A couple of hours before the result of the West Lancashire by-election was declared shortly before 2am, senior Tories at the count were prepared for the worst.
Privately, they were predicting a 60% share of the vote for Labour and 25% for the Conservatives.
They weren’t far wrong. The Tory vote has indeed slumped from over 36% at the 2019 general election to about 25%. But Labour’s share was higher than the Tories feared, above 62%.
That was a bigger share for Labour and smaller for the Conservatives in this constituency than in Tony Blair’s landslide general election victory in 1997.
After the result, Bill Esterson – Labour MP for the neighbouring seat of Sefton Central – took great delight in pointing that out.
For the Tories, Blackpool South MP Scott Benton told Sky News in a combative interview that the result here wasn’t good enough for Labour to send Sir Keir Starmer to Downing Street at the next general election.
In her victory speech, the winning Labour candidate Ashley Dalton – resplendent in a bright red trouser suit – said it was time for a general election. But there isn’t going to be one for at least 18 months.
Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives may be languishing on around 25% in national opinion polls – coincidentally about the same as their vote share in this by-election – but the government consistently wins votes in the Commons by comfortable majorities of about 60.
That doesn’t mean Mr Sunak isn’t in a perilous position, however. A trouncing at the local elections on May 4 similar to this by-election result will send many Tory MPs into a blind panic and plunge the PM’s future into real danger.
Amid the latest run of dismal by-election results and the prospect of a drubbing in May, Mr Sunak’s tenure in No 10 is made all the more vulnerable by the resurgent threats posed by his two predecessors, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, with Mr Johnson undermining him in military aid to Ukraine and Ms Truss leading a renewed charge for tax cuts in Jeremy Hunt’s Budget on 15 March.