Labour activists are quietly hopeful of pulling off a record-breaking win in Rishi Sunak’s backyard by taking the toughest of the three Conservative seats up for grabs next Thursday.
A win in Selby and Ainsty, now a Conservative rural stronghold but one with a mining industry past, would, Labour say, mark the biggest majority the party has overturned at a byelection since the second world war.
Pulling off such a feat should, in theory, be a pipe dream; the outgoing Tory MP, Nigel Adams, was 20,000 votes out in front in 2019. But holding on to the affluent North Yorkshire seat, dotted with historic battle sites and church spires, is proving tricky.
It is Sunak’s top priority out of the three contests, according to a senior ally of his who has helped rally the troops. Mark Crane, a Conservative councillor and leader of Selby district council for 20 years, also admits “Rishi will personally feel it” if the Tories lose.
Sunak’s Richmond constituency is a less-than-90-minute drive through the Yorkshire countryside (or a quick helicopter flit), and he has visited Selby and Ainsty personally, in a bid to add star value to what some fear is a faltering campaign.
Across the picturesque seat, it is notable how few placards mar the manicured houses or fields adorning the roads that carry residents between the many villages and towns that make up this large, rural area. But in Selby town centre, the high-stakes nature of the contest is palpable.
Labour’s headquarters has the buzz of an energetic campaign office but the strict order of a library. Neatly organised leaflets and clipboards sit waiting to be collected by activists, with two walls covered in rolls of paper bearing the scribbled the placenames of those who have visited – from Bishop Auckland to Bristol.
With a huge union flag and candidate Keir Mather’s smiling face emblazoned across the shopfront, it pops out as residents stroll down the high street. Labour insiders admit it would be a surprise if he took the seat, given the huge Tory majority. However, the boundaries of the seat change in Labour’s favour at the next election and the party is keen to use the byelection as a dry run.
The Conservative campaign, in contrast, is based up a flight of stairs in an unassuming business centre a few hundred metres away. Tory insiders think they might hold on, but expect any majority for their candidate, Claire Holmes, will be wafer thin – probably less than 1,000.
The shadow of Adams’ dramatic resignation, five weeks ago when Boris Johnson’s attempt to give him a peerage backfired, looms over the contest. He had become a more absent figure in the area in recent years, with his time increasingly taken up by being Johnson’s backroom fixer.
“A lot of people are upset at the way Nigel resigned,” said Crane, sipping coffee on a bracing summer day in Selby town centre. “It was extremely disappointing that with about a year to go in this parliament, that he should seek to stand down and cause us what can only be a difficult byelection.”
Crane, who has been at the centre of the local political scene for decades, acknowledged apathy among Tory voters is likely to be a major problem. “It will happen. It’s just a case of how many thousands of people,” he believes.
Similar fears were fed back by MPs who have visited the seat, which the party chair, Greg Hands, ordered everyone to prioritise at a recent behind-closed-doors meeting of the 1922 Committee.
Such concerns are not unfounded. In Riccall, one of the seat’s many scattered villages, Pippa James, a self-employed occupational health business owner, says she usually votes Conservative – but admits: “I’m going to have a problem this time.”
Chatting on her way home from the shop, James says Johnson “did a lot of damage” to Conservative voters. She was “horrified – not just with how he behaved – but also the way the Tory party behaved once he’d gone”.
Angela Ormsby, a caterer who lives in the village of Little Heck on the other side of Selby, says she is a Labour supporter who has never been motivated to vote because “it’s a very Conservative area”. But this time she spies a chance: “Lots of Tories won’t vote,” she says, adding confidently: “I’ll be doing a postal vote.”
Another of those Labour is within touching distance of convincing is Sonia Turner, a retired district nurse of 40 years.
“All my life, I have always voted Conservative,” she says proudly, sporting a blue rain jacket on her way out to lunch with her sister. Having recently been admitted to hospital, Turner says the treatment she received was “incredible” – but voices frustration about the difficulty it took to secure an in-person GP appointment. “Because of the NHS, I might be leaning towards Labour given their promises to improve it,” she says.
Selby and Ainsty has changed political hands before but has been Tory since its current formation was set in 2010. Before then the seat was dominated by the town and the mining industry around it, and was represented by Labour from 1997.
Holmes is reticent to describe the current seat as a safe one. “My view is that you should never take anybody’s vote for granted,” she says. “I would never sit there and think: ‘Well, I got so many last time I don’t need to work hard now.’ I’ll keep working hard. It’s what I’ve always done.”
Appearing to acknowledge the difficult situation left by Adams, Holmes says she is “not interested in the past and political games” but wants to “be a strong voice for this area”.
A barrister and councillor, her arguments are well rehearsed and the issues she says are raised with her by voters chime with those at the heart of the government’s “five pledges” – on the economy, cutting waiting lists and stopping the boats carrying migrants across the English channel.
But the young man who may loosen the hold Tory MPs have across all of North Yorkshire is Mather. Aged just 25, he would become the “baby of the Commons” – the youngest MP – if elected next Thursday.
“I feel confident that this can be done,” he says, with a more chipper tone. “I’ve been to rural villages, urban centres, out and about right across the constituency. And I do think that there is a desire for a fresh start, new ideas and somebody with the dedication and energy to be a committed local MP.”
Mather is keen to downplay a recent poll that gave Labour a 12-point lead. “I feel like this is very close,” he says. “But this election, if Labour is successful, is going to require a lot of people who voted Conservative for a long time to give Labour a go for the very first time.”
It should be a comfortable win for Sunak. However, residents in the rural seat are heavily car-dependent and Selby and Ainsty is in the top 40 constituencies in England and Wales for number of mortgage-holders, which means issues such as fuel prices, the cost of living and rising interest rates may have a bigger bearing on voters than they once would.
Labour needs a swing of 18% to pull off a win in the seat. Doing so would allow Keir Starmer to argue the 12% national swing needed to win a majority in the Commons at the next general election is firmly within his sights.
