James Ford is a public affairs consultant and a former adviser to Mayor of London Boris Johnson on transport, environment and technology policy.
Well, here’s my first political ‘hot take’ of 2025: the Conservatives should give Reform UK a free run in the expected Runcorn and Helsby by-election.
I know, I know – it sticks in the Tory craw to concede that there is any political battlefield that should be yielded willingly to the Faragist insurgency. Fielding a candidate in the by-election may seem like the dedicated and dutiful thing to do. At conception the idea might even lift the spirits and gladden the heart. But standing in this by-election is unlikely to result in a Conservative win. Like Custer at the Little Bighorn or King Harold at Hastings, Runcorn and Helsby is not the political hill upon which the Conservative Party should seek to die upon.
The decision by beleaguered incumbent Labour MP Mike Amesbury to plead guilty to assault has made a by-election, either because of a criminal conviction or a successful recall ballot, all but inevitable. And, under normal circumstances, an opposition party should relish the opportunity to potentially embarrass the Government. Furthermore, given that Weaver Vale, one of the antecedent seats that Runcorn and Helsby was created from, returned a Conservative MP to Parliament between 2010 and 2017, some might think there is reason for quiet optimism.
But Runcorn and Helsby is emphatically not Weaver Vale, and this is not the time to allow nostalgia to dictate political strategy. The new seat comprises only about half of the electorate of the old Weaver Vale seat and a projection of how the new constituency would have voted in 2019 (itself a high watermark for estimating Conservative support) estimates that the seat would have returned a Labour MP with a notional majority of more than 5,000. (Indeed, the actual 2019 result in Weaver Vale saw Labour hold that seat with a majority of just 562). If even Weaver Vale was a Labour hold in 2019, it seems unlikely that the more Labour-leaning Runcorn and Helsby will be the most likely location for a spectacular Tory revival in 2025.
Moreover, looking at the actual result in Runcorn and Helsby in 2024 there is even less reason for Conservative cheer than considering rosy recollections of Weaver Vale. Last July the electors of Runcorn sent Mike Amesbury to Westminster with a rather stonking majority of 14,696 (that is nearly 53 per cent of the vote). The Conservatives, with 6,756 votes (16 per cent vote share) were nudged into third place by Reform, who secured 7,662 votes and an 18 per cent vote share.
Given that a by-election win for the Conservatives is unlikely, the smart, strategic thing to do is to decide how best to profit from the two more likely outcomes: Labour holding the seat (but with a much-reduced majority) or Reform taking the seat from Labour. If the Conservatives stand in the by-election, a Labour hold is more likely, and the Conservative Party would be subject to the same allegations of letting Labour win by dividing the right-of-centre vote that we usually like to level at Reform.
Similarly, if the Conservative stand and Reform still wins then it makes Reform’s win more impressive and gives credence to Nigel Farage’s claims to be the real opposition. In either event, an unnecessary by-election defeat is unlikely to do much to strengthen Kemi Badenoch’s position as leader or bolster Tory efforts at renewal.
However, by graciously – and very loudly – standing aside, the Conservative Party can turn both scenarios to their advantage.
If Labour win then it robs Reform of any sense of momentum and exposes as bluff and bluster all of the party’s pretensions to be a major emerging force. Afterall, if they are unable to turn a credible second place in a seat at a general election into a win over that same party in a by-election when the Conservatives have stood aside, what exactly is the point of Reform?
And, if Reform are able to win the seat, then much of the credit goes to the Conservatives for being the proverbial ‘bigger men’ and giving them a clear run. Going from six to seven Reform MPs in Westminster will make no difference to the political arithmetic of Parliament but being able to present the result of the by-election as a referendum on the government’s dismal performance so far is only likely to further disrupt and discombobulate the Labour leadership. Just as importantly, it puts pressure on Reform to stand aside in future by-elections where the Conservatives stand the best chance of unseating a Labour MP. (And, if Reform ignore that pressure, then we need not repeat the experiment).
Robert Louis Stevenson famously said that “life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.” He might just as well have been talking about the delicate gamesmanship of opposition politics as of human fate.
A by-election in Runcorn and Helsby is the very definition of a poor political hand for the Conservatives currently and standing aside seems to me to be the best way to play that poor hand well. Given that the Conservative Party nationally has yet to develop a strategy for managing or mitigating the electoral threat that Reform pose, deciding not to go head-to-head against either Labour or Reform just yet seems to be the smart, strategic option.
It gives the Conservatives time and political space that it can use to formulate a long-term response to the challenge posed by Reform whilst simultaneously piling pressure on the beleaguered Labour government.
