- Saturday, April 20, 2024
By: Sattwik Biswal
BORIS JOHNSON’S Conservative Party suffered an embarrassing defeat at a parliamentary byelection on the outskirts of London.
Since its creation in 1974, the Conservatives had comfortably held the affluent Chesham and Amersham constituency, capturing more than 50 per cent of the vote on every occasion.
However, in a remarkable turnaround, the candidate for the Liberal Democrats – a centrist, pro-European Union party – won a majority of 8,028 votes over the Conservative candidate in results announced on Friday (18) morning.
Sarah Green, originally from Corwen and a graduate of Aberystwyth University, overturned a 16,000 Conservative majority to capture the Chesham and Amersham constituency. She secured a majority of 8,028.
Asked about the defeat in the byelection, junior interior minister Kit Malthouse said: “It’s tough and disappointing”.
“We would have hoped for a better results,” he told Sky News.
The Conservative Party last month won a stronghold of Britain’s opposition Labour Party in Hartlepool in north-east England, which Johnson credited in part to delivering Brexit.
But some have said the approach that is attracting traditional Labour voters in northern England has also alienated some of Johnson’s base in the Conservatives’ own strongholds.
“(Voters) have been taken for granted, they feel that the Conservative Party isn’t listening to them. Many of them are very happy with Boris Johnson,” Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said, referring to Labour and Conservative party colours.
“Everyone’s talking about the red wall in the north, they should think about the blue wall in the south”
Plans to build the new High Speed 2 rail link between London and northern England which cuts through the area had provoked much local hostility in Chesham and Amersham, while government proposals to reform planning laws, which critics fear could lead to more development in southern England, had also riled locals.
In her victory speech, Green was quoted saying by Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Tonight the voice of Chesham and Amersham is unmistakable.
“Together we have said, ‘enough is enough, we will be heard and this government will listen’.”
The election in the Chesham and Amersham constituency was called after the death in April of Cheryl Gillan, who had represented it for Johnson’s Conservatives since 1992. At the last poll in 2019, Gillan won by a majority of 16,223 votes.
