6 Saturday December 18 2021 | the times
News
Boris Johnson has been warned by Tory
MPs that he faces the prospect of a
leadership challenge if he does not
improve his No 10 team following the
Tories’ humiliating defeat in the North
Shropshire by-election.
The Liberal Democrats overturned a
23,000 Tory majority to secure a stun-
ning victory on a 34 per cent swing. The
defeat capped a torrid few weeks for the
prime minister, who blamed the “disap-
pointing result” on recent stories about
Christmas parties in Downing Street.
Yesterday, Tory MPs openly ques-
tioned Johnson’s future. Sir Roger Gale,
the MP for North Thanet, said he still
had to prove he was a capable leader.
“This has to be seen as a referendum on
the prime minister’s performance and I
think the prime minister is in last orders
time... one more strike and he’s out,” he
told Toda y on BBC Radio 4.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a senior
backbencher, said Johnson retained the
“benefit of the doubt” but had to make
improvements to his operation. “He has
got to go away and work out how he can
conduct himself and govern this coun-
try in a way that avoids these sorts of
issues,” he told Sky News.
Other Tories played down the pro-
spect of an immediate leadership chal-
lenge, but agreed Johnson had to make
personnel changes in Downing Street.
Sir Iain Duncan-Smith, the former
party leader, said Johnson was having
to defend other people’s mistakes. “No
prime minister or president can govern
if they spend their whole time having to
defend what others have got wrong and
failed on,” he told the BBC. “It is a mis-
take to have him bogged down in
having to justify and defend things that
are often unjustifiable.”
Sir Charles Walker, another senior
backbencher, told Times Radio John-
son had a year “to sort himself out”.
Helen Morgan, the Lib Dems’ candi-
date, comfortably won the by-election
with 17,957 votes. The Conservatives
came second with 12,032 votes. Labour
came third on 3,686 and the Green
Party came fourth on 1,738. Turnout
was 46 per cent.
North Shropshire was previously an
ultra-safe Conservative seat that had
never been lost by the Tories. The last
time an opposition party won an elect-
ion in the area was in the abolished seat
of Oswestry almost 120 years ago.
In her victory speech, Morgan, 46, an
accountant who finished third for the
Liberal Democrats in the same seat in
the 2019 general election, said she had
won over Tory voters disillusioned with
Johnson’s leadership of the country.
“The people of North Shropshire
have spoken on behalf of the British
people,” she said. “They have said loud-
ly and clearly: ‘Boris Johnson, the party
is over’. Your government, run on lies
and bluster, will be held accountable. It
will be scrutinised, it will be challenged
and it can and will be defeated.”
The by-election was triggered by the
resignation of Owen Paterson, who was
forced to quit after 24 years as the con-
stituency’s MP following a botched
attempt by Johnson to spare him a 30-
day suspension from the Commons for
paid lobbying. Paterson had been found
guilty of contacting ministers on behalf
of companies paying him a combined
salary of £112,000.
The result piles further pressure onAnalysis
N
ot quite
unprecedented
but certainly a
spectacular
rejection of the
Conservative Party (Sir
John Curtice writes). The
voters of North
Shropshire triple-
underlined the message
of the polls that Boris
Johnson has fallen into a
deep electoral hole in
recent weeks.
At 34.1 per cent the
swing from Conservative
to Liberal Democrat is
the second highest by-
election swing ever from
Conservative to Liberal
Democrat – only a little
behind the 35.4 per cent
rebuff that John Major
suffered in Christchurch
in 1993.
Equally, the 31.1-pointdrop in the Tories’ own
share of the vote is the
second highest the party
has ever suffered in the
absence of any significant
intervention by a party
that did not contest the
previous general election.
Christchurch is, of
course, not a happy
precedent for the
Conservatives; its defeat
in 1993 in the hitherto
true blue Tory seat
occurred at a time when
the party was below 30
per cent in the polls and
when, after years of
internal strife (not least
over Europe), it was
eventually to crash to its
most serious ever general
election defeat in 1997.
Moreover, not only is
the reverse in the
Conservatives’ share fargreater than the 19.9-
point drop the party
suffered when it lost to
the Liberal Democrats in
Chesham & Amersham
in June, but it has
occurred in a seat that
looked less vulnerable.
That Buckinghamshire
seat registered a majority
vote for Remain in 2016
and support for the
Conservatives had
already fallen back in
2019 in apparent
rejection by some Tory
voters of Boris Johnson’s
Brexit deal.
In North Shropshire, in
contrast, nearly 60 per
cent voted Leave in 2016.
In short, this result
suggests that the
coalition of Leave-
inclined voters who
provided the primeminister with his 80-seat
majority in 2019 is now at
risk of falling apart.
Of course, a crucial
element in the Liberal
Democrats’ success was a
12-point drop in the
Labour vote, which had
previously been second
placed. It looks as though
many Labour supporters
were all too ready to take
the opportunity to give
Boris Johnson a bloody
nose. However, the result
is also a reminder to
Labour that whatever the
Conservatives’ current
woes, at 39 per cent their
own standing in the polls
is still no higher than 12
months ago.Sir John Curtice is
Professor of Politics,
Strathclyde UniversityIn the historic market town of Oswest-
ry the jubilant celebrations of Helen
Morgan were matched by the voters
who backed her to oust the Tories from
a seat they had held for two centuries.
