Had the Tories lost Uxbridge this morning (only 495 votes in it), the government and liberal media would have shouted ‘long Boris’ and unleashed a salvo of blame on the former Prime Minister via unattributed briefings. Sunak would have been the first Prime Minister since 1968 to lose three simultaneous by-elections, and he would have done what he usually does – blamed his predecessor. This narrative had been lined up, ready to go, by Steve Brine – who when asked on Westminster Hour whether he expected the Tories to lose in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, replied: “Yeah – it’s another bit of what I call ‘long Boris’, isn’t it?” Awkwardly, the only place the Tories won was in Boris’s old seat, so this doesn’t quite work…

The fact the Conservatives clung on by their fingernails in Uxbridge has denied the Sunak camp the chance to blame Johnson for the party’s overall performance. The massive losses in Somerton and Selby are squarely at Sunak’s door. The Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election turned out to be a referendum on Sadiq Khan, not on Boris Johnson – despite the commentariat’s usual hand wringing and incorrect predictions that voters would punish the Conservatives. The Privileges Committee had zero relevance – voters cared about Khan’s insane ULEZ charge and punished Labour instead…

This shows that where there is a real world, salient issue on which the Conservatives can actually be conservative and oppose Labour, they can still win. The Conservatives did not run on Sunak’s five pledges in Uxbridge – they ran a disciplined single issue campaign against a hated Labour mayor. The problem is, issues like ULEZ are highly localised and in very short supply nationally. Canvassers encountered plenty of residual support for the former Prime Minister in the seat. This result will make it impossible for Johnson’s opponents to argue that he is a seat loser who shouldn’t eventually be re-selected. So much for ‘long Boris’…