Tory Party Chairman Quits After ‘Biggest Ever’ Loss in Double-Special Election Night

The Liberal Democrats' by-election candidate Richard Foord is interviewed by the medi
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Oliver JJ Lane

The Liberal Democrats flipped one of the strongest Conservative seats in the country in Thursday’s special election, as another vote in a small northern city also saw the Tories lose to Labour, prompting the chairman of the governing party to tender his resignation Friday morning.

Oliver Dowden, the chairman of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party resigned from his post first thing Friday morning after news of two defeats of the party in special elections (by-elections) overnight emerged — one of those defeats historic in scope — saying in his letter “We cannot carry on with business as usual. Somebody must take responsibility”.

While both losses were expected to some degree — sitting governments losing mid-term special elections being the norm in British politics — the degrees of impact of last night’s results vary.

Wakefield, a small city in Yorkshire in the north of England is a long-term Labour seat and the Conservatives taking it in the 2019 landslide election was historic. But the Conservative’s man, Imran Ahmed Khan, was quickly revealed to be a sexual abuser of boys and after being convicted and jailed for an assault, belatedly resigned his seat, triggering the fresh contest.

Given the scandal surrounding the only Conservative the seat had in nearly 90 years and the embedded strength of the local Labour party, it seems to stretch credulity that anyone at Conservative headquarters seriously expected to hold the seat. In the event, Labour’s Simon Lightwood took 47.9 per cent of the vote to the Conservative’s Nadeem Ahmed on 30 per cent, flipping it back.

The result in ultra-Conservative Tiverton and Honiton, however, is the real shock to the Boris Johnson government. Neil Parish was very well regarded locally as a champion for farming in this rural district and had one of the safest seats in the house, but left Parliament under a cloud after he was caught accessing pornography on a tablet while sitting in the Parliament chamber. A surreal flavour was added to the mix when allies claimed he’d accessed the material accidentally while internet searching for a particular brand of agricultural machine, the Claas Dominator.

For contenders Liberal Democrats to overturn Parish’s considerable 24,000 majority would be a herculean task, but it seems a combination of embarrassment among locals at the thought of supporting the Conservatives when the outgoing member had opened locals up to such ridicule alongside more general disillusionment at Boris Johnson’s Conservatives promising much but delivering little was enough.

Early this morning, it was revealed former Army major Rochard Foord (pictured in main image, above) had achieved a majority of over 6,000 with 52.9 per cent of the vote, with local head teacher and businesswoman Helen Hurford getting 38.5 per cent for the Conservatives.

The upset is a historic one. Parish’s enormous majority is the biggest ever to be turned over in a special election. The previous record-holder for such a by-election upset, The Telegraph reports, was way back in 1935.

Further, the last time a government lost two special elections in one night was back under John Major, the troubled Tory PM who followed Margaret Thatcher and who crashed the party out of power for a political generation after he was roundly defeated by globalist Tony Blair in 1997. This will not be a comfortable parallel for Prime Minister Johnson.

While somewhat politically cynical, Breitbart London understands there is a feeling among some Conservative insiders that had Parish not decided to resign and held on, the scandal would have been forgotten enough by the next general election in late 2024-early 2025 for him to hold onto the seat, albeit with a reduced majority.

The question buzzing in Westminster now is whether Boris Johnson can survive this blow. The answer is yes — in the short term — almost certainly. Johnson has just survived a vote of no confidence which, under party rules, means he’s immune to another such challenge for nearly a year. Nevertheless, the whispered-about ‘men in grey suits’ who are said to be the true power behind the party and, votes of no confidence or not, really make the decisions about when it’s time to go, could have a confidential chat with Johnson and tell him to stand down.

What is worth noting in the chairman of the Conservative Party’s resignation this morning is what’s missing. Dowden supported Johnson in that leadership challenge just weeks ago and yet this morning couldn’t find a single positive word to say about Boris Johnson.

While he writes “somebody must take responsibility” for “the latest in a run of very poor results… our supporters are distressed… and I share their feelings”, Dowden concludes he must resign because of this, but Westminster watchers conclude the subtext here is that it’s time for Johnson to take responsibility.

As for Boris Johnson himself, who took the standard line yesterday that by-elections do generally go against governments and that it would be “crazy” to resign on the back of one, spoke out in the wake of the results this morning saying the results were “tough”.

Remarking that he believed the number-one issue facing most people in the country at the moment is ‘cost of living’ — in other words, the soaring price of energy and food — Johnson said he would “listen to what people are saying, and particularly the difficulties people are facing”.

On the challenge from Dowden that government can’t continue with “business as usual” and that so far the Boris plan seems to be exactly that, the Prime Minister — who is in Rwanda for a Commonwealth meeting — told British television that “there is more that we’ve got to do, and we certainly will. We will keep going, addressing the concerns of people, until we get through this patch.”

It is not only freshly-emerging critics from within his own party that take the view that the status quo is not enough. Speaking just yesterday, Brexit leader Nigel Farage implied disaster for Boris Johnson if he didn’t actually start delivering on people’s priorities, telling him there were some simple steps the Conservatives could take to cling to power.

Pointing to the failure of the government to make the most of any Brexit benefits, Mr Farage pointed to the fact the UK is now free for the first time in decades to set its own taxation rates without limits imposed by Brussels, meaning cutting VAT on soaring energy prices is a tool available to the exchequer to ease the cost of living crisis immediately. Farage said:

…folk out there need to see some direct benefits from Brexit, and what could be clearer than the five per cent VAT on our fuel bills. Everybody on the Brexit side of the referendum said when we leave, we’ll get rid of it. For some reason, Rishi Sunak seems to be too busy putting up taxes and redistributing money — he’s forgotten what he’s there as chancellor [to do], why they’ve got a majority. Let’s [cut tax] as quick as we can, show every household a Brexit benefit, and while we’re at it lets cut the other VAT to zero as well, something we couldn’t do as members of the European Union.

Another problem for the government, Farage said, is because Brexit isn’t complete they are unable to deliver on election promises to voters. A clear example of this is in immigration, where even the UK government’s very mild attempts to discourage illegal immigration have been blocked by a European court.

While Britain left the European Union, the narrowly-worded 2016 referendum question made no mention of the constellation of EU-adjacent bodies the country has so far remained inside. Most prominent is the Council of Europe, which despite sharing the same flag, anthem, goals, having headquarters next door to the EU in the ‘European Quarter’ in Strasbourg, and all EU members having to be a member of it as well, is technically a separate entity. The UK should withdraw from the Council and it’s court to actually take back control of its own borders, Farage believes.

Speaking Thursday night in the dying hours of polls being open in the by-elections, ‘Mr Brexit’ Farage mused: “I see a government that picked up Brexit for political opportunity without really properly believing in it… far from taking back control our borders, it looks like a complete farce. We still have the ECHR able to overrule decisions taken by the Home Secretary taken within this country.”

He continued: “If [Boris Johnson has] the guts to do it, it would be rather like the Brexit fight all over again. Johnson would win a massive majority and we really would get a proper Brexit done… It’s a good opportunity on this independence day to still celebrate the fact we’ve beaten the global elites, but to say we’ve actually got to complete Brexit.”

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