Lib Dem win in Richmond Park could change government's Brexit policy, says Farron - Politics live

• The Liberal Democrats secured a stunning byelection victory to unseat Zac Goldsmith by convincing up to a third of leave-supporting Tory voters to switch to the party, Tim Farron has claimed, adding that the outcome could “change the direction of British politics”. The Lib Dems overturned a 23,000 majority on Thursday to remove the former Conservative MP in a vote that became a de facto plebiscite on the government’s Brexit plans. Sarah Olney, the winning Lib Dem candidate, took a fraction under 50% of the entire vote to record a majority of 1,872. Large numbers of local Labour voters backed her, with the Labour candidate, Christian Wolmar, losing his deposit.

• Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader, has used an article in the Evening Standard to say that the Conservatives could lose more elections if they do not change their stance on Brexit.

So that is really the lesson of last night for Theresa May: she is the prime minister for the whole of the United Kingdom, not just for her party or the hardest of hard Brexiteers. She must reach out, urgently, to those millions of people who simply do not share the worldview of Farage, Gove and Fox. Yes, the Brexiteers won on June 23 — but with victory comes magnanimity and responsibility. It is now Theresa May’s duty to show a bit of both. Otherwise Richmond may turn out to be the first of many election upsets.

• Downing Street has said the byelection result will not stop the government delivering Brexit. A Number 10 spokesman said:

We had an election and we had a referendum. The referendum result was very clear and the majority of the country expressed an opinion for us to leave the EU. The message from the British people was loud and clear on June 23 that there is a desire for us to leave the EU. The government is getting on with delivering that.

Asked whether the result might make the prime minister reconsider her decision not to hold a second EU referendum, the spokesman replied: “No.” Earlier today the Conservative party said the result “doesn’t change anything” in relation to government policy over Brexit or Heathrow.

• Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has paid tribute to Zac Goldsmith, the former Richmond Park MP. Goldsmith “made a remarkable contribution” to the Commons, Johnson said.

He was heroic and principled in standing up for what he believes in on Heathrow expansion. He will be missed but he will certainly be back.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

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The Liberal Democrats’ newest MP walked out of a live radio interview after being given a grilling over her position on Brexit, the Press Association reports.

Sarah Olney, who ousted former Tory Zac Goldsmith in the Richmond Park by-election, disappeared off air just three minutes into the Talk Radio broadcast.

The premature exit came after tricky questioning by presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer on her calls for a referendum on the terms of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

She said: “Voters knew what they were voting for in your by-election, they knew what they were voting for in the EU referendum. Why do we think that one election should be re-run and one shouldn’t?”

Olney said the terms of Brexit had not been clear during the referendum and it had been a vote on the departure rather than the destination.

“There was no clear manifesto for what happened to our membership of the single market or what happened to freedom of movement,” she said.

Hartley-Brewer replied: “Every single leading member of the remain campaign said a vote to leave the EU was a vote to leave the single market. Nothing unclear about that at all.”

After a few seconds of silence, an unnamed aide stepped in and told the presenter: “I’m really sorry but Sarah has to leave now.”

Hartley-Brewer said the MP “should be able to answer some simple questions” about her policy and asked for her to be put back on air but was told Olney had another interview to attend.

“If she doesn’t want to answer questions from a radio station perhaps she is not fit to be an MP”, the presenter added.

I’ve already posted three Guardian analysis pieces about the byelection, by Dave Hill (see 8.40am), by Anushka Asthana (see 10.35am) and by me (see 9.23am.)

Here are five more analysis articles that are worth reading.

• Jeremy Cliffe from the Economist says the real loser at the byelection was Labour.

The outgoing MP may be a Conservative (until recently, at least). But the loser was Labour. The party took 3.7% of votes, down from 12.3% last year, and lost its deposit. It obtained fewer votes (1,515) than it has members in the seat (it claims over 1,600). That may reflect tactical voting: left-wing voters lending support to the Ms Olney. But it also speaks to Labour’s lacklustre voice on Europe (notwithstanding the wise appointment of Sir Keir Starmer as its Brexit spokesman) and general funk.

