By-election results: first thoughts

 Uxbridge was a warning to new New Labour. The ULEZ issue by itself should not  have been enough to hobble the campaign of a party seeking to replace an unpopular government, though no doubt the fossil-fuel lobby will claim it and clearly had a hand in the successful Conservative defence of the seat. The lobby will go on to press Sadiq Khan to abandon his plans to extend the emission-control zone and to persuade Sir Keir and Rachel Reeves to eliminate what is left of Labour's green policies from the party's general election manifesto.  No, the real reason is, as Conservative MP Johnny Mercer pointed out in the BBC panel discussion in this morning's results programme, that voters did not know what Starmer's :Labour stood for. In an ethnically and faith mixed London, which voted to stay in the EU in the second referendum, Starmer's anti-Islamic and pro-Brexit stance would have marked him as a pale Tory. So why turn out and vote for a candidate who offered no real change? One trusts that mayor Khan sticks to his guns over ULEZ expansion (and other city authorities take similar action) though it would only be fair to subsidise those small traders forced to change their transport as a result. 

Somerton and Frome marked the continuation of the process started in Tiverton, that of reclaiming the English west country for the Liberal Democrats. The size of the swing away from the Conservatives suggests that the effects of their dishonest, barely legal, general election campaign of 2018 will be largely, maybe wholly, reversed. It also introduces another strong woman LD to the House. 

What to make of Labour's outstanding success in Selby and Ainsty? Congratulations are clearly in order to their campaign there and their personable young candidate but I, for one, am keen to see the analysis of what factors were at play. The growth in Labour support was out of proportion to the party's poor performance in the other elections; they were even pushed into fourth place by the Greens in Somerton and Frome.

That Green performance, increasing their vote in all three votes, was the other notable outcome. Theirs will be the only unmixed joy at yesterday's results. 

Finally, congratulations to Munira Wilson who stayed the course of the BBC's election coverage programme and forcefully put the Liberal Democrat case in spite of being shouted down on occasions by the male representatives of the other parties. In particular, she established the key differences in housing policy from that of the conservatives, citing the building of low-carbon, affordable, social housing by Liberal Democrat-controlled councils.