Given everyone has won a prize in this round of by-elections, the three main party leaders have been feasting on their respective wins.

Rishi Sunak has arguably had the best day by holding one seat when his party had briefed it would lose all three. He has used the win in Uxbridge to say that the next election is still in play: ‘Westminster’s been acting like the next election is a done deal. The Labour party has been acting like it’s a done deal. The people of Uxbridge just told all of them that it’s not. No-one expected us to win here. But Steve’s [Tuckwell] victory demonstrates that, when confronted with the actual reality of the Labour party, when there’s an actual choice on a matter of substance at stake, people vote Conservative.’

The Uxbridge result can’t be replicated across the country

Sunak had mentioned the strength of feeling in Uxbridge over the Ulez at the 1922 Committee meeting on Wednesday night. Indeed, when I followed the Tories around on the campaign trail there, it was unavoidable, and the party had decided to make the by-election a ‘referendum on Ulez’ to seal that. Perhaps that’s why Labour weren’t so keen to have journalists following them around on the doorstep (something that is highly unusual).

Labour has got a surprise win in Selby: this was the seat that the Tories had thought they might win, rather than Uxbridge, and had sent their MPs up there more. So Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are on their way to that seat to celebrate, and they are arguing this historic victory shows Labour is winning again.

But when Rayner did the morning broadcast round, she cited Ulez and a lack of ‘support for people to change their behaviours’ as the cause of the party’s failure in Uxbridge: ‘The result in Uxbridge tells you that people want to do the right thing, but they don’t want to be penalised because they can’t afford to change their behaviours. So I think the public want to do the right thing, they just want to make sure they’re not penalised. I hear that and I think it’s something all political parties need to reflect on.’

This result will increase the pressure on Keir Starmer to ditch what David Cameron called ‘the green crap’. This may include moving Ed Miliband from the Net Zero brief, even though Ulez isn’t his policy but the Mayor of London’s. It will underline that it is difficult to campaign on a cost of living crisis while also pursuing a policy that will tangibly add to people’s cost of living.

That said, the Uxbridge result can’t be replicated across the country. There are other local rows over Ulez policies in other cities, or low-traffic neighbourhoods in Oxford, for instance. But winning a by-election on a local row means the Tories can’t extrapolate as much as they’d like about this result to the general election.