FOR Rishi Sunak, losing two out of three by-elections was bad – but No10 was expecting worse.
Which explains the look of relief on the PM’s face when he visited Boris Johnson’s old seat in Uxbridge and South Ruislip yesterday, to toast the Tories’ unlikely success there.
Yes, Boris’s old 7,000-plus majority was slashed to less than 500.
And the Tories took a hammering in the two other by-elections, walloped by Labour in Selby, and the Liberal Democrats in Somerton and Frome.
But the lesson of Uxbridge is that – despite the chaos of the past 12 months – Sir Keir Starmer and Labour have still not sealed the deal with voters.