By-election could give Harrogate district its first ever Labour MP

The Harrogate district could be set to get its first ever Labour MP when voters turn out for the Selby and Ainsty by-election next week, according to an opinion poll. 

The survey by JL Partners reveals Labour could win a landslide victory on July 20 in the traditionally Tory constituency, with 41% of the vote – up 16 points on the last election.

No Labour MP has ever represented any of the Harrogate district constituencies: Harrogate and Knaresborough, Skipton and Ripon, and Selby and Ainsty.

The poll has the Conservatives on 29% (down 31 percentage points on last general election), Reform UK on 8% (+8), the Lib Dems on 6% (-3), the Greens on 6% (+3), the Yorkshire Party on 4% (+1), and the others on 6% (+6). 

A Labour victory – which political analysts Electoral Calculus sees as a 66% probability – would be a remarkable upset in a constituency it has never before won.

Selby and Ainsty has been held by the Conservatives since its creation in 2010, with MP Nigel Adams increasing his share of the vote at successive elections from 49% in 2010 to 60% at 2019. 

Labour candidate Keir Mather, 25, would become the youngest current MP if he wins.

A Labour spokesperson told the Stray Ferret:  

“It will be a mammoth task to overturn a 20,000 Conservative majority, and the biggest Labour has achieved since the end of the Second World War.  

“Labour’s Keir Mather is speaking to hundreds of voters on the doorstep who want change, and for him to be their MP and a strong voice fighting on their behalf in Westminster.” 

A Conservative Party spokesperson told the Stray Ferret the party never comments on opinion polls.

Cabinet minister Nigel Adams was a Boris Johnson loyalist and stepped down last month after his name did not appear on Mr Johnson’s retirement honours list. The constituency has been unrepresented at Westminster since then. 

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The Harrogate district is mainly represented by the MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, but large areas fall within other constituencies.

The vast Selby and Ainsty constituency includes Huby, Follifoot and Spofforth, as well as several villages in the Vale of York, including Great Ouseburn, Green Hammerton, Kirk Hammerton and Tockwith. Its main towns are Selby, Tadcaster and Sherburn-in-Elmet, and at its southern end it includes Drax power station and reaches nearly as far as Goole and Doncaster.

The Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency has only ever been held by the Tories and Liberal Democrats, and Skipton and Ripon has only ever been held by the Conservatives. The Selby and Ainsty constituency was formed from the Vale of York constituency – which was perennially Conservative – and the Selby constituency, which swung from Conservative to Labour. 

‘Two in three chance’ Conservatives will lose Selby & Ainsty

The upcoming by-election in Selby and Ainsty is the most likely of three in the UK to see a win for the Conservatives, according to bookmakers’ odds.

Parliamentary seats in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and Somerton and Frome, will also be contested on Thursday, July 20.

Statistics from bookmakers’ odds, analysed by the Telegraph, reveal the Selby and Ainsty seat is the most likely of the three to remain in Tory hands.

However, it still has a 66% likelihood of being lost to another party or independent candidate.

By comparison, Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip has a 92% likelihood of being lost, and Somerton and Frome – previously held by David Warburton until his resignation after having the whip removed by the party – is rated at 71%.

In Selby and Ainsty, the by-election was triggered by the resignation of Nigel Adams, a close ally of the former prime minister.

He had held the seat since 2010, when it was first formed, and won a majority of just over 20,000 at the last election in 2019.

This time, the Conservative candidate will be Claire Holmes. She will stand against 12 other candidates, including two who have stood in the constituency before: Arnold Warneken for the Green Party and Mike Jordan for the Yorkshire Party.

The full list of candidates is:

Any constituents who have not yet registered to vote have until midnight tonight to do so on the government’s website.

It will be the first time voter ID will be required for an election in North Yorkshire. Acceptable forms of ID include photocard driving licences, UK passports, and bus passes for older or disabled people.

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Tories select replacement candidate for Selby and Ainsty by-election

The Conservative Party has selected its new candidate for the forthcoming Selby and Ainsty by-election following the shock withdrawal last week of its previous nominee. 

Claire Holmes, a barrister and East Riding of Yorkshire councillor, will contest the seat in place of Michael Naughton, who quit the race due to an “unforeseen family medical emergency”. 

Speaking to the BBC, Ms Holmes said:

“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.” 

