One Labour MP says it risks becoming the ‘party of the 0%’ after falling to fourth place in Sleaford and North Hykeham byelection

Labour MPs have said they fear the party is pursuing a “0% strategy” because of the lack of clarity on Brexit, after the disappointing byelection result in Sleaford and North Hykeham in which Labour slipped from second place to fourth.

MPs said they believed the party was alienating both sides of the referendum debate by defending freedom of movement but promising to push through with leaving the EU.

Caroline Johnson, a paediatrician, held the Lincolnshire seat for the Conservatives with 17,570 votes, ahead of Victoria Ayling of Ukip, whose share of the vote fell by two percentage points from 2015.

Labour’s vote dropped by seven points and the Liberal Democrats went up by five points to take third place.

The Croydon North MP, Steve Reed, said: “Labour risks becoming the party of the 0% if we manage to upset both remainers and leavers by equivocating our position.

“There’s an urgent need for Labour to address some very fundamental quesitons now about what our party is for and who we represent, but unless we find answers quickly, it will threaten our future success.”

The byelection, in a constituency where a majority of voters backed leaving the EU, was triggered by the resignation of Stephen Phillips because of “irreconcilable policy differences” with Theresa May.

Toby Perkins, the Labour MP for Chesterfield, who campaigned in Sleaford, said the party had failed to make an impact in the constituency despite threats to Grantham’s A&E and maternity services.

“No one expected us to win either of these byelections, but we can’t ignore how disappointing these results are,” he said, referring also to last week’s Richmond Park byelection. “We had strong candidates in both cases and they deserved a better story to be able to tell than what we are currently telling.

“We have a situation, for obvious reasons, which is difficult anyway in the current climate, and there’s a real need for the party to develop a coherent position that does recognise that we’ve had the vote in the referendum, but we will set out a serious Labour plan for our future outside the EU, as a nation with a proud trading history. Clearly we have a lot of work to do.”

The Labour MP David Winnick said the result was “appalling” and blamed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

“If we were to continue in this way then the indications are 2020 will be an electoral disaster and the possibility of a Labour government very remote indeed,” he said.

“The sort of bunker mentality that seems to exist at the moment at the highest levels of the party needs to recognise what is happening in the outside world.”

Stark warning for Labour as party slips to fourth in Sleaford byelection Read more

The Labour MP Jess Phillips said the party had struggled to articulate its stance on Brexit. “When people are putting a cross in a box, clarity is everything,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“Labour needs to have a very clear position and for everybody to be saying the same thing, and at the moment that is not the case.”

Although many Labour MPs said they blamed a lack of clear leadership, they all said there was no appetite in the party for another challenge to Corbyn. “We gave the party membership the opportunity to have their say on that over the summer and we got the answer, so let’s get on with it,” one said.

Another Labour MP said: “Not even any moderate in the party has got a clear idea of what they want to say to working-class voters.”

The former chancellor George Osborne expressed concern about the result on Twitter.

George Osborne (@George_Osborne) The disintegration of the Labour Party is not good for democracy. Oppositions are meant to try to win by-elections, not slip from 2nd to 4th

Vernon Coaker, the former shadow cabinet minister and the MP for Gedling, who helped run Labour’s campaign in Sleaford and North Hykeham, said the party’s message on the EU was not getting through to voters yet.

“Jim Clarke [Labour’s candidate in the seat] and his team ran a strong campaign that they should be proud of,” he said. “The reality is that the Labour vote was squeezed by Brexit. In some ways, this felt like a bit of a referendum re-run.

“Labour’s focus on securing the best plan for Britain outside the EU, while still addressing people’s concerns about the future, is not yet cutting through. This will take more time and effort from us all at all levels of the party.”

A Labour party source said: “This was a byelection in a very safe Tory seat, which was called because a Tory MP could no longer support the direction Theresa May is taking the Conservatives and the country.”

The source said the seat was “always going to be an uphill struggle” and the party had used the byelection to campaign on important issues such as the NHS.

Sleaford proves Labour isn’t connecting with the 52% – or the 48% | John Harris Read more

“Obviously it’s not a brilliant result for Labour, we would have hoped to have done better, but this was always going to be a challenging election in a seat with no history of voting Labour,” they said.

The Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, whose party overturned a Conservative majority of 23,000 to win the Richmond Park byelection last week, said Sleaford was a strong result for the party.

“With Labour yet again nowhere and after losing their deposit in Richmond, the Liberal Democrats are the real opposition to the Conservative Brexit government,” he said.

“Even though this area voted leave, the chaos of the government’s Brexit negotiations has convinced many people that Theresa May’s hard Brexit strategy isn’t working. The Ukip vote has dropped by 5,000, as voters see that there is no need to have a Ukip MP when sadly, we effectively have a Ukip PM.”