Why Boris Johnson should worry about Batley and Spen by-election result: Andrew Vine

After an all-out demolition job over the past two years on the party’s traditional red wall in the north by the Conservatives, this was a brick that held firm

despite every attempt to prise it loose.

Labour’s win has not only taken the heat off its leader, Sir Keir Starmer, from malcontents within his own party, but also raised the possibility that a tipping point has been reached.

Batley and Spen could go down as the event that confirmed the high-water mark of Boris Johnson’s electoral success has been reached.

Until last week’s result, it was almost becoming routine to assume that traditionally Labour seats in the north were only too willing to switch allegiance.

The spectacular Tory win in Hartlepool seemed to confirm that, and in the Prime Minister’s campaigning visits to Batley and Spen, there was a breezy

confidence that this Yorkshire constituency would follow the example of its counterpart in the north-east.

The strength of the Conservative vote that ran the new MP, Kim Leadbeater, such a close second made it easy for Mr Johnson to shrug off the result.

After all, he still has a huge Parliamentary majority. But Labour’s win is significant, nevertheless.

Only weeks earlier, the Conservatives saw what should have been an ultra-safe 16,000 majority in Chesham and Amersham overturned in the by-election following the death of long-serving MP Dame Cheryl Gillan, with the Lib Dems winning by a margin of 8,000.

On the face of it, an affluent constituency in Buckinghamshire and one in the industrial heartlands of Yorkshire might not seem to have much in common.

But perhaps one thing they share is a growing mistrust of the Government in general, and of Mr Johnson in particular.

Last week, the new Chesham and Amersham MP, Sarah Green, cited the question of trust as a key factor in her victory.

Out campaigning, she and her team found again and again unease being expressed by traditional one-nation Tories about the way Mr Johnson runs his

Government.

Cronyism was cited. A couple of people, when talking about the Prime Minister’s conduct, used the expression, “It’s not cricket”.

There’s a quaintness about such a term that might raise a smile, but here in Yorkshire with our passion for the game, we know exactly what they are talking about.

And there might well be those in Batley and Spen who felt exactly the same way, that the Prime Minister does not play an honest game.

His party acknowledged after the result that the Matt Hancock affair played its part. What it did not admit was that Mr Johnson’s flip-flopping over his

amorous former Health Secretary’s resignation was plain for the voters of this corner of Yorkshire to see.

On the Friday the story about Mr Hancock flouting social distancing rules broke, the Prime Minister backed him and said he considered the matter closed.

Just days later, visiting Batley and Spen, he suggested Mr Hancock had been sacked, an assertion the country could see was utter rubbish and a blatant

attempt to manipulate the truth.

Questions over his trustworthiness have nagged at Mr Johnson throughout his career, and the relentless spotlight that being Prime Minister puts him under have only illuminated them all the more starkly.

There is a growing sense that he is not straight with the public, and says things for momentary effect that are not borne out by what is actually happening in Government.

The most glaring of these is the unfulfilled pledge of two years ago that he had a plan to address the social care crisis, when anyone can see that no such thing exists.

Now that we are, mercifully, seeming to approach the end of the Covid crisis that has dominated life in Britain for 18 months, attention is bound to turn much more closely to questions about the substance behind Mr Johnson’s rhetoric.

Is he actually going to deliver on any of the loudly-proclaimed promises, such as levelling up the economy and closing the north-south divide? Or on giving the social care system the help it so desperately needs?

Voters in red wall seats have so far given the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, taking this most persuasive of politicians on trust.

But those in Batley and Spen didn’t. And neither did their counterparts in Chesham and Amersham, both of which suggest that we are seeing signs of Mr

Johnson’s electoral magic so prized by the Conservatives not quite casting the spell it once did.

Trustworthiness matters to voters. And if they are starting to conclude that Mr Johnson lacks it, it could turn out that his glory days of electoral success are past.

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