A new MP for Runcorn? Bring on Reform, say disillusioned voters

Now Labour's Mike Amesbury has quit, many locals feel it’s time for a radical change. Lizzie Dearden and Toby Helm preview a vital byelection

- Lizzie Dearden and Toby Helm

Spring has finally arrived, and as customers enjoy a drink or two in the sunshine outside Runcorn’s branch of Wetherspoon’s on a Thursday afternoon, some are sympathetic to the local man in the news who has so dramatically fallen from grace.

"If somebody was mouthing off to me, I would have knocked him out myself," says Jason Baldwin. "I don’t believe he should have lost his job."

He is referring to Mike Amesbury, who won the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary seat for Labour with a thumping majority of almost 15,000 votes in July last year.

That, however, seems an age ago and now the talk of the town is of Amesbury’s decision last week to resign, having been handed a suspended prison sentence for punching a constituent. A byelection looms.

"Prescott didn’t get sacked," remarks another Amesbury-supporting drinker, referring to the 2001 incident when then-Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott punched an egg-throwing protester.

"Sometimes you're going to snap," agreed a member of the group.

"He was somebody that you could trust and go to to get something sorted out" adds Baldwin.

But support for Amesbury does not translate into backing for the Labour party. Far from it. Ominously for Keir Starmer’s party, polls show that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which came a distant second in the general election here, could cause a sensation and win in this seat when the contest to find Amesbury’s successor takes place. That would be a hammer blow to Labour so soon after it won a historic election landslide.