Polls have opened in three parliamentary seats where byelections are being held, with Rishi Sunak braced for an electoral test of his premiership. The Conservative-held constituencies are being targeted by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, who hope to overturn large majorities and send Tory MPs off into the summer recess nervous about their own political futures come the general election.
Voters can cast their ballots from 7am on Thursday, across the south-western Tory stronghold of Somerton and Frome, Boris Johnson’s old seat in the west London suburbs Uxbridge and South Ruislip, as well as Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire. Sunak was privately downcast on Wednesday afternoon about the his party’s electoral prospects, in part given the nature of why the contests were triggered. Johnson stood down to avoid being suspended from parliament over a report that found he misled MPs over Partygate. Adams quit after being passed over for a peerage. And David Warbuton, an MP in Somerset since 2015, quit after being investigated over claims of harassment and drug use. On top of the circumstances of the byelections being called, Sunak’s party is also polling poorly, nationally. At a behind-closed-doors meeting of Tory backbenchers on the eve of the byelections, MPs said he appeared to acknowledge the results would be “tough”. If the Conservatives are trounced, Sunak could become the first prime minister since Harold Wilson in 1968 to lose three byelections in a single day. The safest Tory seat is Selby and Ainsty – which delivered a 20,000 majority at the 2019 general election. Both Labour and the Conservatives say they expect the result to be tight – within about 1,000 votes. Keir Starmer’s party want to pull off a win there to show they can win in rural areas as well as metropolitan cities and their traditional former industrial heartlands. But the swing required is much greater than current polls suggest they would achieve at a general election. Somerton and Frome should also be a Tory safe seat – with the party holding a 19,000 majority at the last election. But after the loss of Tiverton and Honiton last year, which saw an area in neighbouring Devon clinched by the Liberal Democrats, it is considered the most likely to flip. In Uxbridge and South Ruislip, hopes of a Tory resurgence have grown in recent days given some anger at the extension of the London ultra-low emissions zone by the capital’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan. The byelections will have a unique tinge to them. They will be the first parliamentary elections where voter ID is required, after the scheme was rolled out to council elections earlier this spring.