'Let me assure you we are taking nothing for granted'

MP for Ellesmere Port

Parliament on Monday saw what was becoming a familiar sight as we were able to greet two more Labour MPs.

Many colleagues gathered together on the steps of Westminster Hall for the official photocall to recognise the double success of Gen Kitchen and Damien Egan in by-elections last week.

In these instances, use of the word ‘success’ is an understatement of what was achieved. For the Conservative Party, which was defending both seats, was well and truly trounced.

Labour overturned large Tory majorities in both the Kingswood by-election near Bristol and the Wellingborough by-election in Northamptonshire, taking the total number of Government by-election losses this Parliament to 10 – the most since as far back as the 1960s.

In Wellingborough a swing of 28.5 per cent saw Labour candidate Gen Kitchen overturn an 18,500 Conservative majority – the second biggest Conservative to Labour swing in any post-war by-election. Meanwhile Damien Egan enjoyed a swing of 16.4 per cent to take the South Gloucestershire seat of Kingswood.

My party has enjoyed a number of by-election triumphs across the country since the last General Election, including three wins in Yorkshire – Batley & Spen, Selby & Ainsty and Wakefield; Tamworth in Staffordshire and the Mid-Bedfordshire constituency. Not forgetting the victory in Rutherglen & Hamilton West in Scotland, where we have high hopes of reducing the dominance of the Scottish Nationalist Party next time round. After a very poor set of results at the 2019 General Election, the scale of by election victories in the last few years has been phenomenal.

We look as though we are heading for victory at the General Election but let me assure you we are taking nothing for granted. Some electors believe a Labour victory is certain. It isn’t and we know we have to persuade people to go out to vote.

Some electors are understandably disillusioned after 14 years of Conservative misrule but it is dispiriting to hear on the doorstep: “You are all the same.” The level of turnout in elections is always important so we have to work hard to prove to voters that their ‘X’ on the ballot paper is needed.

However, from our point of view these latest results were fantastic and they certainly provide a tonic for seasoned canvassers who spend large periods of their time in support of the Labour cause.

Of course elections do not always go to plan, as has been highlighted by the impending by-election at the end of the month in Rochdale where my Party has felt it necessary to withdraw support for our selected candidate who made indefensible remarks about Israel. In what was an unprecedented situation it was too late to change our candidate on the ballot paper in this Greater Manchester seat, so apologies that there will be no official Labour Party candidate available to the electorate to support. This is a really unfortunate situation for the party and for the voters of Rochdale to be in. We will, of course, put matters right before the General Election, whenever it is called.