Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives on Friday suffered two crushing UK parliamentary by-election defeats but averted a “3-0” drubbing by unexpectedly holding on to Boris Johnson’s old Uxbridge seat.
The grave problems facing the British prime minister were highlighted when the opposition Labour party secured its biggest-ever by-election win in the once-safe Tory seat of Selby and Ainsty in Yorkshire.
Earlier the centrist Liberal Democrats demolished a massive Tory majority to win the seat of Somerton and Frome, opening up a dangerous new front for Sunak in the Tory heartlands of England’s South West.
I saw some people pointing out that Uxbridge has a big university and all the students have just gone home for the summer. We shouldn’t put too much emphasis on hypotheticals but it genuinely could’ve swung the by-election for Labour if it had been held during term time.
Students couldn’t possibly vote by post. They couldn’t possibly!
Fair point. Like I said, we shouldn’t put too much on hypotheticals.
Don’t students vote in their home constituencies, not the ones where they study?
Up to them where they want to register (unless it’s changed since I were a lad)
You can actually register in both, which is useful for local elections where you can vote in both. But in a general election, you can only vote in one. I assume that you can vote in any byelections.
They can choose either!