Will Labour win a majority at the general election?

The Labour Party has delivered a major blow to the Conservative Party's general election hopes after winning two parliamentary by-elections in former Tory strongholds.

Tamworth, Chris Pincher's former seat, saw a 23.9% swing to Labour, while Mid Bedfordshire, which was vacated by the former culture secretary Nadine Dorries in August, swung by 20.5%. 

The double defeat is an "ominous blow" to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of a general election likely to take place next year, said the Financial Times. 

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While by-elections can't predict the results of future general elections the results will certainly "reinforce the idea that Sunak is struggling to win over the public after a year in office", said the paper. 

What did the papers say?

On Thursday, the former Conservative chancellor George Osborne warned that the loss of Mid Bedfordshire, a Tory seat for nearly a century, would mean “Armageddon is coming for the Tory party”.

Labour did indeed overturn the two "towering" Tory majorities and the results "will be read as a signal" of the party's prospects in the upcoming general election. Labour spinners have been quick to point out that Mid Bedfordshire, a seat that has never been Labour in its history, "is the biggest majority (by number) overturned in modern by-election history", topping the by-election in Tiverton last year, said Politico's London Playbook newsletter. 

Meanwhile, Labour's swing in Tamworth is seen as a particularly notable victory as it is even bigger than the party's 1996 triumph in the seat – then called South East Staffordshire – one year before Tony Blair's decisive 1997 general election landslide. 

Governments "often do poorly" in by-elections, said polling expert John Curtice in The Times, but the figures show these Conservative defeats are "far from the regular mid-term blues". Indeed, the results are "redolent of the outcome of some of the by-elections held in the 1992-97 parliament which concluded with a Labour landslide". 

In that parliament, there were four contests that registered 20% swings. Until July's by-election in Selby & Ainsty, Labour hadn't managed a swing from the Conservatives on that scale since losing power in 2010. "Now they have done so on three occasions," said Curtice.

On Conservative WhatsApp groups, some members of the 2019 intake of MPs reportedly tried to strike a hopeful tone, with one allegedly arguing: "Our voters stayed at home they DIDN'T switch. Come the General [election] the public who sat [on] their hands will come out to back us." This view was branded as "deluded" by another Tory MP, said Sky News' political editor, Beth Rigby.

Conservative peer David Frost wrote on Twitter that the results are "extremely bad" for the Conservative Party and point towards a wipe-out in the next election. "If your voters don't want to come out and vote for you then you don't win elections. It's as simple as that," he said.

What next?

With the Tories already significantly trailing in the national polls, these by-election results have certainly "provided a boost to Labour", said the BBC. 

But the opposition still needs to scale considerable heights in order to win the next general election, and will need "a bigger swing than Tony Blair's landslide", said Sky News' election analyst Dr Hannah Bunting. 

After suffering its biggest defeat in over 80 years in the 2019 general election, Labour must make 124 gains, "something they've only ever done three times". 

Nevertheless, these massive by-election swings towards Labour will allow Keir Starmer to argue that victory is "a feasible goal".