‘There’s a lot of disgust’: Are true blue northern voters about to turn against the Tories?

It may be considered a Conservative stronghold but, in Selby and Ainsty this week, trying to find someone with something positive to say about outgoing Tory MP Nigel Adams was needle-in-haystack stuff.

“The only time anyone around here ever saw him was when he was on TV opening doors for Boris Johnson,” said Richard Schofield, owner of the Heaven & Home gift shop on Selby high street and himself a lifelong blue voter. “He looked more like a chauffeur than an MP.”

Voters in this rural North Yorkshire constituency will go to the polls on 20 July after Adams – a Boris ultra-loyalist – quit the constituency last month, a day after he was snubbed for a peerage.

Now, as campaigning enters its last weekend, it would appear this true-blue seat – vaguely bucolic, relatively affluent, and a little older than the UK average – is set to turn red for the first time since it was created 13 years ago.

With both Adams’s unseemly departure and the growing mortgage crisis at the forefront of voters’ minds, as well as a suite of local complaints such as diminishing public transport, polls suggest Labour could overturn the current 20,137 Tory majority.

One, by JL Partners, has 25-year-old red rose candidate Keir Mather a full 12 points ahead of Conservative rival Claire Holmes, a barrister and councillor in next door East Ridings.

And, speaking to people in Selby – a market town with a 1,000-year-old abbey at its heart – their views appear to fully reflect those numbers.

“Adams was all but anonymous and, in a place like this, people notice that,” said Mr Schofield, a grandfather of three who opened his gift store 23 years ago. “This shop is a bit like a surgery – people pop in and have a chat; and I can tell you there’s a lot of disgust at the way he quit. People are struggling with the cost of everything going up – food, fuel, their mortgages – and their MP flounces off because he didn’t get a peerage? What does that say about him?”

How would Mr Schofield himself vote on 20 July? “I’m still honestly not sure,” the 65-year-old replied. “But I will say there’s a lot of people coming in here saying it’s time for a change, and I think I agree.”

The Selby and Ainsty poll is, of course, just one of three by-elections taking place on 20 July.

Also up for grabs are the seats of Uxbridge and South Ruislip – vacated by Boris Johnson – and Somerton and Frome, the former seat of Tory David Warburton who stood down last month amid accusations of sexual harassment (denied) and drug use (admitted).

The initial early money was on the Conservatives losing both those seats (Uxbridge to Labour; Somerton to the Lib Dems) but retaining Selby and Ainsty.

Yet, increasingly, Labour supporters are confident that this corner of North Yorkshire will also shift colour.

Mortgage fears, cost of living difficulties and last year’s Liz Truss debacle have all eroded confidence in the Tories here, campaigners say. More locally, reduced bus links to nearby York and Leeds, and concerns about the high street have further added to a sense of discontent.

“Everyone you speak to is disillusioned,” said Labour councillor Jack Proud. “They want some hope, and they know they’re not going to get that with just more of the same.”

Activists have flooded into the area. Big names – including both Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner – have visited. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves came here armed with a tailor-made five-point plan for the area. It included promises on issues of real local concern: fuel costs, rural crime and flood defences.

“They’re working hard, there’s no doubt about that,” said Tory councillor Mark Crane. “I think they must fancy it because I’ve had them knocking on my door [in the village of Brayton] three or four times. They say: ‘What are your voting intentions?’ I tell them I’m a Conservative councillor so perhaps they can work it out for themselves. But they don’t seem overly deterred.”

He himself insists the Conservatives can still win here – “but we haven’t been helped by what’s gone on [in Westminster] over the last 12 months or the way Nigel left,” he added. “It will be a very reduced majority.”

Two people who have already shifted their vote are Steve and Denise Harrison.

The couple were sat outside The George Inn – in the shadow of the glorious abbey – when approached by The Independent on Thursday.

They’d voted Conservative in 2019 but had already submitted postal ballots for Labour this time round. “Done and dusted, and a very easy decision,” noted Denise, a retired nurse.

“We need some grown-ups back in charge,” declared Steve, as he sank a pint. “This current rabble, they’re like school kids, arguing among themselves, lying to the rest of us, only in it for themselves. It stinks.”

He was a fan of Tony Blair and sees a bit of the former PM in Sir Keir Starmer. “I don’t agree with everything he says,” the 65-year-old said. “But I think he’s honest and has integrity.”

Another couple passing through the picturesque market square was fretful about mortgage repayments.

The pair – parents of two primary school children – are due to renegotiate their current deal next year, putting them squarely among the one million households who the Bank of England has said may see repayments rise by £500 a month.

“I don’t know where we can get that money from,” said the mother, an office administrator. “We’ve already cut back on food shopping and other things because of rising bills. There’s nothing left to cut. It’s horrible. You work so hard to try and give your kids a good home but it feels like everything is stacked against you. Will we have to sell the house? Maybe. I don’t know. If I think about it too much, I feel genuinely sick with worry.”

Their vote, they said, would be red.

None of which is to say – it should be made clear – that this is a foregone conclusion.

In the constituency’s wealthier outer villages – Appleton Roebuck, Bolton Percy, North Duffield – the Conservatives suggest their support is holding, while Holmes herself appears a candidate capable of winning hearts. “She’s got a good strong Yorkshire accent,” smiles John Smith, a retired butcher, sat in Selby market square. “That’s a plus for a start.”

Two things about Mr Mather, the Labour candidate, meanwhile, appear to cause some doubt here: his age and the fact he lives in London.

“He’s 25!” said Julie Rix, while working in Carol Winn Florists on the high street. “I don’t think you should judge someone on how old they are but what can he know of the struggles that people are going through?”

Mind you, the 56-year-old added, her father lives in an oil-heated farmstead and had, this winter, taken to cutting up pallets for the fire to save on heating costs. “What does a billionaire [Rishi Sunak] know about that?” she asked.

Which brings us back to Richard Schofield in his gift shop once again.

Between 1997 and 2010 – before boundary changes made this a Tory stronghold – Selby had a Labour MP, John Grogan.

“I was never a Labour voter but you’d see him walking down the high street with his arms full of casework folders and, if you stopped him, he’d still stand there and listen to you and have a chat,” said Mr Schofield. “I never appreciated that at the time but if [Mather] gets in and if he’s anything like that, I don’t think people will mind how young he is.”