Why Starmer’s team might welcome a by-election defeat ...Middle East

In more normal times, Labour wouldn’t even be contemplating the prospect of a loss in Cheshire West. Runcorn and Helsby was Labour’s 51st safest seat in the 2024 general election, and one of only five constituencies won with more than 50 per cent of the vote, as Reform trailed by a whopping 35 percentage points. There are, in fact, 386 seats Reform came closer to winning last July.

Trust in politicians is already at an all-time low, and Reform have undeniably benefited from the widespread “anti-politics” feeling among the electorate. It is therefore hard to imagine a more perfect start to their campaign than the outgoing Labour MP receiving a suspended sentence for punching one of his own constituents while on camera.

Runcorn is highly representative of the deindustrialised towns which traditionally made up Labour’s “Red Wall” in the north. Reform will no doubt be buoyed by their recent comfortable win at a council by-election in nearby Blackbrook in St Helen’s.

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Labour cabinet ministers Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Lucy Powell have visited Runcorn and Helsby in the run-up to polling day, but while there has been no pact between Reform and the Conservatives, the official opposition are nowhere to be seen in Runcorn. In fact, a Conservative councillor who had until recently been door-knocking for the party has now defected to Reform.

There will likely be significant pressure on Starmer to focus his policies and his rhetoric, particularly surrounding immigration, which will in turn make many on the left of his backbenches and his cabinet very squeamish.

It’s highly possible that those members of Starmer’s top team who are concentrating on taking the fight to Reform might even welcome a defeat of this sort as a way to light a fire under the party’s more left-wing holdouts.

The reality is neither the right nor the left of the Labour Party are getting the dry run they desperately need if plans to stop Farage are to get through to voters on the doorstep.

Scarlett Maguire is the founder of polling company Merlin Insights

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