Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suffered a political upset as his ruling Conservative Party lost a key parliamentary election in southwest England to the Liberal Democrats, raising fresh questions about whether he can hang onto its “Blue Wall” strongholds in a national poll expected next year.
Sarah Dyke won 55% of the votes in Somerton and Frome, a district of market towns in Somerset. That compared with the Liberal Democrats’ 26% share when the seat was last contested in the 2019 general election. Conservative candidate Faye Purbrick came second with 26% — down from 56% last time.
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Somerton is the second of three special elections to report results early Friday, with Selby and Ainsty in northeast England yet to declare. Sunak’s Conservatives unexpectedly held onto Boris Johnson’s old parliamentary seat Uxbridge and South Ruislip in northwest London.
The result will be hailed by Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats as proof the Tories are vulnerable in their traditional stronghold across southern England. That puts pressure on Sunak because it reinforces the view the Tories are being squeezed on multiple fronts, as Keir Starmer’s main opposition Labour Party builds a formidable lead in national surveys.
Somerton and Frome has long passed between the Conservatives and Lib Dems, but had been in Tory hands since 2015. MP David Warburton won a big majority of 19,213 at the 2019 election.
But he was suspended from the Conservatives amid allegations of misconduct last year, and sat as an independent MP until he resigned in June. That is likely to mean that Sunak will try to spin the result as a punishment for the scandal rather than a reflection of the party’s overall popularity in the district.
That narrative is challenged, though, by the Tories’ defeat in the nearby constituency of Tiverton and Honiton last year. That came when Boris Johnson was premier, and the Tories’ slide down opinion polls began on his watch. It has barely recovered since Liz Truss’s disastrous seven-week premiership, leaving Sunak a mountain to climb to try to keep his Tories in power.
--With assistance from Rebecca Choong Wilkins.
