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Runcorn Labour on back foot as festival of Farage gains pace
The Guardian
|April 30, 2025
It's lunchtime on St George's Day and the Royal pub in Runcorn is a festival of flags, fags and Farage.
"I'm sorry," says Mike Kneale, a painter, as he explains which party he will back in this week's crucial byelection: "But it's Nigel Farage."
The Reform UK leader's Cheshire cat grin leaps out from billboards and doormats all over this constituency, where his party is odds-on to win its fifth MP and deliver a blow to Keir Starmer. It would be the first time in half a century that Runcorn has elected a non-Labour MP.
Labour won Runcorn and Helsby, on the industrial banks of the Mersey, with a thumping 14,696-vote majority 10 months ago. But a drunken assault by the sitting MP Mike Amesbury means its 16th safest seat is up for grabs and the dogfight between Starmer's party and Reform is getting ugly.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 30, 2025-Ausgabe von The Guardian.
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