Writing about Conservative byelection calamities has become something of a standard Friday practice for me. But the party’s defeat in Wellingborough in Northamptonshire was particularly brutal.

The Tory vote share was a mere 25% and the Conservative to Labour swing of 28.5% was the second biggest in modern electoral history. Only Dudley West in 1994, with a 29.1% swing, was bigger. That result was the clearest first demonstration that Labour would oust the Conservatives by a huge majority at the 1997 general election. Politics is on repeat.

The loss of Kingswood in South Gloucestershire was on a smaller (16.4%) swing, but is equally ominous for Rishi Sunak. Apart from in 1992, whichever party Kingswood chose over the half-century of its existence (it is about to be split into other constituencies) also formed the government.

An unprecedented year of byelections

The Conservatives have an increasingly unhappy knack of creating unnecessary and unwelcome (for them) contests. Since 2022, the Conservatives have now lost six byelections to Labour, on an average swing of 21%.

Byelections used to be prompted mainly by deaths. During this parliamentary term however, nine contests in Conservative-held seats have been products of resignations, sometimes after behaviour by the resigning MP that could most generously be described as “controversial”. Another was forced by a recall petition and three necessitated by deaths. Eight of the nine byelections following resignations were lost, as was the recall petition contest and one of the three caused by death.

The Kingswood contest was at least precipitated by a resignation on principle. Chris Skidmore resigned as an MP, angered by his government’s issuing of more oil and gas exploration licences.

Wellingborough’s byelection was caused by the recall petition lodged against Peter Bone under the Recall of MPs Act 2015. Bone, who was found to have bullied and exposed himself to a member of his staff, was suspended from the House of Commons for six weeks, triggering a petition signed by 13% of electors (10% is the threshold needed to hold a byelection).

Electors disillusioned by the Conservatives have had unprecedented opportunities to vent their displeasure. The net effect has been the biggest loss of seats during a parliamentary term since the 1960s.

Looking towards a general election

Is there any brighter news for the Conservatives? Amid the wreckage, the party could point to modest turnouts in both byelections, 38% in Wellingborough and 37% in Kingswood. But low byelection turnout is common. And the results are more a consequence of the Conservative vote dropping – Labour is not piling on the votes.

It is a huge leap of faith to assume the stay-at-homes were all Conservative-leaners who will show up at the general election. Conservative optimists could point to their Kingswood vote share being above that obtained in the constituency at general elections during the party’s wilderness years of 1997, 2001 and 2005. But the opposite was true with Thursday’s pitiful performance in Wellingborough.

The lingering Brexit bonus for the Conservatives may be neutered by the entry of Reform UK. Richard’s Tice’s outfit is no Ukip in its heyday or the Brexit Party, both of which offered a clear and popular core aim.

Nonetheless, Reform winning 13% of the vote in Wellingborough and 10% in Kingswood is an achievement worth noting, if unlikely to be replicated come general election day. The Conservatives won three-quarters of the Brexit Leave vote in 2019. Reform UK will act as a repository for disaffected Brexiteer Tories in particular.

No party has ever won an election when trailing its main rival on the economy. Even without Thursday’s news that the UK fell into a recession in 2023, the Conservatives are well behind Labour on economic stewardship.

It has been 45 years since the less popular leader of the “big two” won the election (Margaret Thatcher trailed James Callaghan in 1979) and Sunak trails Keir Starmer, albeit not as badly as his party lags behind Labour.

For the Conservatives, the one constant is that further trouble may be imminent. The party has removed the whip from Blackpool South MP, Scott Benton, who is appealing his 35-day suspension from the Commons over a lobbying scandal. If Benton loses his appeal, a recall petition will follow, potentially triggering a byelection in a seat classed as marginal, but on all current evidence a seaside stroll for Labour.

Rochdale embarrassment

There could be a very brief respite for Sunak – who may now face pointless calls for a new Conservative leader – as we head towards the farce of the Rochdale byelection on February 29, a contest Labour has managed to lose before it really started. The party dropped support for its official candidate, Azhar Ali, after leaked audio revealed Ali’s anti-Israel conspiracy theory comments regarding the October 7 Hamas attack.

