Why is Rishi Sunak acting like he won?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2023
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Three by-elections and a win each for the three main parties. Labour won with the biggest electoral swing in their history in Selby and Ainsty, the Lib Dems won a huge majority in Somerton and Frome and the Conservatives just about held their seat in Uxbridge.
On the surface, the set of results are better than what the Tories had anticipated. But, better than terrible can still be pretty bad.
And does Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan need to rethink his ULEZ zone if Labour want to avoid struggling in next year's inner city campaigning? It sounds like Keir Starmer and Labour think so.
We're joined in News Agents HQ by Labour's Emily Thornberry and Sarah Olney from the Liberal Democrats to pick apart the results, and what this could mean for Tories, Labour and Lib Dems ahead of next year's general election.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.2 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:11.7 | Westminster has been acting like the next election's the done deal. |
| 0:14.4 | The Labour Party's been acting like it's a done deal. |
| 0:17.0 | The people of Uxbridge just told all of them that it's not. |
| 0:20.6 | Now, no one expected us to win here, |
| 0:23.3 | but Steve's victory demonstrates that when confronted with the actual reality of the Labour Party, |
| 0:29.0 | when there's an actual choice on a matter of substance at stake, people vote conservative. |
| 0:34.4 | That was Rishi Sunak in the rumbling tum calf in Uxbridge. But these results overnight |
| 0:42.5 | will give him some heartburn and a bit of indigestion too, like a good greasy spoon breakfast |
| 0:48.2 | often does, because the Tories had a pretty bumpy night. Now, kudos to him for not reciting what the five pledges were. |
| 0:56.9 | That must be the first time he said, I've got five pledges without listing them. |
| 1:00.5 | But otherwise, yes, Uxbridge was interesting. |
| 1:06.1 | But the rest of it was bloody awful. |
| 1:09.1 | Going into yesterday, Rishi Sunak was trying to ensure that he didn't |
| 1:12.7 | become the first prime minister since 1968 to lose three by-elections on the same night. He just |
| 1:19.0 | about managed to avoid that fake. On today's show, we're going to tell you why it is that you |
| 1:23.7 | shouldn't pay too much attention to that, because the real story of these elections is what we knew before, that the Conservative Party is in one almighty whole. |
| 1:33.4 | And there is no obvious way for Rishi Sunak to dig them out of it. |
| 1:37.2 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:42.1 | The news agents. |
| 1:44.0 | It's John. And it's Lewis. And we now know how those big three by-elections have gone. |
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