Helen Morgan's triumph in Oswestry and district yesterday clearly has to be the first post of the day here. The headlines elsewhere will be of the verdict on Boris Johnson and speculation as to how long he can last. My guess is that he will be the last person in the country to realise that the glitter has come off his image and that it will take an emergency meeting of the 1922 Committee to shift him.
So here are a few sidelights on the result. First, it reinforces the observation that there is no need for a Women's Party. There was already a female majority on the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party before Helen takes the oath on 5th January. I make the new ratio of Lib Dem men to women at Westminster as 4:9.
Secondly, there was not only a swing of 34% from Conservatives to Liberal Democrats in North Shropshire, there was also a swing of over 24% from Labour to Liberal Democrats. It must worry the Labour National Executive that Labour, who were the challengers here in 2019, should have fallen away so badly. If the sole aim of the voters had been to hasten the departure of Boris Johnson, logically Labour, as second party at the general election, should have been the beneficiaries.
Finally, just a bit of fun: plugging those crude swings into UKElect produces a forecast for the result of a general election if held tomorrow of Labour 250, Lib. Dem. 219, Conservative 112, SNP 44, DUP 8, Sinn Fein 7, Plaid Cymru 3, Independent 2, SDLP 2, Green 1, Alliance (NI) 1, Speaker 1.
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