Starmer’s initial ill-judged move to shore up Ali was absurd. Rochdale is thus high on the embarrassment scale for Labour, but as an issue affecting the outcome of the general election, it is negligible.

After an exceptional Brexit election in 2019 – no election in the past century has ever been dominated by a single issue to that extent – the 2024 general election will be decided by the economy, cost of living, perceptions of competence and leadership. Normal politics in other words. And on all the dials, Labour appears way ahead.

Photos: Julian Preece

Alan Bryant points to an old map of East Bristol. It’s marked with little red dots that show where boot factories were located on this side of the city in the early 1900s. In Kingswood, from half way up Warmley Hill to half way down Two Mile Hill, there were about 50 or so, making it one of the largest centres for boot making in the country.

Local manufacturers made football boots for England’s 1966 World Cup winning team, and ice skates for former olympic and world champion ice dancers Torvill and Dean. “But manufacturing is almost invisible now,” the 73-year-old, curator of the Kingswood Heritage Museum, tells the Cable. “There’s only one or two companies that actually make things.”

He says the decline of the town’s industry and, later, its high street, means what was once a buzzing and lively place to live is becoming something of a “dormitory” for home-workers: “It isn’t the same as when I was growing up. Everyone gets their stuff from the supermarket, and that’s wiped out all these family businesses that made Kingswood what it was.”

And the Bristol-South Gloucestershire border town is about to undergo another radical makeover, at least politically. Kingswood voters will at this year’s general election find themselves going to the polls in one of four new constituencies – with their current one set to disappear altogether under boundary changes being made to the political map of the UK.

The area’s local MP, Tory minister Chris Skidmore, has also disappeared – he stepped down over the government’s climate plan – triggering a by-election in the constituency where the winner will hold their seat for only a matter of months before it is erased. You might ask: who would fight for a prize that will be so short lived, or even, who would bother voting?

Alan, like many Kingswood residents, isn’t too enthusiastic about Thursday’s vote, nor is he a fan of the boundary changes that will follow shortly after. He says tampering with the political map, as well as a lack of investment by South Gloucestershire Council in the high street and local services, is an existential threat to his home town’s identity.

Butchering the high street

On Regent Street, Kingswood’s main shopping street, we stopped Brian who’s lived in the area for 30 years. Asked how he think’s the area’s changed in that time, he says: “It’s a bit of a dump, and it’s got worse… It’s all charity shops… there’s the supermarket but that’s it. It’s rubbish.”

But what would you like to see change? “There needs to be something to bring people in, you know, make [something] more interesting than sandwich shops and takeaways… They’re supposed to be rebuilding the entire centre… They keep talking about it and never doing it.”

South Gloucestershire Council outlined its key aims for improvement to the area in a masterplan first published in May 2022. Among the proposals, which are currently up for consultation, the biggest and most ambitious are plans to improve Regent Street.

The nearby King’s Chase Shopping Centre is also set for a revamp to the tune of £5.5 million, but work on that is yet to begin. The complex is home to a Sainsbury’s, Costa Coffee, Boots, and, on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, a mobile butchers, which recently won a licensing battle with the local authority to continue operating there.

Fears for the complex were heightened with the closure of Wilko: the latest sign for the area that the high street is losing out to trends towards shopping online, eating out and going to pubs less, making the building and maintenance of a thriving town centre more challenging. But, as a local retail worker put it, there’s got to be ways to fight back against the desertion of the high street.

“People go online to buy things, they go online to socialise, and so local high streets aren’t going to be what they were in like the 60s, 70s and 80s,” says Anna Perry, co-founder and director of Share Bristol, a repair-reuse shop near Kingswood Park. “There needs to be coffee bars, nail bars… High streets have to adapt.”

Proposed upgrades to Kings Chase include a new leisure centre, cinema, and the pedestrianisation of parts of Regent Street – but there isn’t a clear timeline for the project. The authority, when it published the initial plans almost two years ago, said it was working with the community to ensure the shopping complex is full of businesses and organisations “that people want to see”.

Easier said than done, though, when there are conflicting ideas about people’s wants and needs for town centres and shopping districts. The same goes for pubs, bars and restaurants, which elsewhere in the city are at the forefront of gentrification – something Kingswood, without a Bristol Loaf, isn’t tussling with like some of its neighbours nearer the centre where house prices and rents are rising faster.

