THE ULEZ campaign won Uxbridge, not the Conservatives – says party’s deputy Chairman Lee Anderson.

Speaking to GB News, the Deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and MP for Ashfield, said the unexpected win in Uxbridge and South Ruislip had “given us a flicker of hope” but the party needs to “learn” from the ULEZ campaign.

He said: “There’s a certain course that we’re that we’re travelling on and it’s been not good for the other two by elections. But the one that we did win, it’s given us a flicker of hope, in that there was one thing that was actually campaigned on – this terrible tax, this tax on fresh air, this is this money grab from (Sadiq) Khan.

“I think we have to learn lessons from this. We all know that by elections, especially when you’re coming to the end of the Parliament, will be very difficult for the incumbent government. We were punished.

“And the message on the doorsteps in Frome and in Selby was that ‘we’re a little bit fed up with you at the moment. We want to vote for you, but please give us a reason to vote for you.’

“Now, it’s up to us as a party to show our loyal Conservative voters who stopped at home last week, we’ve got to give them a reason to come out.”

Anderson said he believed the responsibility for the two other by-election losses in Somerton and Frome and Selby and Ainsty were the fault of the parliamentary party.

“As MPs, as the governing party in this country, we should all hold our hands up and take some responsibility rather than just picking individuals out.

“It is our fault that we lost those elections.

Anderson, who has previously said that voters are ‘sick to death’ of net zero, said the government must learn from the ULEZ campaign in Uxbridge.

“Let’s not be arrogant but realise that our voters out there do want to vote for us,” he said.

“Nobody disagrees with the notion that we’ve got to make our planet much cleaner and leave this planet in a better condition than when we arrived. The one thing that concerns me about Net Zero is the fact that we seem to be doing it quicker and faster and more costly than any other nation.

“I worry about the constituents in Ashfield when they’re struggling to pay their gas bills, and electric bills and struggling to fill the car up at the petrol station.

“So I would say what we need to do is have a rethink, because if we don’t look at Uxbridge and the reasons for the win – the candidate Steve (Tuckwell), was quite clear: he didn’t take any credit for the win and he didn’t give any credit to the party, it was all down to the ULEZ campaign.

“It was Labour who lost that campaign, and thank goodness, because it’s given us a little bit of hope and I just hope that some of us aren’t too arrogant to look at the results and think we can just plough ahead.

“At the moment, I think Khan is being arrogant. He’s going to plough ahead with that, and old Flip-Flop, slippery Starmer, he’s flip flopping on this again and changing his mind!”