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Oh, the things we tell ourselves when it isn’t going our way. Jacob Rees-Mogg bravely faced the full glare of the media on Friday morning, with the unenviable task of putting a positive spin on a bruising set of by-election results for the Tories.
Labour overturned majorities of 11,220 in Kingswood and 18,540 in Wellingborough, delivering the Government’s ninth and tenth by-election defeats of the current Parliament and securing its second largest swing from the Conservatives ever.
Gen Kitchen secured Wellingborough with 45.8% of the vote, while Damien Egan won Kingswood with 44.9%. Reform Deputy Leader Ben Habib won 13% of the vote in Wellingborough, while Rupert Lowe won 10 per cent for the party in Kingswood.
It was a chastening night for the governing party, who are now limping towards a catastrophic result at the upcoming General Election. However, Jacob Rees-Mogg is still finding a few straws to clutch at.
He has talked himself into believing the result in Kingswood was ‘not as bad as expected’. His reasoning? Well, it’s so simple, it’s baffling: He stated that Labour ‘did not get over 50%’, and that the Tories and Reform ‘earned more votes together’.
That’s all well and good Jacob, but it’s not how by-elections work. Rather than acknowledging a five-figure swing in public opinion, Rees-Mogg reasoned that, at a national election, the gap would close – because both right-leaning parties ‘share common ground’.
If we’re playing that game, Labour and the Greens amassed over 1,000 votes more than the Tory/Reform bloc. You can watch JRM’s… interesting… take on the results here:
