Dare we hope that we’re seeing the last of the nasty parties?

Gen Kitchen (it’s a name, not a movement…) won her by-election by putting the nice back in politics, says Pravina Rudra, but the surprising – and encouraging – thing is she is not alone

Generation X-in-the-box: Gen Kitchen (left), the new 28-year-old Wellingborough MP, with campaign coordinator Ellie Reeves, after Labour’s by-election win (AFP/Getty)

When Gen Kitchen, the new Labour MP for Wellingborough and Rushden, was asked to comment on the Tories having chosen the girlfriend of disgraced former incumbent, Peter Bone, to run against her in yesterday’s by-election, she said: “I’m not one to judge a woman by who she ties herself to, and I think Helen [Harrison] is very competent in her own right.”

She also claimed that Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, which came in third, “ran a very slick campaign”, and that she’d “commend them on their campaigning”.

If Gen Kitchen sounds like a parody moniker for a new, soft-hearted Gen-Z leftie, perhaps that’s because she is.

To unwind on the campaign trail, the 28-year-old – who overturned a huge majority of more than 18,500 in what was once a Conservative stronghold – made friendship bracelets, with beads spelling out Taylor Swift song lyrics. Even the former Tory party leader of the local council endorsed her as constituents voted her in on a swing of 28.5 per cent, Wellingborough’s second biggest since 1945.

And she’s not the only one making a play of putting the nice back in politics: today, the sight of Labour’s well-groomed millennial Damien Egan kissing his boyfriend after winning the Kingswood by-election embodied the MP’s youthfulness to LGBTQ+ commentators; many can remember a time when such inclinations had to be well hidden.

It’s thanks to these two glossy, young, decent politicos that the government has lost more by-elections than any other since the 1960s – causing pundits to put their money firmly on Keir Starmer to take No 10.

There may be some truth in Egan’s victory speech suggestion that his Tory opponents ran “a very nasty, negative campaign”. But more notable is the love lost between Conservative members over these by-elections: sounding like bitchy high-schoolers, Tory sources suggested last night that Bone had been a “major drag” on his girlfriend’s campaign.

It’s almost too neat a metaphor for a larger political reckoning that sprightly Kitchen replaced 71-year-old Bone – who had been suspended by his party after accusations he exposed himself to a male aide and bullied his staff, claims he has denied but which, in the run-up to the by-election, remained a focus of local gossip.

Such behaviour isn’t just bad, it’s a bit of a passe cliche in these times: since 2019, eight male Tory MPs have lost the whip over sexual misconduct, from the unfortunately named Chris Pincher to the man who introduced us to the concept of tractor porn, Neil Parish.

After the 2019 Tory landslide, it was thought that the fresh-faced MPs elected along the red wall were the country’s future. But now 30-year-old Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) and 29-year-old Nicola Richards (West Bromwich) have said they will not be seeking re-election. Meanwhile, in recent months, Labour has seen Keir Mather, 25, elected as MP for Selby and Ainsty and 33-year-old Alistair Strathern chosen as the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, while 35-year-old Sarah Edwards now represents Pincher’s old seat of Tamworth.

Earlier this week, the spectre of antisemitism threatened to come back to haunt Labour, following comments made by Azhar Ali and Graham Jones, candidates since dropped in Rochdale and Hyndburn. In the end, the nastiness didn’t cling. But somehow, the Tories have been besmirched in the process.

Yesterday, the Conservative Party Twitter/X account was condemned after posting a Sky News clip of Sadiq Khan saying Labour was “proud to be both anti-racist and antisemitic”; it lopped off his subsequent and immediate self-correction: “tackling antisemitism…”.

This follows Sunak’s increasingly snippy public demeanour, which peaked last week in a tawdry rollout of the customary anti-trans jibe against Labour on the day Brianna Ghey’s mother was visiting the Houses of Parliament. In August last year, David Lidlington, Theresa May’s deputy prime minister, forewarned of the Tories’ “nasty party” reputation returning over Rwanda and threats to leave the ECHR.

Why should we care about any of this? Good manners and being nice won’t win Labour the election – only the economy can do that, as per government opponents bandying around the phrase “Rishi’s recession” over the last 24 hours.

But it’s telling that Labour no longer feels the need to indulge in the sort of vulgar ads it infamously launched a year ago, accusing Sunak of letting paedophiles go unpunished. Ungraciousness, after all, usually arises from a feeling of insecurity.

The Tories’ by-election behaviour merely confirms our worst suspicions about their electoral prospects. Let’s hope Labour doesn’t follow their race to the bottom once the starting gun is fired.