This Thursday will see the Labour party’s first proper test at the ballot box since returning to power last July. There will be elections across England, with all seats in 23 councils up for grabs, as well as six mayoral races. The most interesting and politically significant of these contests will be between Labour and Reform in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election.
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.
But these are not normal times, and Reform are now favourites to win Runcorn and Helsby, both at the bookmakers and with pollsters. Their surge in the polls has left many in Labour circles scratching their heads. Nigel Farage’s party has certainly received a good deal of help from the somewhat ignoble circumstances under which this by-election was called.
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.
However, there are other factors that are also boosting Reform’s odds. Despite needing a huge 17.4 point swing to take the constituency, Runcorn and Helsby is demographically suited to Reform. Compared with the country as a whole, the town of Runcorn itself – where around half of the seat’s electorate live, with most of the rest in more affluent market towns – has a higher level of white, working-class voters and suffers from particularly high levels of poverty. It is plagued by a crime rate that is 50 per cent higher than the national average, and one in three households in the constituency are categorised as deprived.
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.
Reform’s odds are also shortened by the sheer unpopularity of the current Labour government. While it is relatively standard for governing parties to be given a kicking in by-elections, Labour is unusually unpopular for a first-term government at this stage in an election cycle, and Keir Starmer’s personal ratings are little better. Perhaps this is why the Prime Minister has not visited the constituency himself during the campaign.
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Read MoreLabour 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.
A win in Runcorn and Helsby would set the political scene for the years to come. By knocking such a safe brick out of Labour’s Red Wall, Farage would send a clear message to the hundreds of Labour MPs currently sitting on far less secure majorities: “I’m coming for you too.”
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.
However, it’s been reported that some of those closest to the PM have been pushing for a rightward shift on exactly these issues, for exactly these reasons, for quite some time. But the party might not be quite ready for such a realignment.
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.
Either way, it’s hard not to see the battle for Runcorn and Helsby as a lost opportunity for Labour to stress-test any of their speculative plans to combat Reform.
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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