The by-election was triggered by the resignation of MP Nigel Adams, who was first elected in 2010 and has since held several ministerial posts under prime ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson. He was nominated by Mr Johnson for a peerage, but did not make the final list. 

Mr Adams had already said he would not contest the seat at the next election, but stepped down immediately after former Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation in the wake of the cross-party Privileges Committee report into the Partygate scandal that he had misled Parliament. 

The by-election in Selby and Ainsty will be held on Thursday, July 20, the same day as the by-election in Mr Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency. 

The other candidates declared so far are: for the Green Party, Arnold Warneken, the councillor for Ouseburn on North Yorkshire Council; for the Labour Party, Keir Mather, a senior public affairs adviser for the Confederation of British Industry (CBI); and for the Yorkshire Party, Mike Jordan, whose defection from the Conservatives earlier this month lost the party its majority on North Yorkshire Council. 

The Liberal Democrats are due to announce their candidate this week, but are not expected to campaign heavily in the constituency ahead of the ballot, in order not to split the anti-Tory vote. In 2019 they only won 8.6% of the vote in the constituency, compared with Labour’s 24.6%. 

The Conservatives, however, won 60.3% of the vote, giving them a 20,137 majority, which means that Labour will need a huge swing of 18% to win, according to Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde. 

Photo ID required to vote

In a statement, North Yorkshire Council said that anyone interested in becoming a candidate in the Selby and Ainsty by-election must submit a completed set of nomination forms before the deadline at 4pm this Friday (June 23).

Residents of the Selby and Ainsty constituency have until midnight on Tuesday, July 4, to register to vote and until 5pm on Wednesday, July 5, to apply for a postal vote. If someone is unable to vote in person or by post, they have until 5pm on Wednesday, July 12, to apply for a proxy vote.

Voters attending the polling station for the by-election will need to bring photographic identification, such as a UK photocard driving licence, a passport, or concessionary travel passes, such as an older person’s bus pass or blue badge.

Anyone without an accepted form of ID should apply for a free voter authority certificate by 5pm on Wednesday, July 12.

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Labour names candidate for local by-election

Labour has selected 26-year-old Keir Mather to fight the Selby and Ainsty by-election, triggered by the resignation of Conservative MP Nigel Adams.

Oxford history and politics graduate Mr Mather is a former parliamentary researcher who works as a senior public affairs advisor at the Confederation of British Industry.

Mr Mather, who would become one of the youngest MPs, was born in Hull and grew up near Selby.

His candidacy was supported by the unions GMB and Unison.

Many villages close to Harrogate, Knaresborough and Boroughbridge, including Spofforth, Follifoot, Kirkby Overblow, Goldsborough, Little Ouseburn, Nun Monkton, Green Hammerton and Kirk Hammerton, will go to the polls on July 20.

The Conservatives, who will defend a 20,137 in the by-election on July 20, have named Michael Naughton as their candidate while the Greens have selected Arnold Warneken.

It is expected to be a close contest between the Tories and Labour, with political forecasting website Electoral Calculus predicting a 55% chance of Labour victory and a 45% chance of Conservative victory.

A by-election in Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency will also take place on the same date.

Mr Mather said:

“It is an honour to have been selected to fight to represent this brilliant constituency. Whilst the Conservatives are too distracted by their own chaos to deliver, the people of Selby and Ainsty have been left without a voice.

“We are facing the worst fall in living standards in a generation. Mortgages are up, our public services are broken, and the economy is stagnating.”

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‘Few teething issues’ with North Yorkshire Council launch, say political leaders

Few teething issues have emerged during first month of the new North Yorkshire Council, the leaders of its political groups have agreed.

Councillors said residents facing confusion over who to contact and delays of about 30 minutes when trying to phone the council’s call centre had been the most major cause of concern since the county council and seven district authorities fused operations on April 1.

Ahead of North Yorkshire Council’s launch its chief executive Richard Flinton warned while the authority’s basic infrastructure had been created ahead “snagging issues” were expected when the new council launched due to the scale of the merger and “eight different ways of working”.

When asked whether he was pleased with how the transfer had gone so far, the Conserative-run council’s leader, Cllr Carl Les said: 

“Yes. It has gone surprisingly well, but with the amount of effort put in by Richard Flinton and his team I shouldn’t be surprised.”

