Party strategists will be concerned that Reform UK managed to post double-digit vote shares in both Kingswood and Wellingborough. But the mortal danger is Labour, and Conservatives cannot afford to forget it.
Despite not being from Southampton, Yankson claims to have a third of a century’s worth of experience there, having first visited when a student at Durham University.
As Conservative group leader on South Gloucestershire council, our candidate knows the local issues that matter to residents, chiefly the prospect of 6,000 new homes being built on the Green Belt.
We continue our post-match inspection of our battleground profiles with the Liberal Democrat graveyard of the South West.
It’s very tight indeed in these constituencies, but Ed Miliband’s party has the edge in these local campaigns on the basis of this evidence.
The second piece in our series explores the intense struggles across the South West of England.
It is a party with no prospect of any majority in the House of Commons, which cannot and will not change a word of legislation – and will put in grave peril the real progress we have made since 2019.