Sixteen months ago Rishi Sunak was installed as Conservative leader and prime minister in the hope that he would be able to turn his party’s fortunes around in the wake of the damage inflicted on the party’s popularity by Liz Truss’ ‘fiscal event’.

However, Thursday’s by-elections confirm the message of the polls that Mr Sunak has made little or no progress in bringing that hope to fruition.

True, at 21 points the fall in Conservative support in Kingswood since 2019 was less than the drops in the three by-elections the party lost to Labour last year in Mid-Bedfordshire, Selby and Tamworth. But it was still no better than the drop implied by the party’s current standing in the polls, which, at 26 per cent, is up just one point on the position Mr Sunak inherited in the autumn of 2022, and is as much as 19 points down on its vote in 2019.

But the outcome was much worse in Wellingborough. The party’s support was down by nearly 38 points, making it the biggest fall in Conservative support in any by-election where the party was trying to defend the seat. True, the local circumstances surrounding that by-election – the bullying allegations against Peter Bone and the decision to nominate his partner as the Tory candidate – may well have affected........

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