He added: 

“We always said if you are going to chose a time to do local government reorganisation you wouldn’t necessarily be coming out of a pandemic with a war going on in Ukraine and various other things happening.

“You wouldn’t chose to launch on April 1, when council tax bills are going out for a new authority and people renew their garden waste collection waste collections with the new authority, but still have phone numbers for the old authorities.”

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Speaking ahead of a meeting behind closed doors with Mr Flinton and the other political group leaders to discuss the council’s first month, Cllr Les said the unitary’s contact centre had become deluged, resulting in lengthy answering delays and potentially some residents hanging up.

He said: 

“The contact centres have been busy and have not been as to strength as we thought they might be. We are taking steps to increase recruitment and increase training.”

The leaders of the council’s other political groups agreed no other major issues had emerged during the authority’s first month.

North Yorkshire Council civic centre Knapping Mount

North Yorkshire Council civic centre at Knapping Mount.

Labour group leader Cllr Steve Shaw Wright said while the unitary authority appeared to be “generally working”, its call centre had been “an absolute abomination”.

He added: 

“Selby Town Council just can’t do anything because people have been forever ringing them up because North Yorkshire’s call centre doesn’t work.”

Green group leader Cllr Kevin Foster said: 

“This has been a massive undertaking and on the whole things have gone very well. There’s still lots of work to do, but if you’d asked me if I’d have accepted this when the changeover went in I would have grabbed it with both hands.”

Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Bryn Griffiths said residents struggling to find phone numbers to contact the unitary, which was “trying to force people to use the internet a lot”, and delays in answering, had represented “a mixed start” for the unitary.

He added: 

“With a big organisation of about 10,000 employees there are bound to be a few hiccups.”

Independent group leader Cllr Stuart Parsons added: 

“Things could have gone better, but it also could have gone a lot worse.”

He said the centralised call centre had not appeared to work as well as “phoning the old numbers for district council call centres”.

Cllr Parsons said: 

“It’s been mainly hiccups, nothing major appears to have gone wrong, which is very comforting. It’s just a question of trying to iron out the hiccups and ensuring services improve considerably.”

Call for parents to share maternity experiences in Harrogate district

A group of volunteers is calling for parents to share their experiences of maternity services across the Harrogate district.

Harrogate Maternity Voices Partnership (MVP) is an independent group of volunteers aiming to use feedback from parents to ensure maternity services are the best they can be.

From community midwifery to the hospital’s delivery suite and postnatal care at home, the MVP wants to hear from anyone who has experienced the maternity services provided through Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust.

The group’s chair, Jen Baldry, took up the role in early 2022. She said:

“I’ve had three children in Harrogate and I think I’ve had really positive experiences throughout my maternity journeys. However, I always think there’s room for improvement.

“I have a passion for developing local maternity services, in particular focusing on personalised care and informed choice.

“I had a baby during covid so that massively impacted me wanting to do this role and give my experience of that, compared to having two before covid.”

The MVP holds regular coffee mornings around which any parents are welcome to drop in to. They offer space for children to play while the parents can chat to each other, MVP volunteers and maternity professionals about their experiences.

There are also regular, free information sessions, such as one next Friday evening on the biomechanics of birth, led by a hypnobirthing teacher and a student midwife. It will cover how different positions and movements can be used during labour and childbirth.

Harrogate hospital

Feedback over the last year has seen the MVP work with maternity professionals to look at the language they use, the birthing environment at the hospital, and delivering personalised care to suit each person going through pregnancy and birth.

As well as giving feedback, people who have experience of maternity care in Harrogate are always welcomed as volunteers with the MVP. Jen said:

“We have over 40 active volunteers. I ask everyone for one to two hours a month, and that could be for reviewing leaflets or coming to a coffee morning, or even going in to the unit for a ’15 steps’ review, when we look at what the experience is like for someone arriving there.

“Anybody who has had experience with maternity services or worked in a field related to maternity can join us.”

Pilot project

While the MVP will operate long term with all parents, at the moment it is working on a pilot project with the maternity department in Harrogate.

Across the NHS, midwives will soon be required to undertake more training each year. Harrogate’s involvement in the pilot project will see it help to produce training based on feedback from people using its services.

The MVP is helping to find parents to take part and is particularly seeking those who have experienced pregnancies with twins and multiples, surrogacy, their child being cared for on the special care baby unit, or giving birth outside NHS guidance.

