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Setback at threshold

With the parliamentary majority of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s party reduced to one in the Commons, effecting Brexit by 31 October will doubtless be an uphill task.

Setback at threshold

Broadcasters live as ballot papers are counted during the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election count at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells, Wales on August 2, 2019. Britain's Boris Johnson faces his first test at the ballot box Thursday in a by-election that could reduce his parliamentary majority to just one, as his new government vowed to double funding for a possible no-deal Brexit. Johnson's Brexit plan could also become harder to enact as his governing Conservative Party looks set to lose the Welsh seat of Brecon and Radnorshire to a pro-Europe candidate on Thursday. (Isabel INFANTES / AFP)

It might be redundant to labour the obvious that Britain’s Conservative party, albeit down but not out, has been defeated. The by-election in the Welsh farming seat of Brecon and Radnorshire would normally not have been of much moment; it is the convincing triumph at this juncture of the pro-Remain Lib Dems that must be the pregnant message of the vote.

With the parliamentary majority of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s party reduced to one in the Commons, effecting Brexit by 31 October will doubtless be an uphill task. The setback that the new resident of 10 Downing Street has suffered at the threshold is not merely a setback to Brexit; it will come to bear on governance in the wider canvas.

The relatively narrow 1,425-vote loss to the Liberal Democrats can still give the new Prime Minister hope if his administration can leave the EU by 31 October. Those who were looking forward to a Conservative bounceback after Mr Johnson’s elevation to Downing Street might be a little astonished at the figures.

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The party’s share of the vote was down by 9.6 percentage points in the seat at 39 per cent, although that was markedly better than its result in Peterborough in early June when, at an early phase of the party’s leadership contest, the Tory vote slumped 29 points and Labour held the seat when the Leave vote was split. The simple fact of the matter is that the Tories lost in a marginal seat held by the ruling party in 2015 and 2017 and the Brexit party’s 10.5 per cent shows that the new Prime Minister remains in a state of nerves, at any rate until Brexit is concluded.

The Lib Dems underlined their increasingly healthy revival, gaining 14.3 points to reach 43.5 per cent and regaining a constituency the party held in four consecutive elections from 1997. Ultimately, a narrow majority of 50.3 per cent of the vote went to unambiguously pro-Brexit parties in a seat that voted 51.9 per cent for Leave in the 2016 EU referendum.

The Conservatives know they have a chance to unite that vote if they can credibly leave the EU at the end of October. The Brecon result shows that failure to do so would almost certainly lead to the party being defeated at Westminster if an election were to be held, or forced on Mr Johnson, shortly after a failure to leave the EU or a Brexit that is far from convincing. It will not be easy for the Prime Minister to recover from the electoral setback.

The Lib Dems reaffirmed on Friday that they want to preserve Britain’s four-decade membership of the European Union. Three months before Brexit is scheduled to materialise ~ an iffy prospect ~ the distressing signal must be that the 650-seat House of Commons is today highly fractured along party lines. The ruling party’s majority is fragile in the extreme and the course of Britain’s future is exceptionally fogbound.

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