The Mid Bedfordshire by-election appears to have brought the burgeoning romance between Labour and the Liberal Democrats to an abrupt end.
The Conservatives have accused the two parties of forming an electoral pact in an effort to inflict the hardest possible blow on the Tories at the next election.
During recent by-elections, Labour and the Lib Dems have made space for each other when contesting Conservative-held seats, with the party most likely to secure victory spending the most during the course of the campaign.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, added to the speculation by refusing to rule out a pact with the Lib Dems in an interview with the Evening Standard last week.
But despite all the talk of potential collaboration, the alleged tacit agreement between the two parties appeared to collapse during the Mid Bedfordshire campaign, raising questions about whether tactical voting will pose a kind of serious threat to the Conservatives.
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Peter Kyle, the shadow minister who ran Labour’s election campaign, claims the data was irrefutable that Labour was the best positioned party to beat the Tories. However, he says the Lib Dems insisted it was a three-way race, and adopted a stance that could have split the left-wing vote and allowed the Tories to come through the middle.
The Lib Dems defended their tactics. A senior source said: “We are proud of our campaign in Mid Beds which saw our vote double while the Tory vote collapsed. This was a competitive and hard-fought campaign as all elections should be. To see Peter Kyle so lacking in magnanimity and grace is worrying — we suggest he takes a long hot bath and enjoys an early night.”
Far from splitting the vote, Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem’s deputy leader, claims her party played a “crucial role” in Labour’s victory by taking the votes of lifelong Conservatives in villages who would otherwise not have switched to Labour.
Speaking about the result, she said: “We nearly doubled our share of the vote which would see the Lib Dems win dozens of seats off the Conservatives in a general election. The Liberal Democrats played a crucial role in defeating the Conservatives in Mid Bedfordshire, and we can play a crucial role in getting rid of this Conservative government at the next election.”
Although Cooper claims the Lib Dems will be targeting 80 seats at the election, party insiders claim the figure is 33. They are mostly Lib Dem-Tory marginals where it will be left to Labour to decide whether to stand aside and divert resources to winnable seats.
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While Starmer’s allies were incensed by the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey’s refusal to concede that his candidate had no chance of winning in Mid Bedfordshire, they are not likely to change strategy.
A senior Labour source said: “Like most political parties, we have finite resources and will continue to invest those in the seats we are most likely to win. We have taken those decisions in recent by-elections and will continue to do so. For example, we knew there was no point in pouring in resources to Somerton and Frome which we had no chance of winning.”
Mid Bedfordshire was the first recent by-election where there was no tacit agreement between opposition parties to unseat the Conservatives and they came very close to losing it by splitting the vote. Labour overcame a 24,664 Tory majority to win the seat by 1,192 votes — a swing of 20.5 per cent.
In total, Labour won 13,872 votes, with the Conservatives on 12,680 votes and the Lib Dems on 9,420 votes. By contrast in Tamworth, Labour’s Sarah Edwards overcome a 19,000 majority and defeated Conservative rival Andrew Cooper by a majority of 1,316. The Lib Dems, who dedicated next to no resources to the campaign, saw their vote share fall, which was crucial to Labour’s success and lost their deposit by polling less than 500 votes. This shows that tactical voting where people support the party most likely to win against the Tories could yet cause Sunak problems.
While last week’s by-election results are positive for Labour, tactical voting could also benefit their opponents. Research by the campaign group Best for Britain shows that a Tory-Reform UK pact could vastly increase the number of seats they could win, especially in the absence of a pact between Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens.
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The Conservatives lost both by-elections by less than the number of votes secured by Reform UK. The bulk of these votes would likely have gone to the Conservatives if Reform UK had not stood and while they are promising to stand at the next election, their Ukip and Brexit party predecessors said similar things before standing aside in both the 2017 and 2019 elections.
Previous polling and analysis by Best for Britain suggested that this could be the difference between a huge majority and a slim win for Starmer.
Reform UK and the Tories could also be bolstered by the Farage effect. Richard Tice is leader of Reform UK in name only, while Farage remains its sole “person of significant control” and was the toast of the Tory party conference, claiming last week that he expects to be their leader within two years. If the opportunity comes for him to give the Tories a boost he will likely take it again.
The Tories also believe they could benefit the support of so-called “shy Tories”.
People feel safer to not vote or cast a protest vote at a by-election knowing that it won’t change the government. Greg Hands, the Conservative Party chairman, used this to explain the recent by-election defeats. “I might say that the big problem we have is still Conservative voters staying at home,” Hands told Sky News. “The Labour vote hardly went up at all, in fact it went down slightly in Mid Bedfordshire, no breakthrough for the Liberal Democrats. But clearly disappointing for us and we’ll have to reflect on the fact that a large number of Conservative voters stayed at home.”
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Naomi Smith, chief executive of Best for Britain, said: “Labour should be pleased with these victories but there is a danger that the wrong lessons are learned, particularly from Mid Bedfordshire where progressive parties came very close to letting the Tories win by splitting the vote.
“If opposition parties cannot replicate more Tamworth-style tacit agreements at the next general election, where opposition parties cannot dedicate by-election-level resources to every constituency, where more Tory voters will turn out and where Farage is likely to stand down candidates, tactical voting will be critical to get rid of this failing government, and we will be doing everything in our power to ensure people know which opposition party is most likely to win in their area.”
Ahead of the next election, Best for Britain will launch the most powerful tactical voting operation the UK has ever seen at www.getvoting.org. Using the most up-to-date MRP polling and expert analysis, voters will have an easy place to find out which opposition party is best placed to win in their constituency.
