Starmer faces by-election battle after Amesbury quits

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.

- ARCHIE MITCHELL

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.