It also wants to hear from anyone from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds who has been cared by for through Harrogate’s maternity services.

Two focus group events are being held at the end of March – one online and one in person in Harrogate – to gather feedback from those parents.

Jen said:

“The biggest challenge for the MVP is hearing the voices of people who don’t necessarily speak up.

“People tend to get in touch if they’ve had an amazing experience or a really bad experience. We don’t often hear from that middle ground, where it was fine, but there are some areas that could be improved.

“All those tweaks, we’re here to help with. Was there anything that would have made it even better?

“We also want to ensure we represent everybody in the community, from all different types of background – anybody who has had an experience of maternity services.”

For details of upcoming events, visit the MVP Facebook page.

To contact Harrogate MVP, or give feedback on your experiences of maternity services, visit its website.

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Shadow minister brands Harrogate hospital’s reliance on agency staff ‘a disgrace’

Shadow minister Alex Sobel has claimed Harrogate District Hospital‘s use of agency staff is a “disgrace” that is harming patient care.

Alex Sobel, Labour MP for Leeds North West and the party’s shadow environment minister, told a Commons debate on the NHS this week a constituent called Marjorie Dunn spent just over seven weeks at the hospital last year.

He added:

“In that time she saw NHS nurses leave the service and she was treated predominantly by agency staff — mistreated, I have to say, by agency staff. It is a disgrace.

“When she was eventually moved to a recovery hub run by Leeds City Council she got excellent treatment there.

“She had broken her pelvis and been told she would never walk again, but it was the council physiotherapist who got her up and walking again. Is it not right that we should be supporting local authorities such as Labour-run Leeds to get such facilities as well as the NHS?”

Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health minister, said Mr Sobel was “absolutely right about the impact of the churn of staff on a ward”, adding:

“It can be quite distressing for patients to see the faces and names change every day and to constantly be explaining once again what their experience in the hospital has been, if indeed the staff have time to stop and talk.”

The Stray Ferret asked Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative MP Andrew Jones if he wished to respond to Mr Sobel’s comments but he did not respond.

‘Workforce challenges’

Asked to respond to Mr Sobel’s comments, a Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said:

“We pride ourselves on providing the best possible standards of care for our patients, wherever that care may be being delivered. On the rare occasions when this has fallen below our expectations or those of our patients, we have procedures in place to identify this and ensure we continuously improve.

“Workforce challenges in the NHS are well documented. As a trust, we monitor recruitment, retention, turnover and staff wellbeing closely and have a bank of the trust’s own nursing staff, who are available to support where we have short- term absence. These staff are familiar with Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust and our standards of care.

“On occasion, we do need to use the services of agencies to support nursing gaps, however we expect all staff working at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust to provide the same standards of care for our patients, and we will address this if it is found not to be the case.

“Maintaining the health and safety of those people in our care is our main priority and we would like to apologise to anyone who has found that their experience has been below what they would expect. In addition, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust work collaboratively across health and social care to ensure that care and services are delivered to our population in the right place, by the right professionals, which means there are occasions where this is a multi-agency approach to ensure the care be delivered as close to the person’s own home as possible.”

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The Lib Dem aiming to become Harrogate and Knaresborough’s next MP

After a process lasting eight months, the Liberal Democrats have finally named Tom Gordon as their candidate to wrestle Harrogate and Knaresborough off the Conservatives at the next general election.

Mr Gordon, who turns 29 today, is less than half the age of Andrew Jones, the current MP, but has already packed a lot into his short political career. He has stood twice for Parliament, led the Liberal Democrats on Wakefield Council and supported Judith Rogerson in her campaign to unseat Mr Jones at the last election in 2019.

But does he have the experience and nous to defeat a seasoned politician like Mr Jones, who will be going for his fifth success in a row? Mr Jones has achieved more than 50% of the vote at the last three elections, turning a constituency held by Liberal Democrat Phil Willis from 1997 to 2010 back into a safe Conservative seat.

With Paul Ko Ferrigno named as the Green Party candidate, and Labour yet to declare, there is the possibility of all the main parties selecting white men. Mr Gordon’s youth gives him some point of difference, which he acknowledges could be advantageous but he says the main reason people should vote for him is because he would stand for “fairness and equality” while Mr Jones, he claims, is a party stooge with a “record of shame”.

But what kind of candidate are local people getting — and how well does he know Harrogate and Knaresborough?

