Corbyn CRUSHED in Copeland: Tories snatch Labour stronghold in WORST defeat since war
THE Tories have dealt a hammer blow to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party as Trudy Harrison won over hearts in Copeland in a landmark by-election victory, which was the worst defeat for the opposition at the hands of the governing party since the end of World War II.
Conservatives win Copeland in historic by-election victory
Ms Harrison obtained 13,748 votes against Labour’s Rebecca Hanson, who came close with 11,601 votes.
Labour had held the Cumbrian constituency since 1935.
The victory in the Cumbrian seat means the Tories are the first governing party to win a by-election since 1982, as the party won with a majority of 2,147 votes with 44 percent of the vote.
The last time a governing party took a seat from the opposition at a by-election was in 1982 when the Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden defected to the SDP.
Since 1945 the main opposition party has only lost by-elections to the party in power on three occasions.
One was Mitcham and Morden in 1982 when the Conservative candidate Angela Rumbled gained a comfortable win.
The other two were Brighouse and Spenborough in 1960, when Labour lost the seat to a Conservative/National Liberal candidate, and Sunderland South in 1953, when Labour lost to the Conservatives.
On those three occasions the Labour majority was lower than it was in Copeland.
The Labour defeat will be something of a humiliation for the party which is currently struggling to connect with voters - according to the latest nationwide polls the left-wing party is trailing the Conservatives by some 18 percentage points.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition in the past to nuclear power will not have gone down well in an area that is heavily reliant on the Sellafield nuclear plant.
The turnout at Copeland's by-election was unexpectedly high at 51.35 percent and dispelled fears Storm Doris may put off voters.
Labour supporters in Copeland have lost faith in Corbyn
The Tory victory overturned the Labour majority of 5,179 which it secured at the general election in 2015.
There was a tremendous gap between the two front-running parties and the remaining candidates as the Liberal Democrats gained just 2,252 votes, just 7.2 per cent of the vote.
In her first speech as Copeland MP, Ms Harrison hailed the her victory as “historic” and said it is clear that people in Copeland do not trust Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party.
She pledged to represent all people in her constituency as some people who voted for her had not voted Conservative’s before.
Ms Harrison said after the result that it showed “the people are ready for change”.
She added: “I think we ran an extremely positive campaign and it was a campaign that represented the needs of this area. And I know this area because I have lived here all of my life.
“I think that, and the combination of Jeremy Corbyn's views on nuclear in an area which is so dependent on Sellafield and on Moorside, contributed to my win tonight.”
Corbyn reacted to Labour’s loss in Copeland on Twitter and said: “Labour's victory in Stoke is a decisive rejection of UKIP's politics of division.
“But our message was not enough to win through in Copeland.”
According to reports from BuzzFeed, the Labour candidate was “chased” out of the Copeland count, trying to ignore shouts of “do you blame Corbyn”.
Political sources expected Jeremy Corbyn to lose the by-election when he admitted defeat to his colleagues hours before the result, branding the by-elections “close and challenging”.
Political scientist John Curtice told the BBC that the swing from Labour to the Conservatives in Copeland, around 7 per cent was bigger than current national polling suggests.
He also said that this was the biggest gain in share of the vote by a governing party in a by-election since the Hull North by-election in 1966.