These were awful results for the Conservatives, among their worst by-election defeats since 1945.
The biggest collapse took place in Tiverton and Honiton. The outcome there establishes a new record: the largest Conservative percentage majority overturned in a by-election.
It replaces Shropshire North in the top spot, confounding Tories who mistakenly thought that things couldn’t get worse after that mauling.
Reaction as PM suffers by-election defeats and party chair quits – live updates
The swing to the Liberal Democrats in Tiverton is 29.9%. Not the worst, with the catastrophe that was the Christchurch by-election still heading the list.
But this latest result becomes the sixth-worst swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats and its predecessors in the post-war era.
Comparisons with by-election turnarounds during the Conservatives’ slow-motion advance to disaster at the 1997 general election are certain to concentrate the minds of its MPs…
