West Lancashire by-election sets early test for Liz Truss

New PM will have to prove her claim to be a vote-winner for the Conservatives as Kate Devlin explains

After the calm, the storm.

Liz Truss has had a rollercoaster start to her time as prime minister. At one point during the summer it appeared as if the Tory leadership contest might stretch on forever. Even her victory was delayed as she was only allowed to officially enter Downing Street as PM more than 24 hours after she was declared the winner over her rival Rishi Sunak.

Yet within days she was in the Commons announcing one of the most expensive packages in peacetime history – to save the country from soaring energy prices this winter. Even as she did that it emerged that the Queen was gravely ill and within hours the world’s eyes were on the UK. Now that the official period of mourning is over Truss is in New York at a United Nations summit, and at home her government is preparing to announce a series of measures designed to help the struggling economy.

What the prime minister could hardly have expected was to also face a by-election in a seat held by Labour. The party’s Rosie Cooper announced that she was standing down after 17 years at Westminster.

The move will focus attention, perhaps unhelpfully, on whether or not Truss is a vote winner for the Conservatives. That, of course, was one of her claims during the early days of the leadership campaign.

The Conservatives will not be expected to take the seat of West Lancashire, where Cooper has a majority of more than 8,000. Labour gained the constituency from the Conservatives in 1992 and it is firmly in the red wall that Keir Starmer’s Labour will be looking to hold. As one Tory MP said today: “If we did not take it in 2019 [when the party took dozens of extra seats across the country] we won’t win it now.” But many Conservative MPs will be nervously eyeing the Tory performance, nonetheless.

It will not take much for Truss to do better than her predecessor. By the end of his time in office, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives were losing seats with majorities of more than 20,000. But the West Lancashire result will still be a test. Will potential Tory voters like what they see of Truss? Will they forgive her for standing by Johnson during the Partygate scandal? And what will the result say about Truss’s ability to keep ahold of the keys to Downing Street, now that she has finally won them?