LABOUR was urged to be “bold” after flipping major Tory majorities in the Wellingborough and Kingswood by-elections today.

Sir Keir Starmer said the results showed people were “crying out for change” and that his party were “now credible contenders” for this year’s general election.

But he admitted had been a “bumpy” week with “Tory switchers” making up part of its vote share.

“We’re trying to do, if you like, what Kinnock, what Smith and Blair did, over 13 or 14 years, in four short years,” he claimed to the BBC.

The results provided Labour with a boost even after a U-turn on the party’s pledge to spend £28 billion on green projects and the anti-semitism row that forced it to drop Azhar Ali, who had been standing for the party in the upcoming Rochdale by-election.

It overturned majorities of 11,220 and 18,540 in Kingswood and Wellingborough respectively in its second-ever largest swing from the Tories, though given low turnouts its actual vote fell in Kingswood and rose only marginally in Wellingborough.

Congratulating the new MPs, a spokesman for Momentum said: “It’s clear — after 14 years of austerity and privatisation, the public are crying out for real change from the Tories.

“To fix the broken Britain they’re leaving behind, Labour needs to be bold.”

The Tories’ double defeat came a day after it was officially announced that Britain had entered a recession at the end of 2023.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said their low turnout showed “that there isn’t a huge amount of enthusiasm for the alternative in Keir Starmer and the Labour Party, and that’s because they don’t have a plan.”

Both contests were seen as two-horse races between Labour and the Tories.

The right-wing Reform party’s deputy leader Ben Habib won 13 per cent in the heavily pro-Leave constituency of Wellingborough.

Rupert Lowe, its candidate in Kingswood, won 10 per cent.

Damien Egan, who won the Kingswood by-election for Labour, said: “The issues people talked about time and time again were the NHS – nowhere in Kingswood can you get an NHS dentist, how hard it is to find a doctor, the cost of living crisis, which is so much more than a slogan.

“[And also] mortgages [being] up by £400 a month, people having to worry about what they put in their trolley, keeping their house warm in winter, families cancelling holidays. Safety on our streets – people want to see police back in our community.”

Citing concerns about doctor appointments and road surfaces, Gen Kitchen, who won the Wellingborough contest, said: “People here are patriotic and hopeful for our country and care about our community.”