Labour win Wellingborough and Kingswood in double blow for Rishi Sunak

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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 --decided to be stood here as the newly elected Labour

00:11 MP for Wellingborough.

00:13 [APPLAUSE]

00:16 Hello, Ralph Blackburn, National World Politics Editor

00:19 here at the Wellingborough by-election count

00:21 in Kettering, where Labour has recorded a stunning victory.

00:27 Overturned an 18,000 majority that was originally

00:31 held by Peter Bone to elect Jen Kitchen,

00:35 their 28-year-old candidate.

00:38 Now, that was a 29% swing from the Tories to Labour,

00:42 which is huge.

00:44 And if that carried on to a general election,

00:46 it would be a wipeout.

00:48 Labour also won in Kingswood, just outside Bristol,

00:52 with a smaller swing.

00:53 So they've taken two seats off Rishi Sunak's party.

00:58 There'll be big celebrations in Labour HQ

01:00 after a really tough week with the scandal in Rochdale.

01:04 For Rishi Sunak, he'll be licking his wounds.

01:08 It really felt like the Tories weren't putting in a huge

01:12 amount of effort to either of these by-election campaigns.

01:14 Here at the count, there were hardly any senior Tories

01:19 and no one really to speak to.

01:22 And it felt like they didn't really put anyone out

01:24 or that much effort into the election.

01:26 And that showed with the poor showing

01:28 from their candidate, Helen Harrison,

01:30 who was Peter Bone's girlfriend.

01:33 Now, the other story of the night, as well as Labour,

01:35 is the Reform Party.

01:37 They took 10% of the vote in Kingswood.

01:40 And they took over half of the Conservatives' share

01:44 of the vote here, almost 4,000 votes

01:47 for their candidate, Ben Habib.

01:50 What will be interesting is to see how that carries on

01:54 going into the general election.

01:56 And that will really ruffle a few feathers,

01:58 particularly on the right of the Tory party,

02:00 who think that they're ceding too many votes to reform

02:03 due to their stance on immigration.

02:05 However, as has been pointed out a lot this evening

02:09 and into the early hours of the morning,

02:10 not all reformed voters would go back to Tory.

02:13 It's quite a big split.

02:15 But that will certainly worry Rishi Sunak.

02:18 (upbeat music)

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