Voters in the North Shropshire by-
election said Tory “sleaze and indeci-
sion” and No 10 Christmas parties had
prompted them to vote for change.
In the town centre campaigners
wearing orange rosettes welcomed
Morgan’s victory with cries of: “We
voted for you.”
Lifelong Conservatives abandoned
the party, including Jonty Woodward,
56, a farm labourer, who said he would
only vote Conservative again if Boris
Johnson resigned.
“I’ve always voted Conservative but
this time I decided I’d had enough of
the hypocrisy,” he said.
“My wife felt the same but couldn’t
quite bring herself to vote for the LibSleaze and No 10 parties
Neil Johnston
Midlands CorrespondentDems like me and just didn’t vote.”
Gwen Morris, 75, a company director,
said she believed there was one rule for
the government and another for the
rest of the country.
“I’ve always voted Conservative but
this time it was Lib Dem. Sadly, Boris
has not shown himself to be a great
leader. The indecision and mixed mes-
sages about Covid have made people
feel they can’t trust him and the party.”
Richard Wilson, 76, from Oswestry,
who has voted Tory previously, said the
government was dishonest. “The whole
government is smeared with dishones-
ty, people have not accepted it this time
around.”
The seat on the English and Welsh
border had been held by the former
minister Owen Paterson, 65, since 1997
until he resigned last month after being
found by standards watchdogs to have
broken lobbying rules during his
£110,000-a-year private sector work.
He resigned amid fury over a
proposed ban from the CommonsSix bigger swings
Only six by-elections have had a
bigger percentage swing than North
Shropshire. In 1983 in Bermondsey,
there was a 44.2 per cent swing
from Labour to Liberal. In Clacton in
2014 there was a 44.1 per cent swing
from the Tories to Ukip. In Lincoln in
1973 there was a 43 per cent swing
from Labour to Democratic Labour.
In 1967 in Hamilton the swing from
Labour to SNP was 37.9 per cent. In
2012 in Bradford West the swing
from Labour to Respect was 36.6 per
cent and in Christchurch in 1993
there was a 35.4 per cent swing to
the Lib Dems from the Tories.Get your act together or it’s over,
News Politics
North Shropshire
Lib Dem
Conservative
Labour
Green
Reform UK
Other47.5% (17,957)
31.6% (12,032)
9.7% (3,686)
4.6% (1,738)
3.7% (1,472)
3.2% (1,253)46.3%
TurnoutShare of votes (total votes received)Results at previous elections
Con2005
2010
2015
2017
2019
2021Lab Lib Dem
Green Others
49.
51.
51.
60.
62.
31.25.9 19.
20.
22.47.18.
19.
31.
22.
9.George Grylls Political Reporter the prime minister, who has endured a
bruising couple of weeks.
Johnson was forced to open an
investigation into allegations that
Downing Street hosted several Christ-
mas parties last year after leaked foot-
age showed No 10 aides joking about a
cheese and wine evening.
Meanwhile, rising cases of the Omi-
cron variant have driven a wedge
between the prime minister and his
backbenchers as Tory MPs inflicted the
biggest rebellion of Johnson’s premier-
ship thus far in a vote over the introduc-
tion of vaccine passports.
Johnson’s approval ratings have
slumped to their lowest since he
became prime minister and Labour
have overtaken the Conservatives in
the polls.
Following the result, Johnson said
that reports of Christmas parties in No
10 had distracted voters. “Clearly the
vote in North Shropshire is a very dis-
appointing result and I totally under-
stand people’s frustrations.”
He added: “Basically, what’s been
going wrong is that in the last few weeks
some things have been going very well
but what the people have been hearing
is just a constant litany of stuff about
politics and politicians — stuff that isn’t
about them.”
The defeat underlines the threat now
posed to the Conservatives by the Lib-
eral Democrats in Tory heartland seats.
Earlier this year, the Lib Dems blew
away a 16,000 Tory majority in the
Chesham & Amersham by-election.
Unlike Chesham & Amersham, how-
ever, North Shropshire was a leave-
voting constituency.
Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader,
warned Johnson that tactical voting
could remove Tory MPs after Labour’s
share of the vote collapsed from over 22
per cent to under 10 per cent following
a subdued campaign. Davey said there
was no need for a formal pact between
the parties because voters can “work it
out for themselves”.
The Lib Dems campaigned on such
topics as ambulance response times
and the impact on farmers of trade
deals with Australia and New Zealand.
Neil Shastri-Hurst, the Conservative
candidate, was targeted for not coming
from North Shropshire and made a
commitment to move to the area the
central pledge of his campaign.
Tories have swallowed the poison
of populism, Matthew Parris, page 37
Letters, page 40
A prime minister badly damaged
by defeat, leading article, page 41
The prime minister,
visiting police in
his Uxbridge seat
yesterday, said voters
had been distracted