Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives on Friday suffered two crushing UK parliamentary by-election defeats but averted a “3-0” drubbing by unexpectedly holding on to Boris Johnson’s old Uxbridge seat.

The grave problems facing the British prime minister were highlighted when the opposition Labour party secured its biggest-ever by-election win in the once-safe Tory seat of Selby and Ainsty in Yorkshire.

Earlier the centrist Liberal Democrats demolished a massive Tory majority to win the seat of Somerton and Frome, opening up a dangerous new front for Sunak in the Tory heartlands of England’s South West.

  • frankPodmore
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    11 months ago

    I saw some people pointing out that Uxbridge has a big university and all the students have just gone home for the summer. We shouldn’t put too much emphasis on hypotheticals but it genuinely could’ve swung the by-election for Labour if it had been held during term time.

      • frankPodmore
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Fair point. Like I said, we shouldn’t put too much on hypotheticals.

      • smeg@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Up to them where they want to register (unless it’s changed since I were a lad)

        • M1n1f1g@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          11 months ago

          You can actually register in both, which is useful for local elections where you can vote in both. But in a general election, you can only vote in one. I assume that you can vote in any byelections.