Latest editorial
The count of votes in the Chesham and Amersham by-election at Chesham Leisure Centre in Chesham, Buckinghamshire
LABOUR suffered its worst by-election result ever today in another chastening night for leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Coming just weeks after the Tories took Hartlepool for the first time in a separate by-election last month, Labour finished fourth in Chesham and Amersham, polling just 622 votes — a 1.6 per cent share — losing its deposit in the process.
The vote in the Buckinghamshire constituency was also a big setback for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as the Lib Dems overturned a Conservative majority of more than 16,000 to win the seat for the first time after nearly 50 years of Tory rule.
Every Starmer boast about removing asylum-seekers probably wins Reform another seat while Labour loses more voters to Lib Dems, Greens and nationalists than to the far right — the disaster facing Labour is the leadership’s fault, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP
Sixty Red-Green seats in a hung parliament could force Labour to choose between the death of centrism or accommodation with the left — but only if enough of us join the Greens by July 31 and support Zack Polanski’s leadership, writes JAMES MEADWAY
From Gaza complicity to welfare cuts chaos, Starmer’s baggage accumulates, and voters will indeed find ‘somewhere else’ to go — to the Greens, nationalists, Lib Dems, Reform UK or a new, working-class left party, writes NICK WRIGHT
