Mike Amesbury is quitting as an MP in a move which will see Sir Keir Starmer face off with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in his first by-election as prime minister.
The suspended Labour MP was last month given a 10-week suspended prison sentence for drunkenly punching a constituent multiple times in the street.
In an interview with the BBC, Amesbury said he was going to step down from parliament “as quickly as possible”.
“I'm going to step aside at the earliest opportunity,” he said, adding: “I’ve got processes I must go through – there’s a statutory process in terms of redundancies.”
Defending his decision to continue taking his MP salary while behind bars, Amesbury said he “actually picked up some casework in prison”, adding that his office manager forwarded on “correspondence”.
“Life doesn’t stop as an MP,” he said. He spent three nights in jail after pleading guilty earlier this year to assaulting 45-year-old Paul Fellows but was released after successfully appealing the sentence.
The decision sets up a difficult by-election in Runcorn and Helsby for Sir Keir, with Labour’s poll ratings having plunged amid a slew of “difficult decisions” by the PM since the general election.
The northwest seat will be a prime target for Mr Farage’s Reform, with pollsters already saying it is the insurgent right-wing party’s to lose, having surged in the polls since the general election. But, in a reprieve for Labour, it comes amid a damaging bout of infighting between Reform leader Mr Farage and Rupert Lowe, one of five MPs elected for the party, who has now been suspended.
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Amesbury said he would have fought to stay on as an MP had he been given a lighter community sentence, but said he believed he had been “punished accordingly” for the drunken incident.
In the interview, he said he will “lose the family home”, his livelihood and have to live with a criminal record.
Amesbury pleaded guilty to assault in January, after he punched Mr Fellows, 45, following a disagreement in the street over a bridge closure.
The incident occurred on Main Street in Frodsham, Cheshire, in the early hours of 26 October, after Amesbury had been drinking. Upon arriving at a taxi rank, he was approached by Mr Fellows, who began to complain about a bridge closure in the town.
Footage showed Amesbury punch Mr Fellows in the head, knocking him to the ground, then follow him onto the road and start to punch him again, at least five times.
He was heard saying: “You won't threaten your MP again will you, you f****** soft lad?”
Amesbury said, when arrested, that he had acted in self-defence and suggested he felt “threatened” and “intimidated”, the court heard.
He has been ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work, undertake a 12-month alcohol monitoring requirement, go on an anger management course and carry out 20 days of rehabilitation work.
He was set to face a recall petition, which would have led to a by-election had 10 per cent of his constituents signed. But Amesbury made the decision to quit before being forced out by voters.
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