Mr Gordon, who is from Knottingley in West Yorkshire and is the Lib Dem leader on Wakefield Council, was chosen by party members ahead of Knaresborough campaigner Matt Walker.

Mr Jones was quick to express surprise, telling the Harrogate Advertiser (he does not speak to the Stray Ferret) he felt Mr Walker’s local roots made him a “shoo-in”.

Mr Gordon, who is moving to a flat in Harrogate next month, says it was a “lazy attack line” and points out Mr Jones is also originally from West Yorkshire having been born in Ilkley and educated in Bradford and Leeds.

Mr Gordon is keen to highlight his familiarity with Harrogate and Knaresborough, having helped Ms Rogerson in 2019, and at pains to explain he is only from “20 miles down the M1”. But he did not answer when asked to name the manager of Harrogate Town, although he talked enthusiastically about Knaresborough Bed Race.

From disengaged student to Lib Dem activist 

His introduction to politics began by chance as a student in 2014 when he was on a train to London and got talking to the woman opposite, who happened to be the Lib Dem peer Baroness Harris of Richmond.

“She gave me her business card and said ‘if there is anything I can ever do, just get in touch’. At that point it’s fair to say I was slightly disengaged with politics.”

He dropped her a line and ended up becoming a parliamentary intern at the House of Lords aged 20.

But his mother’s diagnosis with breast cancer, the day before he started a masters degree in 2016, was the key moment.

“My mum is a single parent and my little sister was five. I dropped down to part-time study to go home and help.

“Mum arranged to have chemo on Friday nights so she could be ill over the weekend because she couldn’t afford to live off statutory sick pay.

“Seeing mum work a minimum wage job, trying to cover the mortgage and bills, and trying to deal with fighting cancer was an eye-opener. When people have to schedule their chemo around work, that’s not the country I want to live in.”

Mr Gordon in Knaresborough

He says Labour politicians, utterly dominant in his area, had taken local people for granted, safe in the knowledge of re-election. By contrast he says the Lib Dems empower people by giving them the tools to build a better future.

He joined the party in 2017 and stood in Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford at the 2019 general election, finishing fourth behind Labour big beast Yvette Cooper with 6.5% of the vote. The Lib Dems polled 5.1% at the previous election. In 2021 he polled 3.3% in the Batley and Spen by-election to finish fourth behind Labour. George Galloway was third.

Harrogate and Knaresborough is his first serious chance of victory. The Lib Dems increased their share by 12% in 2019 to almost halve Mr Jones’s majority. Mr Gordon says it “was one of the few success stories we had on the night” and “put us in a place where we can think about winning” at the next election, which is likely to be next year.

Why does he think Mr Jones has been so successful?

“We are not under any illusion that as an area there are a lot of demographics in favour of the Conservative Party. But what we do know is there is a route to winning here. We have held the seat before under Phil Willis and feel we can do again.”

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Mr Gordon cites NHS funding, apprenticeships and championing small- and medium-sized businesses as priorities. Brexit, he says, has “eaten up the oxygen in the room” and won’t feature prominently in campaigning.

But what about local issues — does he think nearly £50 million should be spent refurbishing Harrogate Convention Centre?

He says the long-term future of the convention centre needs to be secured but is less sure about the £11.2 million Harrogate Station Gateway scheme that has divided the town:

“There are strong views for and against it. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

Pavement politics

Mr Gordon says his political heroes are mainly Americans, particularly Hillary Clinton, but also singles out former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, explaining:

“Pavement politics and grassroots activism upwards is the best of the Lib Dems and Tim epitomises that.”

It’s a style he intends to copy:

“People should expect to see someone who will be on their doorsteps, who will be at community events and leading from the front and championing Harrogate and Knaresborough and demanding better than what we’ve got from the Tories. I am energetic and dynamic and very happy to roll up my sleeves and get stuck in.”

Liberal Democrat Tom Gordon

Mr Gordon’s varied professional career includes spells as an estate agent and in recruitment. He’s currently a part-time policy and external affairs officer for the Carers Trust charity and the office manager for Helen Morgan, the Lib Dem MP for North Shropshire — a role he will soon relinquish.

He also plans to stand down as a Wakefield councillor in May, having been elected at the age of 25.

Away from work, he has run several marathons for charity and enjoys swimming and badminton. He has a degree in biochemistry and a masters in public health.

