Labour has won the Wakefield by-election to regain the West Yorkshire seat it lost to the Conservatives at the 2019 General Election. Simon Lightwood defeated Tory candidate Nadeem Ahmed by 4,925 votes in the poll to overturn a majority of 3,358.
The vote followed the resignation of ex-Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan, who was jailed in May for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008. Mr Lightwood received 13,166 votes in total, with Mr Ahmed taking 8,241.
The victory signifies Labour’s first by-election gain since Corby in 2012. Prior to Khan’s election in 2019, the Wakefield constituency had been held by Labour since the early 1930s. Minutes after the declaration in Wakefield, the Liberal Democrats took Tiverton and Honiton in Devon from the Conservatives, overturning a majority of more than 24,000.