Out of touch

Here, rather than sighing at the price of their pint or posh coffee, local businesses are fighting to stay open. As Tony Tardio, who has run his shoe repair and key cutting shop on the high street for 35 years, explains: “The footfall isn’t as great as it used to be. When I first started, there used to be a market next door, where the Wetherspoons is, and on a Thursday and Saturday the place would be heaving – the car park would be full.

“When I first started, there wasn’t Longwell Green. People tend, maybe the affluent people, tend to go there as opposed to Kingswood, you know. A lot of older people come here, for charity shops mainly,” Tony adds. “I’m still open, but I’m doing half of what I was doing about 12 years ago,” he says, adding that this has something to do with a competitor – a chain he didn’t want to mention the name of – opening nearby.

“It’s a throwaway society, so for me personally, I don’t think the good old days will come back. I’ve got to be happy with it, just ticking over and making a moderate living,” says Tony.

Bristol burr or London twang?

Heritage museum volunteer Alan says the boundary changes are going to further damage his home town’s identity. Previous boundary changes in 2010 saw the consistency, a former mining community with strong working class roots, take in the leafier, more Tory areas of Hanham and Bitten.

Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg is set to stand in the newly drawn up North East Somerset seat, which will include parts of the Kingswood constituency area. “He doesn’t know what Kingswood is. He doesn’t know what Warmley is, and being who he is, he probably doesn’t care,” Alan says of the former Leader of the House of Commons, who divides his time between a 17th-century mansion in Somerset and a £5.6 million townhouse in Westminster.

Rees-Mogg was out on the campaign trail with the Conservative candidate in the Kingswood by-election, Sam Bromley, who is the leader of the Conservative group at South Gloucestershire Council. He’s defending the seat following the resignation of Skidmore, who last time out, in 2019, secured a healthy majority of about 11,000.

His competitor, Labour candidate Damien Egan, grew up in Kingswood but cut his teeth in politics as mayor of south-east London borough Lewisham. It’s a job he stepped down from to launch his campaign here. He’s also been chosen by his party as the candidate for the new Bristol North East seat, which will include Kingswood, beating Bristol mayor Marvin Rees in the contest.

Egan told the Guardian he wasn’t expecting to run in the by-election but that he’s really excited about it. “I grew up in Kingswood. I really know the area. Once you’re on the streets, you get the feeling you have the chance to give a voice to those people you grew up with,” he told the newspaper.

The Labour candidate has, on social media and then in news articles by other local media, been accused of putting on a Bristol accent in his campaign video for the campaign. Whether voters give a shit about how he sounds remains to be seen. But if he wins, will he spend his short time in power trying to save Kingswood high street, or will it suffer the same fate as the constituency he’s standing in and become extinct?

Two massive high street names are opening at Kingswood's Kings Chase Shopping Centre. British bakery chain Greggs will be opening today (Thursday, April 25) next to Billings Pharmacy, in the site of the former New Look store.

The latest addition to the retail park will house a large seating area, allowing customers to eat in once they've picked up a sausage roll or other baked good. New Look closed after decades at the popular shopping spot in Regent Street, back in summer 2023.

Another popular brand set to open at Kings Chase is B&M, with signage already in place and recruitment ongoing. According to a post from the shopping centre on Facebook yesterday, the new store is scheduled to open its doors on June 14 and "the team are working very hard to get the store up and running".

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B&M will be located on the site of the former Wilko branch. Store front signage reads: "Your new B&M store is coming soon. We can't wait to meet you!"

Wilko in the South Gloucestershire town's centre was among the many which shut last year, closing for the final time on October 3. It has been empty since.

Last year Kingswood shoppers spoke to Bristol Live about how the loss of Wilko, which had been a key anchor store in the shopping centre, would be a "huge loss" for the town centre. The centre itself is set to get a £5.5million upgrade as part of a £25million masterplan for the town, but some people have questioned the pace of improvements almost two years since that plan was unveiled.

Taking to social media to share their thoughts on the news of the new openings, one shopper commented: "This has already made my day!" While a second said: "Christmas sorted" and a third wrote: "It's a date for the diary".

