Tory By-Election Humiliation Shows Badenoch’s Party Is Running Out of Road

A local by-election result in Swansea has exposed just how deep the Conservative crisis now runs. This was not a routine defeat: the Tories were defending the seat and still collapsed from first place to fifth, losing around three quarters of their vote. Michael Heaver looks at what this result says about Kemi Badenoch’s leadership and the wider decline of the Conservative Party. He points out that when Badenoch became leader, the Tories led Labour by two points and Reform by ten. Since then, Reform has surged, Labour has fallen, and the Conservatives have suffered the biggest decline of all. After huge local election losses, Scottish and Welsh Parliament setbacks, and now a humiliating by-election collapse, the evidence is becoming brutal.