Politics latest: Terrible night for Tories as Keir Starmer says Labour is ‘redrawing political map’

A night of fluctuating predictions ended more than five hours after the polls closed with a Labour majority of 1,192.

At first, when the polls closed at 10pm, the betting at the count at the offices of Central Bedfordshire Council was that the Tories would hold the seat, coming through the middle as the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats fought a bruising battle against each other.

But it soon became clear that the Tory vote, even in its strongholds in the small villages in this sparsely populated rural constituency, was collapsing.

First, the Liberal Democrats claimed that their vote in the villages had increased significantly, doubling their vote share, a change the Lib Dems claimed would help hand victory to Labour.

But then it emerged that the Labour Party was making big gains over the Tories in the villages. 

One local councillor told Sky News the Tories were being “hammered” by Labour in the rural areas, even in some of what had previously been their safest wards.

At one point, a very senior source at the count told Sky News that the “whispers” in the hall where the votes were being counted were that Labour was going to win by 3,000 or possibly even 4,000. 

But that prediction was swiftly discounted by Labour sources as it became clear that the party’s winning margin was likely to be around 1,000, which turned out to be the case when the result was declared around 3:15am. 

Labour clearly benefitted from a very long campaign. Winning candidate Alistair Strathern told Sky News he began campaigning back in June. Normally, a governing party facing a tricky by-election opts for a short campaign to make their opponent’s task much harder.

But the Conservatives were scuppered in Mid Beds by the maverick former MP, Nadine Dorries at first saying she was going to stand down, but then delaying her resignation for 11 weeks. 

After the result was cleared, the Tories’ humiliation was complete when their defeats candidate, Festus Akinbusoye, fled from the platform even before Mr Strathern had made his victory speech. 

Together with the result in Tamworth, Mid Beds is another spectacular victory for Labour, coming on top of its success in Rutherglen and Hamilton West a fortnight ago.

Sir Keir Starmer will be pleased that Labour had shown it can defeat the SNP in Scotland and the Tories in Middle England.

But many Conservative MPs, even those with majorities of 10,000 or 15,000 will be fearing the worst at the next general election.