingswood byelections: it’s never been this bad for the Conservatives, and it could still get worse

By Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of Liverpool

Writing about Conservative byelection calamities has become something of a standard Friday practice for me. But the party’s defeat in Wellingborough in Northamptonshire was particularly brutal.

The Tory vote share was a mere 25% and the Conservative to Labour swing of 28.5% was the second biggest in modern electoral history. Only Dudley West in 1994, with a 29.1% swing, was bigger. That result was the…

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