Old loyalty's appear to be a bit dead and the idea of a safe Tory seat seems to be very

much up in the air. Welcome to Political Fix, your essential

insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. You heard

they're the FT's Jim Picard, talking about Labour's two spectacular by-election wins

this week. Also coming up, we'll discuss Rishi Sunak's tour of the Middle East, where

he's taken part in a flurry of diplomatic meetings aimed at preventing the

Israel Hamas conflict escalating. I'm joined in the studio now by my FT colleagues

Miranda Green, hi Miranda, hello Lucy, Jim Picard, hi Jim. Hello. And Steven Bush, hi

Steven. Hi Lucy. So we're meeting on Friday morning in the wake of a political

earthquake victory for the Labour Party, as Kirstama would have it. Here's a clip of

him celebrating after two very significant by-election wins. It is clear that the voters

here have turned their back on a failed Tory government. They had enough of the decline

of the last 30 years, and they are crying out for change, positive change that the Labour

Party can bring them. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Tory Party Chairman Greg

Hans was a little bit more merely malved. We do need to reflect on the fact that conservative

vote was down very considerably. We do need to reflect on the fact that we need to get

our conservative voters, or people who might or did vote conservative back to voting

conservative. That is a big challenge. So Jim Miranda, there are a wealth of statistics

showing what a sort of significant event this is. In the Tamworth by-election, it was

a 23.9% swing to Labour, the second biggest swing to Labour in a by-election ever. Meanwhile,

in midbedfordshire, Labour broke the record for the largest numerical majority overturned

at a by-election. It is, of course, the first time Labour has won two by-election gains

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