Labour plays down by-election hopes in ‘super safe Tory’ Mid Beds and Tamworth

By-election double header

Today brings us yet more by-election excitement, with voters heading to the polls in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Labour was doing some pretty heavy expectation management on Wednesday, with a spokesperson telling reporters seats up for grabs are “super safe Tory seats” and stressing the need for “perspective”, adding: “Winning both of these seats would be a moonshot for us.” For context, the Tories won Mid Beds with a majority of 24,664 votes in 2019, and Tamworth with a 19,634 majority. However, a notable contrast between the two is that Tamworth was red throughout the New Labour era. Truest-blue Mid Beds has been under Conservative control since 1931.

LabourList’s editor Tom Belger spent the day in Mid Beds yesterday, speaking to candidate Alistair Strathern and others about their “unconventional” campaign and gauging the opinion of Labour, Lib Dem and undecided voters in a series of vox pops. Strathern told Tom that turning Mid Beds red for the first time would show there are “no no-go areas” for Labour. He highlighted a recent poll showing Labour and the Tories neck and neck, and urged supporters to join a ring-a-thon today: “We’ve got a good chance here of pulling it off, but it is going to come down to the wire. There’ll be phone-banking all day, and it won’t just make a difference, it could be the difference.”

Labour is also pushing hard in Tamworth, with Keir Starmer posting a video on X this morning saying only Labour’s candidate Sarah Edwards will deliver a “fresh start”. Edwards has also got a last-minute endorsement from TV hardman Ross Kemp. “It’s gonna be close,” Kemp tells voters. “But you have the opportunity to vote for a difference in your constituency today. So please vote for Sarah Edwards.” You can join the party’s polling day phonebanks for Mid Beds and Tamworth here.

Starmer’s LBC controversy revisited

Labour sought to clarify its position on the conflict between Israel and Hamas yesterday following a series of resignations by councillors. Starmer wrote to all the party’s councillors, saying “millions of innocent” Palestinians and Israelis have been affected by the ongoing conflict and Gaza needs humanitarian access including food, water, electricity and medicines.

A particular flashpoint has been the interview the Labour leader did with LBC last week. He seemed to suggest Israel ‘has the right’ to cut off power and water. But a party spokesperson yesterday denied Starmer had said Israel had that right, saying the Labour leader’s comment had been in response to a previous question on Israel’s right to defend itself. One MP told LabourList it was “one of the most serious mis-steps of Keir’s leadership”. They fear many more councillors could quit and it could even cost Labour some ‘Red Wall’ seats. “This is reminiscent of Iraq.”

Momentum is keeping a tally of MPs’ positions as part of a new tool for activists to lobby them, and reckons 36 Labour MPs now back a ceasefire, including 31 who signed an early day motion on it. Plus Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott.

Compass at 20: Naughty or nice?

Campaign group Compass held a 20th birthday party last night (editor Tom Belger writes). Founder Neal Lawson dubbed Compass a “mad experiment in being nice”; his deputy Frances Foley told guests the soft left may “need to play hardball”; supporter and columnist John Harris urged them to “please stay nice”.

Clive Lewis MP drew laughs calling Labour “the B side of an establishment institutional set-up” in which “wealth and power must not be touched”. The difference to the Tories though is Labour leaves a “crack in the door” campaigners can get their shoulders in. Yet he hopes not to “end up on the naughty step with Neal”. Good luck with that.

In other Labour news…

SELECTIONS: Allison Gardner has been selected as Labour’s candidate for Stoke-on-Trent South at the next election. She is a former teacher who currently works with the NHS as a senior scientific adviser for artificial intelligence. She was previously a councillor on Newcastle-under-Lyme council.

LABOUR HEAD-TO-HEADS: Labour’s Liam Byrne was elected chair of the Commons business and trade committee yesterday. Harriet Harman was chosen by MPs to take over as chair of the standards committee, while Cat Smith was picked as chair of the petitions committee (PoliticsHome).

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES: Keir Starmer has won the backing of the chairman and chief executive of the world’s biggest asset management firm, BlackRock. Larry Fink said Labour now offered a “measurement of hope” in political leadership (The Times).

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