Tories Predict Triple Defeat For Sunak In By-Elections

Conservative MPs are increasingly gloomy about their chances of avoiding a humiliating triple defeat at this week's byelections - warning that a wipeout will leave Rishi Sunak facing another round of infighting.

- ADAM FORREST

Many Tories now expect defeat in all three of the contests – Uxbridge, Selby, and Somerton and Frome – sparked by Boris Johnson’s departure and the exit of David Warburton after his admission to taking cocaine.

“We’ll lose all three,” one Tory MP told The Independent. “Most people are resigned to it. Oddly Uxbridge might be the least bad due to the Ulez [ultra-low-emission zone] issue.”

Another Tory source said that if all three are lost everyone in the party would be in a “bloody bad mood” over parliament’s summer recess and will spend it calling for various changes from Mr Sunak.

Labour still faces a huge challenge in taking Johnson loyalist Nigel Adams’s seat in Selby and Ainsty, which the Tories won by 20,000 votes in 2019 – but the party is quietly confident of a new record for Labour overturning a Tory majority.

One senior Tory MP said they would lose Selby, but believes Uxbridge could still be won because of anger over Sadiq Khan’s expansion of the ultra-low emission zone charges to outer London. “It’s not only a referendum on the government, but on the mayor, Ulez and crime.”

But others in the Tory party think the recent optimism that Mr Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge can be held – despite a majority of only 7,000 and anger at the former PM – is misplaced ahead of the contests on Thursday.