Labour places third as Lib Dems beat Tories in North Shropshire by-election

Labour has placed third in North Shropshire, where Lib Dem candidate Helen Morgan has won the by-election triggered by the resignation of disgraced Conservative MP Owen Paterson by a comfortable 5,925-vote margin.

Morgan secured 17,957 votes to defeat Tory Neil Shastri-Hurst, who was backed by 12,032 North Shropshire residents. Labour’s Ben Wood took 3,686 votes, with the party seeing its vote share fall by 12.4 points on 2019 and slipping to third place.

North Shropshire:

LDEM: 47.2% (+37.2)
CON: 31.6% (-31.1)
LAB: 9.7% (-12.4)
GRN: 4.6% (+1.4)
REFUK: 3.8% (+3.8)

Turnout: 46.3% (-21.6)

Both the Lib Dem and Labour Party campaigns in the constituency told the press earlier this month that their internal polling showed that they were closing the gap. Labour’s campaign suggested it had narrowed the Tory lead to seven points.

But it was Morgan, an accountant and parish councillor born and raised in the rural West Midlands, who overturned a Tory majority of nearly 23,000 votes to win the seat. She contested the constituency in the 2019 election. The Lib Dems secured just 10% of the vote in 2019 as the Conservatives retained the seat with over 62%.

The Lib Dem candidate beat Labour’s Ben Wood today, selected by members earlier this year to represent the party in the by-election. From Oswestry in Shropshire, Wood attended Woodside Primary School and the Marches Secondary School.

Labour’s vote share fell by 12.4 percentage points on the 2019 general election, which was fought for the party by Graeme Currie. 3,686 Shropshire North residents backed Keir Starmer’s party in the vote this Thursday.

Keir Starmer described Wood as a candidate who would “stand against corruption, and stand up for North Shropshire”. Labour has come second in every election since 1997, with the exception of 2010, but shadow minister Yasmin Qureshi told Times Radio last weekend that “we know, realistically, we have no chance of winning”.

The Conservatives selected Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst to fight the contest in the wake of Paterson’s resignation. The Tory vote share fell by 31.1 points on the 2019 election, with the barrister securing the support of 12,032 constituents.

North Shropshire has returned a Conservative MP since 1830. The constituency also voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum. The latest by-election result, announced this morning, followed the Lib Dem gain in Chesham and Amersham earlier this year, where the party overturned a 16,000-vote Conservative majority.

Paterson represented North Shropshire for 24 years until his resignation, which followed the backlash sparked by Boris Johnson ordering Conservative MPs to reject a 30-day sanction of their disgraced colleague for a breach of lobbying rules.

The former North Shropshire representative was found by the cross-party standards committee to have committed an “egregious” breach of the rules, which saw him paid more than £110,000 on top of his parliamentary salary by two companies.

The crucial electoral test came after a tumultuous month for the Prime Minister. Johnson has recently been accused of dishonesty after denying knowledge of Downing Street parties, been found to have broken the law in relation to party donations and suffered the largest backbench rebellion of his premiership.

National polling published earlier this week showed that Johnson has fallen 13 points behind Keir Starmer on who would make the most capable Prime Minister, and Ipsos Mori, YouGov and Survation have all recently reported a lead for the Labour Party over the Conservatives in the wake of the multiple allegations.