Liberal Democrats deny former Labour pact as landslide wipes out massive Tory majority in Somerset – as they admit tactical voting helped them win

The Liberal Democrats today admitted tactical voting helped them overturn a massive Tory majority in Somerset – but denied a formal pact with Labour.

Local councillor Sarah Dyke won the Somerton and Frome by-election with a majority of 11,008 in a 29 percentage point swing away from the Tories.

She wiped out the 19,213 majority won at the last general election by David Warburton, who quit Parliament last month over a botched misconduct probe. The Lib Dems had been given a clear run to retake a seat they had held between 1997 and 2015 by Labour effectively standing aside and devoting its campaigning resources elsewhere.

Having come third in the previous two contests, this time Labour finished fifth behind the Greens and Reform UK as well as the Lib Dems and Conservatives. The party put such minimal effort into campaigning, its candidate Neil Guild lost his deposit by winning only 2.6 per cent of the vote with 1,009 ballots cast.

Asked by LBC radio yesterday if the Lib Dems had done a deal with Labour, deputy leader Daisy Cooper insisted: ‘No. We’ve never done a deal with Labour and never would. Voters can make up their own minds about who they want to vote for.’

She insisted people voted for Ms Dyke ‘proactively’ as she was well-known locally but admitted: ‘Of course, in this unfair broken voting system, we also know that we have to rely on tactical votes.’ 

In a separate interview on Sky News Ms Cooper said how she had won her Hertfordshire constituency in 2019 by asking Labour and Green supporters to lend her their votes. 

‘Tactical voting is important in every election for every political party,’ she said. ‘It worked in St Albans, it’s worked again in Somerton and Frome.’

In a warning to the Tories of the risks of tactical voting, polling expert Sir John Curtice told the BBC: ‘As in previous by-elections, voters registered their dissatisfaction with the Conservatives by switching to whichever opposition party appeared best able to defeat the local Tory candidate.

‘In Uxbridge and in Selby, the already low Liberal Democrat vote was badly squeezed, while in Somerton, Labour were pushed into fifth place. In a general election such a pattern of tactical voting could seriously accentuate the scale of Conservative losses.’