In a poll outcome perceived as the first electoral test of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s leadership, the Opposition Labour Party won an important byelection with an increased margin in a northwest England constituency on Friday.

Samantha Dixon retained the Chester seat for Labour with 17,309 votes, a 61 per cent share and nearly 11,000 more than her Conservative Party rival. While Labour was expected to win the seat vacated following the resignation of a scandal-hit incumbent, the bigger margin is being seen as a public vote against the governing Tories.

Labour leader Keir Starmer said the result showed people are “fed up” with the Conservative government. It marks the worst result for the Cons ervatives in Chester since 1832, with candidate Liz Wardlaw getting 6,335 votes or 22.4 per cent.

“People in Chester and across our country are really worried,” said Dixon, dubbing her win as a “resounding mandate” for Labour. “This is the cost of 12 years of the Conservative government. The government, which has wreaked havoc with our economy, destroyed our public services and betrayed the people who put their trust in them at the last general election,” she said.

Thursday’s byelection was the first to take place since Boris Johnson quit in the wake of the party gate scandal and his successor Liz Truss resigned following market turbulence caused by her mini-Budget. It is also the first byelection since a double defeat for the Conservatives in June, which saw the party lose Wakefield to Labour and Tiverton and Honiton to the Liberal Democrats. The results will be a cause of some concern for Sunak, Britain’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister who took over the Tory reins in October in the wake of a particularly tumultuous period for the party. Tory MP Andy Carter was keen to downplay the result.

“I don’t think we’re surprised at the outcome of the result tonight. We are mid-term in what has been an incredibly challenging parliamentary term on the back of Covid, a war in Ukraine where prices have shot up.”