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(Bloomberg) — U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party held the Parliamentary seat vacated by her predecessor, David Cameron, in the new premier’s first electoral test.
The Conservative candidate, Robert Courts, won the special election in Witney, Oxfordshire, with a narrower majority over the Liberal Democrats, the Press Association reported early Friday.
In a second by-election in Batley and Spen, Yorkshire, the Labour candidate Tracy Lynn Brabin retained the seat formerly held by Jo Cox, who was murdered in June. The Tories, Liberal Democrats, Greens and U.K. Independence Party didn’t field candidates out of respect for Cox.
The results preserve the status quo in the U.K. Parliament, where May has a narrow working majority of 16 seats in the House of Commons. Most lawmakers voted Remain in the June 23 referendum on European Union membership, and many are pushing for more scrutiny of May’s plans to negotiate an exit from the bloc, in line with the popular vote.
While Court was defending Cameron’s majority of more than 25,000, one of the biggest in the country, the Liberal Democrats had hoped to make a dent in that with their candidate Elizabeth Leffman. The pro-EU party, which was in coalition with Cameron from 2010 to 2015, had hoped to attract support in one of the few boroughs in rural England that voted to remain.
