Labour activists may have been beset by last-minute nerves on a rainy polling day in Birmingham Erdington but, in the end, Paulette Hamilton’s victory was a comfortable one. Her 55% of the vote beat Labour’s 50.3% the last time it was contested, in the December 2019 general election, by the much-loved veteran MP Jack Dromey. The Conservatives, meanwhile, had aimed to maintain their 2019 vote share of 40% – but were beaten back to 36.3%, after Labour poured MPs and campaigners into the seat to get out the vote on Thursday.
Keir Starmer’s team feel they have come a very long way since the humiliating loss of the Hartlepool byelection to the Tories last May. Erdington never appeared likely to go the same way as Hartlepool. Despite being a constituency that voted to leave the EU, with 63% in favour, there was no significant Brexit party vote from 2019 for the Conservatives to squeeze – and more importantly, Labour is in a much stronger position. Starmer has carried out a painful restructuring of the party’s internal machinery, and a major reshuffle of his frontbench – and since the Partygate revelations, Labour has consistently led the Tories in the polls. Most importantly, though, they feel the public are beginning to give them a hearing on day-to-day, bread-and-butter issues including the cost-of-living crisis, which repeatedly came up on the doorstep in Erdington. That has been all but impossible for much of Starmer’s two years as leader, as the pandemic dominated people’s lives and captured the headlines. Despite its relatively comfortable victory, there is little for Labour to be complacent about, however, and there are two particular worries. First, there is no sign yet either in the Erdington result or national polling that Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, and Boris Johnson’s approach to it, have caused voters to rally to the government’s side.
But it may make it harder for Labour to raise the issues on which Starmer and his team feel they have a strong offer to make to the public. And, like the early days of the pandemic, it demands staunch support for the government’s position, as seen in the cross-party ovation given to the Ukrainian ambassador in the Commons on Wednesday. Starmer has pushed the government to go further, in imposing sanctions on Russian oligarchs, for example, but there is a tacit acceptance that this is not a time for politicking – which is hard for any opposition party. Second, while his personal popularity is rising steadily, there are still qualms among some in his party about whether he has the star quality to lead them to a general election victory, and the 27% turnout in Thursday’s poll has done nothing to assuage that view. Erdington is traditionally a low turnout seat, and Labour activists pointed to the grotty March weather as another explanation, But they had poured activists into the seat for weeks, including much of the frontbench. Byelections do tend to attract a lower turnout, without the weeks of national fanfare that precede a nationwide poll. But the total vote on Thursday, of 17,016 voters, was lower than Dromey’s individual vote in 2019. That may suggest that, as yet, Labour is not generating great enthusiasm among the voters in heartland seats it needs to hang on to – or in Tory-held seats win back to its side – if it is to win the next general election.