North Shropshire byelection: Liberal Democrats win former safe Tory seat in blow to Johnson

The Liberal Democrats have won a stunning victory in the North Shropshire byelection, taking what had previously been a safe Conservative seat by a margin of nearly 6,000 votes, and capping a disastrous few weeks for Boris Johnson.

It was a swing even greater than the 25% seen last June when the Lib Dems won the Chesham and Amersham byelection.

North Shropshire was seen as a notably greater challenge for the party, given it is a largely rural and strongly pro-Brexit constituency, one which has been Tory for all but two of the past 189 years, from 1904 to 1906. Morgan fought the seat in 2019 and came third, with 10% support.

It was fought amid a wider atmosphere of damaging claims for Johnson and his government over allegations of lockdown-breaking Downing Street parties and a major Tory rebellion over Covid rules.

The byelection was seen as notably difficult to predict given both the short timetable and the number of candidates, totalling 14.