00:00 Westminster has been acting like the next election is a done deal, the
00:04 Labour Party has been acting like it is a done deal, the people of
00:07 Uxbridge have told all of them that it is not. I can understand why
00:12 Prime Minister Sonac is going to take solace in the fact that they
00:14 have held on, surprisingly, to Uxbridge and Rathrox-Riselip, but
00:20 with a much reduced majority. Clearly, what it is about, we know that
00:25 Boris Johnson is going to be a big impact. There is a big question
00:30 whether Boris Johnson would have held on to it had he not decided he
00:33 would run away rather than fight this one. As to whether it heralds a
00:37 new dawn for the Conservatives, I think not. You look at the outcomes
00:41 in the other two seats that were held yesterday and quite clearly the
00:44 Conservatives are still in big trouble. The fact that the
00:47 Conservatives lost two out of three of those by-elections brings
00:51 disappointment to their camp. They may try to soften the blow by
00:55 getting a mixed bag of results in the next few days. In Yorkshire, the
00:59 Labour Party achieved record-breaking success and Keir Starmer is likely
01:04 to capitalise on that momentum. Over 20% swing, that is phenomenal.
01:09 Quite clearly, if that were a piece of the general election, I imagine
01:13 we would be seeing a Labour Party coming in the next general election
01:17 without any doubt whatsoever. It is the second largest swing since the
01:21 Second World War, so that tells you the magnitude. What does that also
01:27 tell us? I think this is a big protest vote against the government
01:31 and quite clearly, and we saw that also in the other by-election, people
01:35 are sick and tired of this administration. They want change.
01:39 Whether that will be a repeat of the general election, really doubtful
01:42 because strange things happen at by-elections. In the south-west, the
01:45 question is, has the tide turned for the Liberal Democrats? Will their
01:50 success be repeated in the general election, where they are not able to
01:54 push all of their resources into one constituency? I suspect what they
01:59 will do is that they will have to concentrate their resources where
02:03 they think they will have the best results. Clearly, the south-west is
02:06 the big place, but a number of blue wall seats, where, as we have seen
02:10 elsewhere, the blue wall is starting to crumble. In Uxbridge, the
02:15 Conservatives howled but with just a few hundred votes. Their winner,
02:20 Steve Tuckwell, said Mr Sonnac's Uless policy lost them the seat.
02:25 Quite clearly, people are really resentful of something which is going
02:29 to cost them money to drive around in the suburbs. It is not surprising
02:33 that the Conservatives used this as a stick with which to beat Labour. I
02:38 think it has cost them this by-election. What will happen at the
02:42 general election? It was an issue particular to London. The swing seen
02:46 in these free by-elections will massively concern the Prime Minister
02:50 and indeed the whole Conservative Party. They are losing seats that
02:54 were formerly theirs with massive swings. There are concerns that Mr
02:58 Sonnac has failed to change the political weather.
03:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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