- The Guardian Saturday 3 August 2019
(^10) National
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National
Politics
▼ Liberal Democrat candidate Jane
Dodds (centre) after winning the
Brecon and Radnorshire byelection
PHOTOGRAPH: REBECCA NADEN/REUTERS
Analysis
Dan Sabbagh
Brecon result is not disastrous
for the cabinet, but it shows they
need to hit their Brexit deadline
B
oris Johnson’s
Conservatives may
have been defeated
in their fi rst electoral
test, in the Welsh
farming seat of Brecon
and Radnorshire, but the relatively
narrow 1,425-vote loss to the
Liberal Democrats can still give
the new prime minister hope if his
administration can leave the EU by
31 October.
The most immediately obvious
statistic beyond the overall result
was that the size of Jane Dodds ’
win was smaller than the 3,
votes secured by the Brexit party;mopping those up would hand the
Tories a win in a seat where Plaid
Cymru and the Green party had
stood aside to give the pro-remain
Lib Dems the best shot at victory.
Nor can it have helped that the
constituency party chose to select
the same candidate, Chris Davies ,
who had been found guilty of
making false expenses claims , an
easy attack line even if the off ence
was fairly technical.
Nevertheless, those looking for a
Conservative bounce after Johnson’s
elevation to Downing Street would
have to study the fi gures carefully.
The party’s share of the vote wasdown by 9.6 percentage points in
the seat at 39%, although that was
markedly better than its result in
Peterborough in early June when,
at an early phase of the party’s
leadership contest, the Tory vote
slumped 29 points and Labour held
the seat w ith the leave vote split.
The simple fact remains that the
Tories lost in a marginal seat held by
the governing party in 2015 and 2017
and the Brexit party’s 10. 5% shows
that the new prime minister remains
on notice, at least until Brexit is
concluded.
The Lib Dems underlined their
increasingly healthy revival, gaining
14.3 points to reach 43. 5% and
regaining a constituency the party
held in four consecutive elections
from 1997.
It was a welcome victory for the
new leader, Jo Swinson, although
expectations were such that the seat
had become close to a must -win
for a party that now holds 13 seats
at Westminster. Party activists had
travelled from around the country
to fl ood the seat, evoking memories
of the byelection successes in the
previous decade.
Although Plaid stood aside, the
Welsh nationalists have only aTory rebels in
warning to
Johnson after
byelection loss
morphed into something a lot diff er-
ent to what I joined in 1992.”
Although Johnson may be able to
rely on Labour Brexiters and inde-
pendents to vote for a Brexit deal, Lee
suggested that the government could
still be threatened by the many Con-
servatives in the party’s centre who
had been alienated by the number of
right wingers in Johnson’s cabinet.
“At the moment Boris Johnson has
a very diffi cult pitch to play and that
has been made even harder by the for-
mation of this cabinet,” he said. “There
are increasingly people who think,
even if my career is over, I can’t put
my name to this.
Other Tory MPs have pointed out
privately that the majority of seats
where the Lib Dems are in second place
are held by Conservative MPs.
One former cabinet source pointed
to warnings given by several former
cabinet ministers , including Jeremy
Hunt, David Gauke and Rory Stewart,
about the electoral threat of the Lib-
eral Democrats and the need to attract
moderate Tory voters in order for the
party to have a functioning majority.
The defeat in Brecon and Radnor-
shire came amid new warnings from
the Bank of England governor, Mark
Carney, that the challenges posed by
a no-deal withdrawal on 31 October
should not be played down.
“It may take a while to get to the
sunlit uplands,” the outgoing gover-
nor told the BBC, adding: “With no deal
the shock to the economy is instan-
taneous and instantly ... you actually
have businesses that are no longer
economic.
“One would expect prices to go up.
It’s reasonable to expect – the markets
are absolutely clear on this – that in
the event of no deal the exchange rate
would go down for a period of time.
And the area of the economy where
that instantly translates into prices –
it’s at the forecourt of the petrol station
and in fruit and veg,” Carney said.
A senior Conservative source said
there would be no change to the
government’s plans, regardless of the
prime minister’s wafer-thin majority.
“We have made clear we are leaving
on 31 October. The most recent polling
of what happens to British politics, if
there is any more delay, is really not
pretty and it is not good for anybody,”
the source said.
The party is likely to begin to target
potential Conservative-Lib Dem swing
voters with messaging about the new
government’s domestic priorities – as
well as emphasising the unhealthiness
of the continued impasse at Westmin-
ster – one Tory source said.
“This PM has a whole bunch of
domestic priorities, things that vot-
ers really care about,” the source said.
“The party has to send the message
that voting Lib Dem is not just a mat-
ter of potentially ignoring a democratic
vote to leave the EU – and that’s going
to be a key message for us.
The Lib Dems’ new leader, Jo Swin-
son, hailed the victory in mid-Wales
as the party “winning and on the up”.
The victory was partially down to a
remain alliance, with the Greens and
Plaid Cymru standing aside to give her
party a clear run at the seat.
“The country doesn’t have to settle
for Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn,”
she told the BBC. “There is another
positive alternative that is the Liberal
Democrats.”
It was a sobering night for the
Labour party, which was beaten into
fourth place by the Brexit party , and
only just held on to its deposit.
The selection of Davies to run again
in the seat, having previously been
ousted in a recall petition after he was
convicted of expenses fraud, was the
source of mass recriminations among
Conservatives.
One Tory campaign source said
they believed there would have been a
strong chance of keeping the seat with
a few more days’ campaigning and a
diff erent candidate. “Clearly this can-
didate was not chosen by this prime
minister – there are a lot of what ifs
that can be asked about this process,”
the source said.
Steve Baker, the vice-chair of the
hard Brexit European Research Group,
said the Brexit party had in eff ect
helped elect an anti-Brexit MP. “It
is becoming obvious to all now that
the Brexit party standing against the
Conservative party would produce a
massive own goal,” he tweeted.
The party, which is led by Nigel Far-
age, shows no sign of wanting to enter
a pact with the Conservatives thus far.
Overnight, the Brexit party
announced a number of candidates
who would stand in target seats at the
next election, including in Labour-
Tory marginals.Continued from page 1
‘Increasingly there
are people who think,
even if my career
is over I can’t put
my name to this’Phillip Lee
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