2023 by-elections: Selby and Ainsty, Somerton and Frome and Uxbridge and South Ruislip all up for grabs

The Conservatives could be in for a disastrous day on 20 July, as they will defend three seats in by-elections which could see Labour and the Liberal Democrats potentially take all three between them.

Boris Johnson’s resignation over the Privileges Committee’s report has already caused serious issues for Rishi Sunak, but its main consequences for the Prime Minister might be still to come, if he loses control of his predecessor’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency to Labour.

Selby and Ainsty MP Nigel Adams had already said he would not stand again at the next election, but his decision to resign alongside his close ally Johnson and trigger a by-election in the process was seen as being designed to further damage Sunak.

And to make matters worse, the disgraced former Conservative David Warburton opted to resign as an MP recently having sat as an independent since April, following a series of scandals involving drug use and allegations of sexual misconduct. His Somerton and Frome seat is arguably the safest of all three for the Conservatives, but the Liberal Democrats are still favoured to win it.

Here are the three seats up for grabs later this month.

Somerton and Frome

A relatively affluent, rural constituency which narrowly voted Leave in 2016, Somerton and Frome has been held by the Conservatives since 2015 with a fairly steady majority of around 30%. Eight parties have announced candidates so far, with the main competition coming from the Liberal Democrats, who held the seat between 1997 and 2015.

Ed Davey’s party would need a significant swing to take the seat, but the Lib Dems have proved capable of pulling off major upsets in this kind of constituency in high-profile by-elections. The Lib Dems recently took control of Somerset County Council from the Conservatives, while their by-election candidate, Sarah Dyke, was elected to the council to represent Blackmoor Vale. Among her opponents was Conservative Hayward Burt who heads up a team at Conservative Party headquarters focused on beating the Lib Dems.

As well as holding the environment brief for the Lib Dem council, Dyke is listed as a director of a vintage store which is currently selling a fully restored “mid-century industrial illuminated red sex shop light” for £540. Dyke’s campaign got off to a difficult start after a calamitous interview with the Guardian’s politics podcast in which she fumbled a question about deprivation in the constituency, describing it as “a subject that I don’t know anything about”. She could then be heard telling her media advisor that she “didn’t feel prepared at all for” the interview, and the questions were “getting a bit above [her] station”.

After the interview, Dyke wrote on Twitter: “I messed up in an interview on the first day of this campaign. My passion and desire to do this job got the better of me and I got nervous.

“I’m going to spend every day campaigning hard and proving to the people of Somerton and Frome that I’m the best choice for our area.”

The Conservative candidate, Faye Purbrick, also sits on the council and runs a consulting business.While Labour is fielding a candidate, they seem to be putting very little energy into this contest, despite no formal pact between the opposition parties.

Selby and Ainsty

The Selby and Ainsty constituency was created in 2010 and has been held by the Conservatives since then, though the seat which it was mostly created from, Selby, had been won by Labour at the previous three elections, dating back to 1997. Selby and Ainsty voted to Leave the EU.

Nigel Adams enjoyed a significant majority of just over 35% following the 2019 election. Labour will be hopeful that they can take the seat having secured more than a third of the vote in 2017, though this dropped to just under a quarter in 2019.

Labour has been campaigning hard in the area, with Keir Starmer already having paid a visit alongside several frontbench MPs. The party has launched a large canvassing operation in the area relatively early on in the campaign, in part because the postal votes which were sent out last week are likely to play a crucial role in deciding the result.

The party has selected 25-year-old Keir Mather, from Hull, an Oxford politics graduate who worked for a year in the office of Health Secretary Wes Streeting before taking up a role at the London-based business lobbying group, the Confederation of British Industry.

Claire Holmes, a lawyer and councillor for the neighbouring East Riding of Yorkshire council, will stand in for the Conservatives, after the initial candidate Michael Naughton withdrew his nomination due to a family emergency.

Holmes told BBC News: “I know right now people want an MP who’ll only focus on improving our local communities across Selby and Ainsty – not on political point scoring in Westminster.

“That means I will work with Rishi Sunak and the government on our five clear priorities: halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing debt, cutting hospital waiting lists and stopping the boats.”

Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Held by Boris Johnson since 2015 - the seat was established in 2010 having been created mostly out of the former seat Uxbridge, which since 1855 had been represented almost entirely by the Conservatives except for a spell between 1945 and 1959, then again between 1966 and 1970, when Labour held the seat.

Despite being traditionally safe for the Tories, due to demographic change over the last decade or so and with more younger people commuting from the constituency into central London, Rishi Sunak’s party has a lower majority here than in either of the other two seats they’ll defend this month.

Labour cut the Tories’ majority down to just over 10% in 2017, although this rose slightly in 2019 to 15% despite Labour putting a significant amount of resources into the seat.

The party’s candidate this time around, Camden Councillor Danny Beales, has said he would focus on being present in the constituency and holding regular surgeries, in contrast to Boris Johnson who was often criticised for failing to take his constituency work seriously even before becoming a cabinet minister.

While much of Beales’ campaigning has been focused on criticising Johnson, his actual Conservative opponent Steve Tuckwell is a local councillor who works in plant hire and runs a business consultancy. Tuckwell has criticised London mayor Sadiq Khan over what he describes as a “cynical u-turn” on a decision to close Uxbridge police station. The station will remain open, with Conservative councillors who say they’ve long campaigned to keep it open labelling the decision as politically motivated with the by-election campaign in mind.

As the most high-profile of the three by-elections taking place later this month, the contest has attracted a large number of candidates. With 17 people standing, the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election will see the largest number of candidates in modern political history, with one more than the Batley and Spen by-election in 2021.

Aside from those from the main parties, the candidates will include Count Binface, Reclaims’ Laurence Fox, a particularly eccentric independent candidate listed as Joseph 77 - real name Tom Darwood - as well as anti-vaxxer Piers Corbyn and Howling Laud Hope of the ever-present Monster Raving Loony Party.  There are also two independent candidates who’ve both indicated with their listed names that they are against the Ultra Low Emission Zone in London; Kingsley Anti-Ulez and No-Ulez Leo Phaure.