The Liberal Democrats’ victory in the Richmond Park byelection could place the party back on the road to significant gains in the House of Commons, according to one of the country’s leading psephologists.



Prof John Curtice said Sarah Olney’s defeat of Zac Goldsmith was not simply an indirect loss for the Conservative party but also ought to worry Labour, which he described as a “fragile creature” that had taken another blow.

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He suggested the outcome showed voters were “beginning to forgive the coalition” and warned that Labour, while right to be worried by the Ukip threat, must also appeal to the much larger socially liberal spectrum of potential voters. He said Jeremy Corbyn’s party had more socially liberal supporters than socially conservative ones.

“This gives the Liberal Democrats the opportunity to get back into the general election game,” the academic at Strathclyde University told the Guardian.

“It’s not going to put them in a position to be the next government but it potentially puts them back on to the road to securing significant representation in the House of Commons once again.”

He said it could be comparable with the party’s 1990 Eastbourne byelection victory, which came off the back of disastrous polling but led to a solid performance in the 1992 general election. “Do we see them go into double figures for Liberal Democrats?” he asked about the national polls.

Curtice admitted that the Richmond byelection, in a leafy suburb of south-west London, had come in “propitious” circumstances for the Lib Dems as it was a deeply pro-European seat and Brexit-supporting Goldsmith had stood as an independent, without the backing of a party machine.

He also pointed out that from 1979 until 2010 the Liberal Democrats had held more than 40% of the local vote, and that it had only properly collapsed last year in line with the rest of the country.

But he argued that the victory underlined the fact that Tim Farron’s party had the ability to exploit such circumstances and reverse the post-coalition collapse. That could boost the party in its key south-west target seats, he added, despite heftier support for Brexit in that area.

Curtice said the party had tapped into a “niche market” of around half of remain supporters who were still deeply upset about the Brexit decision, but said it was a part of the electorate that the Lib Dems were “ready to exploit”. He described the typical potential Lib Dem voter as socially liberal and a university graduate.

And that, he argued, should worry Labour, which had been very focused on the Ukip threat but had another concern to contend with.

“If I were the Labour party I would be worried if the Lib Dems are back in the game. Labour is worrying about losing the socially conservative end of the coalition, but they forget that it is smaller than the socially liberal end.”

He suggested Labour’s nervousness about respecting the Brexit vote wasn’t necessarily in line with its current electorate.

“Everyone is going around with an outdated vision of what a typical Labour voter is about. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of Labour supporters [in 2015] voted remain.”

He said Labour had lost working-class voters, who had once not voted but could now turn to Ukip. He suggested the problem pre-dated Corbyn and Ed Miliband, and the party still had hefty majorities in the northern seats where many of those voters lived. People rightly saw Labour as a “fragile creature”, he said.

“The nightmare scenario is that while Paul Nuttall [the Ukip leader] mobilises people at the other end of the spectrum, the Lib Dems eat at the socially liberal vote.”

He said Labour was struggling to persuade people that it could run the economy and had people on its frontbench who were ready for government.

“The Labour party is hanging from a tree like a ripe apple – the question is whether it will be knocked down by the number of stones that hit it, and Richmond is another potential stone.”

The threat has led to a number of Labour MPs, including the shadow business secretary, Clive Lewis, the shadow City minister, Jonathan Reynolds, and Lisa Nandy, to call for the party to work in alliance with other progressive candidates.

Neal Lawson, the chair of Compass, the pressure group behind the idea, threw his support behind the Greens and the Women’s Equality party stepping aside for Olney in Richmond.

“The Tories, Ukip and the candidate they supported lost because progressive parties and people worked together. If can happen in Richmond, it can happen everywhere,” he said.

However, the idea is unpopular among many Labour MPs who criticised their colleagues and supported their Richmond Park candidate, Christian Wolmar, who did so badly that he lost his deposit.