Enjoy your victory, Sir Keir – the really bad news is you’re heading to No 10

Yes, the Labour leader can celebrate his by-election triumphs but the spectre of Rochdale still hangs over him – and the worst is yet to come: the all-too-real prospect of being in power, writes John Rentoul

Unfortunately for Starmer’s ‘no complacency’ message, his shadow cabinet are unlikely to be taken in by such extravagant pessimism – even if pessimism is something they have grown used to over the years (PA Wire)

Even if we take Keir Starmer at his word and assume that Labour is serious about refusing to be complacent about the general election, it is now hard to see what is going to prevent him from taking office with a decent parliamentary majority by the end of the year.

Starmer can try to play down the significance of Thursday’s double by-election win. The second-best ever swing to Labour from the Conservatives in Wellingborough, 29 per cent, was a freak result, he could say, because the local Tories chose the girlfriend of the disgraced former MP as their candidate.

Look at Kingswood, he could say. There, the swing to Labour was a merely respectable 16 per cent. Go and read Peter Kellner, he could tell his shadow ministers. The former president of YouGov said: “Labour’s two victories were far more the product of Conservative weakness than Labour strength.” In Kingswood, Labour didn’t do as well as it did in other by-elections last year: Selby (24 per cent swing), Tamworth (24 per cent) and even Mid Beds (21 per cent), where it was fighting off a strong Liberal Democrat challenge.