Mike Amesbury, the former Labour MP for Runcorn and Helsby, was sentenced yesterday to 10 weeks in jail after pleading guilty to assault last month.
In addition to his 10-week jail sentence, Amesbury must pay £200 compensation to Paul Fellows, the constituent he is shown striking in the original video of the offence. Upon its emergence in October, Amesbury was swiftly disowned by the Labour Party. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has today gone one further and said voters in Runcorn and Helsby “deserve” a new MP.
At this stage, a by-election looks all but inevitable. According to parliamentary rules — as defined by the Recall of MPs Act 2015, a recall petition is triggered following a conviction that results in imprisonment, a suspension from the House after a recommended sanction from the standards committee, or a conviction for making false or misleading parliamentary allowances claims (sentence does not have to be custodial).
In these circumstances, the speaker of the House of Commons must notify the MP’s local returning officer — who, as the select “petition officer”, is then tasked with overseeing the process. Unless Amesbury chooses to appeal therefore, his sentence means a recall petition will be triggered in Runcorn and Helsby.
Since 2015, only one recall petition has been unsuccessful. That came in 2018 when the DUP’s Ian Paisley Jr avoided recall after just 9.4 per cent of his North Antrim constituents signed the petition — 0.6 points short of the requisite 10 per cent threshold. In 2024, the petition to recall Scott Benton was terminated after the ex-Tory opted to resign as the MP for Blackpool South. It is certainly possible in this instance that Amesbury will resign.
In any case, a contest in Runcorn and Helsby would be the first by-election of this parliament and thus Labour’s first major interaction with the electorate since July last year. It would mark a major challenge for Keir Starmer’s party, given the significant drop in popularity the government has suffered since seizing the reins of power.
Of the 411 seats the party won in July, Amesbury’s constituency was the 49th safest; Labour finished first in Runcorn and Helsby with a majority of 14,696 (34.8 per cent).
But it was also one of 89 seats in which Reform UK, the restyled Brexit Party, finished second to Labour last July — albeit a relatively distant second. Reform’s candidate Jason Moorcroft won 7,663 votes (18.1 per cent).
A Runcorn and Helsby by-election would serve as an immense opportunity for Nigel Farage to prove that the all-consuming hype around his party and its electoral prospects are real. The party now finds itself virtually neck and neck nationally with Labour — if not ahead. As such, several of the Reform chief’s grandiose (and sometimes eccentric) claims will be on the line.
At the very least, Farage will want to prove — beyond doubt — that he is in fact the “real leader of the opposition”. (Practically, gaining a sixth MP would qualify Reform for more “short money”. Parties with five MPs or fewer are subject to a ceiling of £376,230 of public funding).
One would expect an insurgent opposition party to outperform its national polling figures in a by-election of this kind. The Lib Dems and Labour took down historic Conservative majorities in the last parliament — with swings far in excess of national estimates. Moreover, differential turnout (motivated Reform base; unmotivated Labour base) and the circumstances surrounding Amesbury’s likely defenestration are factors that augur well for Reform. Of course, Farage does not so much manage expectations as he sends them soaring into the electoral stratosphere. His approach to the by-election campaign will be instructive.
Above all, the campaign will test Reform’s new party machinery, as constructed by chairman Zia Yusuf in recent months. Can Reform replicate the by-election-winning capability of the Liberal Democrats historically? Will mere motivation prove an ample counterweight if the get-the-vote-out operation is found lacking? In other words: is Reform ready?
As More in Common’s Luke Tryl notes, the by-election could also be an early indication of the extent to which there is a stop Reform voter sentiment in constituencies such as Runcorn and Helsby — where they stand to perform well. Will the Green (2,715) and Lib Dem (2,149) votes recorded in July fall behind Labour to thwart Farage? Might even some Conservative voters privilege an anti-Farage feeling above and beyond their positive Tory affiliation?
In this regard, as much as a by-election in Runcorn and Helsby would be a golden opportunity for Farage, anything deemed failure — depending on where expectations fall — could impede his apparently burgeoning insurgency. “Failure” either to win outright or to run Labour close would place a spotlight on the party’s vulnerabilities — both in logistical and political terms.
A Runcorn and Helsby by-election, ultimately, stands to illuminate the peculiar political dynamics of this parliament — which have been significantly complicated by the sustained rise of Reform. Just how unpopular is Keir Starmer? How popular is Reform? Is there an anti-Farage/Reform vote? Are the Conservatives an irrelevance?
A contest in Runcorn and Helsby would help answer these most pressing questions.
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Reform MPs ‘absent’ for commons statement on Ukraine, Labour’s Stella Creasy notes
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‘We will deliver our commitment to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence, but we will bring that forward so we reach that level in 2027.
‘And we will maintain that for the rest of this parliament.’
— UK defence spending will rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027, the prime minister has announced. Keir Starmer made the announcement in an unexpected House of Commons statement ahead of talks with Donald Trump at the White House.
Starmer added that this means spending £13.4 billion more on defence every year from 2027, and marks the biggest increase since the Cold War. More via the BBC below.
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