By any standards the North Shropshire outcome will go down as one of the most sensational by-elections in decades with the LDs jumping from third place to win this Leave-voting agricultural seat with a huge swing that almost outdoes Christchurch of 1993. The result when it came wasn’t even close and saw a huge drop in the Tory vote with the LAB GE2019 vote more than halved.

This is terrible for the Tories and the PM and completely knocks on the head his previous USP as being an election winner. In the space of six months he has seen two apparently rock solid seats go to the LDs which has reinforced their reputation as the king of this sort of election.

It will also be useful to the LDs in future seats where Labour is in second place and might claim to be the real contender. It is now nine years since Labour was able to take a seat off the Tories in a by-election.

The Tory majority at Westminster was so large anyway that it hardly impacts on the parliamentary situation but there will be a lot of Tory MPs this morning looking at the above numbers and thinking about their own safety.

I well remember October 1990 when I played a small part in the LD Eastbourne by-election victory which predicated a few weeks later the exit of Maggie. The CON to LD swing in that contest was just 20%.

It is now odds-on in the betting that BJ will be out by the end of 2022.

Mike Smithson