And it speaks to a wider structural evolution. Three or four years ago, with UKIP on the rise and the Lib Dems in power with the Tories, the talk was of the fragmentation of the right of British politics. That period seems to have passed. The 2015 election saw the Conservatives consume the Lib Dems’ centrist flank. The Brexit vote and Theresa May’s nationalist tilt has attracted back some Tory defectors to UKIP (hence her party now routinely exceeds 40% in polls).

Today the fragmentation is more on the left. Particularly under Paul Nuttall, its statist new leader, UKIP is now overwhelmingly a problem for Labour; especially in the sort of post-industrial areas that have long voted for the party but strongly supported Brexit.

• But Andy McSmith on his blog says the byelection result says nothing about the state of the Labour party.

In Newbury, in May 1993, when the voters amassed behind a Lib Dem to keep out a Tory, Labour ran a member of its head office staff as the candidate and sent in Peter Mandelson to plan the campaign, and harvested just 2% of the vote (compared with 3.7% in Richmond Park). It was, to put it mildly, not an accurate pointer to what might happen at the 1997 general election.

The significance of yesterday’s vote is that the electorate in a heavily pro-EU constituency were given a one-off chance to rid themselves of their pro-Brexit MP, and seized it. The result says nothing, one way or the other, about the Labour Party’s uncertain future.

• Helen Lewis at the New Statesman says the outcome was worrying for both main parties.

The result in Richmond will make many in Labour and the Conservative party nervous. For Tories who won their seats from Lib Dems in 2015, this is a sign that there is a small but significant block of voters for whom Brexit is a motivating issue. (Nearly three-quarters of voters in Richmond voted Remain.) For Labour, the concern is that a political discussion polarised around pro/anti-Brexit lines leaves them out of the picture - as has happened in Scotland, where the narrative is framed around independence/unionism.

• John Rentoul at the Independent says the byelection result increases the chances of Brexit being delayed.

What a sensational, media-saturated by-election does, though, is change the atmosphere, especially in the House of Lords. If the supreme court rules in January that parliament must vote on article 50, it will have to go through both Houses. Until this morning, the Lords would have felt bound by the referendum. Now there is evidence that the will of the people is not as clear-cut as the prime minister insists it is.

The House of Lords is still unlikely to delay article 50. Angela Smith, the leader of the Labour peers, has said they will not obstruct it. But a few more Paleo-European peers in all parties and on the cross benches may be emboldened, and if anything else happens before the bill is tabled they may be more emboldened still.

• Ian Warren at Election Data says Richmond Park is a very unusual constituency because it is dominated by two groups: stable, wealthy over 40s in professional occupations and younger professionals in high-end privately rented accommodation.

This is from Ipsos MORI’s Ben Page.

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, has told LBC that Theresa May has now effectively become the leader of Ukip. He said:

There is no point in Ukip now because Theresa May has become the leader of Ukip. They’ve taken that right-wing extreme view on Brexit. Something that most people who voted leave I think don’t actually agree with.

The academic Rob Ford has been tweeting about the size of the swing in Richmond Park.

Chuka Umunna, the former shadow business secretary, has told the Evening Standard that he has no time for politicians, like the Lib Dems, who are calling for a second referendum on the EU. He told the paper:

I really have no time for calls for a second referendum because I think it comes across as disrespectful to those who voted to leave. Those calls reinforce what I feel is a false stereotype — of a bunch of people in London who think they know best.

Labour is not calling for a second referendum, but Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, recently refused to rule one out.

Grant Shapps, a former Conservative chairman, has criticised his party’s decision not to put up a candidate against Zac Goldsmith in Richmond Park.

This chart, from James Kanagasooriam from Populus, indicates which Conservative seats might be vulnerable to tactic voting by aggrieved remain supporters. (They’re the seats above the blue line.)

Zac Goldsmith’s brother Ben has been tweeting about the result this morning.

The Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn points out that Goldsmith deleted a rather coarser version of this in the early hours of the morning.

The Conservative MP Anna Soubry, a staunch remain supporter, has welcomed the Richmond Park result.