So, Reform has won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election. Judging by what I am seeing in the news and on social media, this is a major defeat for Labour whose voters, we are told, are deserting the party en masse for Reform. The lesson for Labour is apparently clear: they need to double-down on their drift to the right and adopt even more draconian policies towards immigrants, the disabled, trans people and so on.
The Reform majority was just 6 votes. Labour activists are blaming the Greens for their loss. If only left-leaning people had all supported Labour, they say, they would have won.
It is easy to see why people come to that conclusion. Here is the swing data.
| Party | Swing |
|---|---|
| Reform | +20.58 |
| Labour | -14.23 |
| Conservative | -8.83 |
| Green | +0.66 |
| LibDem | -2.20 |
The conclusions seem clear. Voters are deserting Labour, the Tories and LibDems for Reform. The Greens have slightly increased their vote. But, with all due respect to Jon Snow, swing data does not tell the whole story. Absolute numbers of votes matter too.
Here are the total votes for the main parties from both yesterday’s election and the equivalent contest in the General Election last year. I have omitted the minor parties and joke candidates so the totals don’t quite match up.
| Party | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reform | 7662 | 12645 | +4983 |
| Labour | 22358 | 12639 | -9719 |
| Conservative | 6756 | 2341 | -4415 |
| Greens | 2715 | 2314 | -401 |
| LibDems | 2149 | 942 | -1207 |
| Total | 42235 | 32655 | -9580 |
This tells a very different story. The rise in the Reform vote can be almost entirely explained by people deserting the Tories for Reform. The number of people voting Green has gone down slightly, not up. The major story seems to be people deserting Labour in droves, but choosing not to transfer their vote to any left-leaning party. If all of the people who deserted Labour and the LibDems had voted Green instead, then the Greens would have won.
Obviously the lesson for Labour here is very different. Rather than moving further to the right to try to take votes from Reform, what they should be doing is finding out why people who supported them in the past no longer want to vote. Whether they will learn that lesson is another matter. They seem firmly wedded to drifting yet further to the right.
There is also a lesson for the LibDems and Greens. People who are disaffected with Labour are not turning to them. They need to think about why this happens. Presumably the voters assume that those parties have no chance of winning, or perhaps are totally disillusioned with politics.
Here in Wales we have a couple of advantages. Firstly large parts of the country are used to voting for Plaid Cymru as an alternative left-wing party. Secondly the Senedd elections use a system of proportional representation, so fragmentation of left-wing parties is not such an issue. Nevertheless, there is still a huge segment of the population in Cardiff, Swansea and south-east Wales who traditionally vote Labour and who may now not vote at all. How we engage with those people (both in Wales and England) will be vital to the future of the UK.