New additions to the town's indoor market have also brought hope for the town's high street. Previously South Gloucestershire Council said it is currently in the process of reviewing all of the comments to a public consultation on town centre improvements, and expects to share the results and next steps in 'early summer 2024'.

A homeowner in Kingswood has been ordered by South Gloucestershire Council to change the colour of walls on a granny annexe. Neighbours living next to the annexe complained it was built “considerably larger” than the original plans, and wanted the structure rebuilt and made smaller.

The annexe was built in a garden on Court Road and the outside walls are black. Its owner will now have to change the colour of the walls to white, as per the approved plans. But they have been given retrospective permission to keep the extra large size of the annexe.

Planning permission was originally granted in 2020 for a smaller annexe. Councillors on the development management committee granted approval for the larger size on Thursday, April 11, after hearing from residents that windows on the annexe look straight into their kitchen.

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Matt Campbell, a local resident, said: “The wall of the building is just 68 centimetres from the fence, whereas the drawings stated it would be 94 centimetres. We feel this is overdevelopment and should be constructed as previously approved. The annexe can now look directly into our garden and our kitchen.”

The length of the building has increased by 75 centimetres to 9.5 metres, while the width has decreased by 15 centimetres to 4.5 metres, according to a planning report. A condition on the retrospective permission orders the homeowner to change the colour within three months.

Conservative Councillor June Bamford said: “I don’t have a great problem with this. The actual building is slightly longer, but in one area it’s a little bit smaller. Originally it should have been white rendering, but they’ve done it in black. I’ve got no problems with the black, but at the end of the day they haven’t built it as was originally granted.”

Councillors on the committee voted to approve permission with seven votes in favour and two against. A fence dividing the garden will also need to be removed, within a month.

If you've been keeping a close attention to recent news this week you may have noticed that there's been a by-election in a Bristol suburb that lies within South Gloucestershire. The voters in Kingswood have elected a new MP but did you know that here in Gloucestershire in the Stroud District there's a village with the same name?

Kingswood lies just off the edge of the Cotswolds close to the market town of Wotton-Under-Edge. The two locations are near enough connected to each other and it's clear that if you walk to the top of the nearby Tyndale Monument or Wotton Hill you'll get a decent view not just of the Severn estuary but also Wotton and Kingswood combined.

The village is relatively small and does have your usual amenities such as a pub, a shop, a gym and a church that recently celebrated a tercentenary. At the bottom of the High Street, which isn't your usual High Street full of shops, there's a fantastic piece of history with the Kingswood Abbey Gatehouse which was founded by 12th century Cistercian monks and dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1538.

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But what about the people who live in the village? Is it confusing to have another place called Kingswood almost 20 miles away near Bristol?

For Tom Foxwell as landlord of the Village Inn pub, he says having two Kingswood's close together is something villagers have just got used to. "I set up a football team here separate from the pub, a local women's team, and at first everyone did think it was Kingswood in Bristol. You're just used to it", Tom says.

No postal delivery mistakes, nothing like that has really happened in Tom's experience but talking about the village he has lived in all his life, Tom says Kingswood 'is everything'. He adds: "A lot of people come here to the pub to gather so unless you're travelling out of the village, we're the sort of place to come to and we're a very close knit community."

Close knit is exactly the right word as next door you have Kingswood Village Stores where Tom's mum Jacqui Foxwell runs the shop with Teresa McCorkell. Since 2017 they've been serving customers where you do see regular faces come in and out. Speaking to them together, the big talking point for why they both like Kingswood is because the village "has quite a big community spirit."

Teresa said: "I think of when the kids were growing up and they were out and about, you always know somebody nearby and looking out for each other." Jacqui said: "The amount of people that do get confused with the two Kingswood's has seen someone before asking directions but I feel more Gloucestershire than South Gloucestershire."

Sally Harries is chair of the Kingswood Village Association, which organises a variety of events in the village such as Open Gardens, Showday, a Christmas Wine Festival and the New Year's Eve Senior Citizens lunch. Putting on events in the village certainly brings lots of people together she says.

"This is a community. Everyone really supports each other and when I moved here I knew absolutely nobody but being the chair for five years I've seen how much the community really looks after others. It is always lovely to know that you can walk up the road and just say hello to villagers," Sally says.