Wellingborough by-election result: Gen Kitchen, 28, takes seat for Labour for first time since 2005

Labour has won the seat of Wellingborough for the first time since Tony Blair was Prime Minister, spelling major trouble for Rishi Sunak come the general election.

It appears the party has completely shrugged off the label of Remain that Boris Johnson exploited in 2019. Wellingborough voted 63% in favour of Brexit, yet Remainer Gen Kitchen, 28, will be returned as the Northamptonshire constituency's new MP after Thursday's by-election.

Kitchen first became a councillor aged just 22 and now become one of Westminster's youngest MPs, overturning a Tory majority in 2019 of 18,540. Labour secured a massive swing, with Kitchen getting 13,844 votes - a majority of 6,436 and a swing of 29%.

She said: "I take my responsibility to every single constituent very, very seriously. Whether you voted for my party, another party or no party at all. I will serve you and work to earn your trust again. The Labour Party is ready to serve the people of this country and so many people across the constituency."

Kitchen started trying to represent the community before she was elected MP. She organised meetings with community leaders and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to discuss knife crime and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting to talk about the NHS.

She told previously NationalWorld: "There’s not a lot of trust in politicians, that comes up quite a lot. It’s something you really have to battle - I’m trying to earn people’s votes by doing the work now. Nothing works, people have this feeling like nothing works - and that’s the pervasive thing."

She said that her priorities are dealing with potholes, tackling knife crime and regenerating Wellingborough's High Street "making the town centre somewhere that people want to hang out and spend their money in".

Kitchen defeated Conservative Helen Harrison, former Peter MP Bone's girlfriend. Bone had the whip stripped after Parliament’s Independent Expert Panel (IEP) found he “committed many varied acts of bullying and one act of sexual misconduct” against a member of his staff in 2012 and 2013. Bone denied the allegations saying the claims were "false and untrue" and “without foundation”, however MPs voted to suspend him from the Commons for six weeks and a recall petition has led to the by-election.

Harrison previously said that the allegations against Bone are "untrue" and described the situation as "a deeply unpleasant process". She received 7,408 votes in what was previously a Tory stronghold.

Reform UK, Richard Tice's anti-immigration party, had its best showing in an election. Ultra-Brexiteer Ben Habib won 3,919 votes - more than half of the Tories.

This will seriously concern Sunak and the Tories as this was the biggest indication so far of how Reform can erode disaffected Conservative voters. Tice has pledged to stand a candidate in every seat in Great Britain, however this will likely mainly benefit Labour.

The Wellingborough victory is the latest by-election result which shows Labour's clear path to power at the next election. Along with this morning's win in Kingswood, South Gloucestershire, this means the government has clocked up more by-election losses in a single parliament than any administration since the 1960s.

Conservative deputy chairman Luke Hall had previously tried to reduce expectations for his party. Earlier in the night, he told the BBC: “By-elections are always difficult for governing parties. Tony Blair lost by-elections, David Cameron lost by-elections, and then went on to win majorities and actually increase their share of the vote at the next general election.

“So I think we should be careful about reading too much into any specific by-election result because a lot of different factors are at play."

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.