He has certainly not been idle in his 20s. He says:

“I’m an ambitious person. I’m very driven. If I set my mind to something, I tend to achieve it.”

As for Mr Jones, the politicking has begun.

“I met him once briefly in passing at a media event. One of the things local people have said is that Andrew does like to turn up to have his photo taken where possible. They don’t tend to say much else.”

If elected, what difference would it make to local people?

“The key point will be that I’m not going to endlessly trudge through the lobbies as the government says, I’m going to be a strong voice for what local people want.

“He has a record of shame quite frankly, whether it be voting to let water companies get away with discharging sewage into rivers or voting for all sorts of horrendous policies this government has concocted over the last few years — he’s got one of the highest records of following that government whip.

“I will put the people of Harrogate and Knaresborough first — not the Tory Party.”

The first shots have been fired as the election countdown draws near.

Harrogate district MPs back government amid chaotic fracking vote

Two Harrogate district MPs voted against a motion to ban fracking last night amid a chaotic night in the House of Commons.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer tabled the motion as part of an opposition day debate to introduce a law to ban fracking in the UK.

Conservative MPs were whipped to vote with the government in what was seen as a test of confidence in Prime Minister Liz Truss.

Harrogate and Knaresborough MP, Andrew Jones, and Julian Smith, Skipton and Ripon MP, voted against the motion. Nigel Adams, Selby and Ainsty which includes rural Harrogate, did not vote.

Mr Adams was one of 40 Conservative MPs who did not take part.

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The government won by 319 votes to 228 – however the night descended into chaos amid allegations that Tory MPs were “bullied and manhandled” into supporting the Prime Minister.

Confusion arose when Graham Stuart, climate minister, told the Commons before MPs entered the voting lobby that “obviously, this is not a confidence vote”.

The move led to whips trying to get their own Conservative MPs to vote against the opposition motion.

Charles Walker, a Conservative MP, described what he saw as “inexcusable” and said there was “no coming back” for the government.

Following the vote, Labour MP Chris Bryant urged the deputy speaker of the House of Commons to investigate the claims.

He said:

“I urge you to launch an investigation into the scenes outside the entrance to the No Lobby earlier. 

“As you know, members are expected to be able to vote without fear or favour and the behaviour code, which is agreed by the whole House, says that there shall never be bullying or harassment of members.

“I saw members being physically manhandled into another Lobby and being bullied.”

Speaking about the allegations, Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg told Sky News that to “characterise it as bullying was mistaken”.

Tactical voting could swing Harrogate and Knaresborough to Lib Dems, poll says

The Liberal Democrats could take Harrogate and Knaresborough off the Conservatives at the next general election if people vote tactically, a poll suggests.

The New Statesman published an article today about the impact of tactical voting at the next election.

The findings are based on questions put to 2,500 voters a week ago by polling company Redfield & Wilton Strategies.

It forecasts tactical voting would lead to a Labour landslide and reduce the Conservatives to just eight seats in northern England — with Mr Jones among the victims.

tactical voting poll

Data by New Statesman and Redfield & Wilton Strategies

The article says Conservative Andrew Jones is currently set to win in Harrogate and Knaresborough for the fifth consecutive time, taking 35% of the vote compared with 32% for the Liberal Democrats and 25% for Labour.

But with tactical voting, the Liberal Democrats would win with 42% compared with 37% for Mr Jones. Labour’s vote would slump to 13%.

The figures are extrapolated from YouGov polling in May, which revealed 50% of Labour voters would consider voting for the Liberal Democrats — but just 13% would consider voting for the Conservatives. The article says:

“Tactical voting would see some voters switch to the Conservatives, without doubt, but the overwhelming majority who would change their vote would change it against them.”

Applied nationally, both for Con-Lib marginal seats and Con-Lab marginal seats, three to four dozen seats would change hands.

The Conservatives would win just 117 seats overall, the Liberal Democrats would win 41 and Labour would end up with 408 seats.

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The article warns:

“These types of polling questions come with a health warning about hypothetical data, but they can aid us in modelling the next election.

“They let us look at seats where the Lib Dems are in second and gauge how many Labour voters might switch to help them over the line.”

The Liberal Democrats upgraded Harrogate and Knaresborough to a target seat this year, which prompted the selection process for its next prospective parliamentary candidate to be restarted.