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# In having nothing to say about Rishi Sunak, new Tory MP Steve Tuckwell said it all
- URL: https://www.europeans.today/2023/07/23/in-having-nothing-to-say-about-rishi-sunak-new-tory-mp-steve-tuckwell-said-it-all/
- Published: 2023-07-23T00:35:00.000Z
- Updated: 2023-07-23T22:49:32.000Z
- Description: Some people, like Britain’s prime minister, have hideously good luck.
- Author: Rashmee Roshan Lall
- Tags: COMMENT, Conservative Party, Tories, Rishi Sunak, UK General Election, United Kingdom, UK Politics, Ultra Low Emissions Zone (Ulez), Sadiq Khan, Steve Tuckwell

### Some people, like Britain’s prime minister, have hideously good luck.

R ishi Sunak seems to have hideously good luck. 

  
For instance, he became prime minister but only **after** Liz Truss and Boris Johnson had made a ruinous mess of the Conservative government and Britain’s reputational status worldwide. As of this week, Mr Sunak’s hideous good luck took on yet another human form – a man named Steve Tuckwell.

Mr Tuckwell is a newly elected member of parliament belonging to Mr Sunak’s Conservative Party. On July 20, he managed to hold on to former prime minister Johnson’s parliamentary seat – Uxbridge and South Ruislip – by less than 500 votes. It was a win for the Conservatives, their only one of the three parliamentary byelections held in the UK on the same day.

> [ ](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cu8x-Uxt7o9/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
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All three seats started out on election day as solid Conservative constituencies. By the next morning, two of them – Selby and Ainsty and Somerton and Frome – had switched from Conservative to Labour and the Liberal Democrats with a **24 per cent** and a **29 per cent** swing respectively.

To many, Mr Tuckwell embodies good luck for Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak. In actual fact, he could be said to signal the opposite.

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In his victory speech, Mr Tuckwell attributed his election success to… London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan. He particularly credited Mr Khan’s controversial and polarising *Ultra Low Emission Zone* scheme (ULEZ) for his stunning success on election day. “This area doesn’t want a ULEZ,” Mr Tuckwell declared, and he appealed, in a faintly threatening way, to Labour leader Keir Starmer and Mayor Khan to listen to the people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

Not a word did Mr Tuckwell say about Rishi Sunak, his party leader and prime minister; no obeisance did he pay to Mr Sunak’s five pledges as the captain of the ship of state; he seemed utterly oblivious to Mr Sunak’s laborious and painful task of steering the hulking government, in choppy waters and with an enervated and washed-up Conservative Party crew that has been in power for 13 years.

Mr Tuckwell’s verdict on Mr Sunak was stunningly direct – he ignored his party’s leader and prime minister. In having nothing to say about Rishi Sunak, the newest Tory MP said it all.

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### **Sources:**

##### ▪ **Text:** This piece was originally published in [Medium](https://www.rashmee.com/2023/07/22/rishi-sunak-steve-tuckwell-byelection-snub-boris-seat/?ref=europeans.today) and re-published in PMP Magazine on 23 July 2023, with the author’s consent. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

##### ▪ **Cover:** Flickr/[The Conservative Party](https://www.flickr.com/photos/conservativeparty/53061032254/?ref=europeans.today). (Licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/?ref=europeans.today).)

![Creative Commons License](https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png "Cover photograph license")

  
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