The other by-election is in Uxbridge of course, where Johnson’s old seat is up for grabs. And if Nadine Dorries carries out her threat to resign, another one will take place in Mid-Bedfordshire shortly afterwards. All three look like disasters for Sunak.
Selby and Ainsty should on paper be a safe Tory seat. Nigel Adams had a majority of 20,317 in 2019 (72% turnout) and would this normally would guarantee him or his Conservative replacement, another five-year term. I confess that a few months ago I was resigned to having Adams as our MP again in 2024.
But amazingly, Labour is actually in the lead, albeit only just, according to polling by Britain Predicts and reported in The New Statesman. The result will tell us if Labour is “really on course for a landslide at the next election.” I don't think this is in doubt, all we are talking about is the size of the landslide. The boundaries have changed slightly in favour of Labour I believe, but this is only part of the story.
Note that 8% of voters plan to support Reform UK, the successor to UKIP and the Brexit Party, run by Richard Tice and presumably they still think Brexit has a bit of scrap value and something of it can be salvaged from the mess we find ourselves in.
The best result Labour have ever achieved in the past is when they overturned a 15,000 majority in a by-election in Mid-Staffordshire in 1990. To take Selby would really send a powerful message.
If the Tory candidate Claire Holmes, a barrister and councillor in East Riding, wins against the odds she will have the 14% or so who plan to vote Lib-Dem of Green to thank for it.
One Labour social media ad reminds us that under the last Labour government, we got a bypass and a new hospital but in the last thirteen years - nothing. And this is true, not just of this area, but large swathes of the UK. The TNE article describes Selby as "a long stretch of quaint and quiet English countryside" sandwiched between the “spa towns” of Harrogate and Knaresborough, and Doncaster, "where boarded-up terraced houses go for as low as £5,000."
A vote for Ms Holmes will be taken as an endorsement, not only of the economic decline that has taken place since 2010 but also of the unprecedented fall in living standards, the corruption and incompetence that we've seen under Johnson, Truss and now Sunak. It's akin to a bit of modern-day scourging or self-flagellation. Why would you do it? No wonder Adams stepped down.
He's deprived us of seeing his face on live TV as the results are being announced in the early morning after the 2024 general election, something that many of us would have looked forward to, but never mind. The by-election result will tell its own story.
However, if Conservative Central Office thinks Selby might be bad, The Telegraph has news of a potential bloodbath if Mid-Bedfordshire is contested anytime soon: Tories face biggest by-election defeat in British history in Nadine Dorries’s old seat.
A survey by Opinium claims that Labour would overturn a near 25,000 Conservative majority in Dorries' constituency which has been Tory for 92 years. Think about that. Uxbridge (majority 7,210) is a foregone conclusion.
Peter Kyle, Labour MP for Hove, has been campaigning already in Mid-Beds and he says:
“It is unprecedented, in my experience, to stand on a doorstep and have every resident tell you what’s wrong with the party you’re trying to beat rather than being the person who has to tell them and convince them.
“All you do is say ‘hello, I’m from the Labour Party and then the residents tell you about Nadine, they laugh about will there be a by-election and then they are usually quite passionate about having an absent MP and having a party that is taking them for granted.”
I suspect candidates will find the same in Selby and Uxbridge.
The results on 21 July will send shockwaves through the Tory ranks. Many of their sitting MPs have already announced they are stepping down, presumably after seeing private polling which goes on all the time and from their own activists who are always knocking on doors and talking to constituents. The writing has been on the wall for some time.
It is going to be very uncomfortable for the PM although I have to say he seems to be going through the motions at the moment as if he realises the game is up. The new 'plan' to recruit 300,000 more NHS staff is just that - a plan, and it doesn't even start until 2026-27 when he is certain to be ousted well before.
The Conservatives must now be contemplating an existential crisis next year.
You can see a full list of the 13 candidates in Selby and Ainsty in the York Press HERE.
