A nagging doubt about Keir Starmer has been exposed

‘One out of three ain’t bad’ isn’t a saying you hear often. Yet avoiding a clean sweep of by-election defeats overnight will surely have Rishi Sunak breathing a sigh of relief. Holding on in Boris Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge & South Ruislip not only means the Tories have exceeded the rock-bottom expectations of the pundit class, but there is an unmistakeable further intuition hanging in the air: had Johnson not lost his courage and instead decided he would trust his electors and stand in a by-election under the recall process, then he surely could this morning be the man who had pulled off an unlikely triumph. And imagine how he would have milked that.

Instead, it was the somewhat less lyrical but more collegiate Steve Tuckwell who passed the chequered flag for the Tories, clinging on with a majority of under 500.

That win cannot disguise the extent of the crushing defeats the Conservatives suffered in nominally ‘safe’ seats to the Lib Dems in Somerton & Frome in Somerset and to Labour in Selby & Ainsty in Yorkshire.