Labour overturns huge Tory majority to win Tamworth byelection
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 Labour. Voter turnout was low at 35.87%, little more than half the 2019 turnout.
The byelection was called when Chris Pincher, a former deputy chief whip, quit the House of Commons last month 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 giving him the deputy chief whip role.
Cooper, the Conservative candidate in the byelection, 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.
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.