Tom Harwood explains the 'make or break' situation Nigel Farage's party find themselves in as former Labour MP, Mike Amesbury announces he will be walking away from his role of the Member of Parliament for Runcorn.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Today, a vacancy arises in Parliament, and now there's a rush to fill it with a by-election
00:07just weeks away.
00:09My name's Tom Harwood and this is GBN Originals.
00:13Today on GB News, Mike Amesbury, the former Labour MP who received a suspended sentence
00:19from the courts for punching a constituent to the ground late at night outside a pub,
00:25Well, he has announced that he will be resigning on this day, the 17th of March.
00:32He was speaking to Gloria De Piero, GB News presenter, former Labour MP herself, and said
00:39quite a few things about where he is now as a person.
00:44He doesn't know what job he will be doing next, he has put his home up onto the market
00:49for sale, and he has done the, some would say, honourable thing of resigning rather
00:56than allowing a recall petition to go ahead for six weeks, as it would, to allow for 10
01:04per cent of the constituents of Runcorn to force forward a by-election and only then
01:11for it to be called.
01:13Now that Mike Amesbury has resigned his seat, there can be what's known as the moving of
01:19the writ, the start of the process for that by-election to take place.
01:24We don't yet have a date for that by-election, but it could be as soon as the 1st of May,
01:29that date for the local elections, that's if everything moves really very quickly.
01:35Some candidates have so far been selected, the Conservatives, the Labour Party and indeed
01:41the Greens have selected their candidates, the Reform Party is still yet to select theirs.
01:47That announcement no doubt coming in the coming days.
01:52And looking at the polling around this by-election, it does look like it is becoming, at least
01:56at this stage, a two-horse race.
01:59The Labour Party won by a considerable margin at the last election, but the Reform Party
02:05were in second place.
02:07And of the polling that has been carried out, for example the polling done by Lord Ashcroft
02:12in recent days, it does seem like it is almost neck and neck now between the Labour Party
02:17and the Reform Party.
02:19The traditional by-election squeeze of other parties as voters rush towards the horses
02:26that look like they're in the lead.
02:28Are we going to see quite a lot of tactical voting in this now nailed on by-election?
02:35Quite possibly.
02:36But let's rewind for a second and correct an error I made when I told you that Mike
02:41Amesbury has resigned.
02:44Of course, he can't resign.
02:46MPs are forbidden from resigning from the House.
02:50They can of course be expelled from the House of Commons, or they can leave their job if
02:54they die.
02:55But they can't leave their job simply by stating they will resign.
02:59How then is Mike Amesbury leaving his job as the MP for Runcorn and Helsby?
03:05Well, he's taking on another job.
03:08Ancient tradition dictates, indeed ancient statute dictates, that because an MP is elected
03:15by constituents, they can't simply walk away.
03:20That would be an affront to the constituents who have sent that MP to that place.
03:26The only way you can leave as a Member of Parliament other than expulsion or death is
03:33by taking on another job, a job traditionally in the pay of the Crown.
03:39There are certain jobs that ancient statute precludes Members of Parliament from holding.
03:45And that means that if an MP wants to in effect resign, they take on one of those jobs.
03:50There are two offices that used to be in the pay of the Crown.
03:53I have to say they are now unpaid.
03:55But there are two offices that MPs take up in order to leave the Commons.
04:00It's a quirk of old British tradition.
04:02They are the Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead and the Steward and Bailiff
04:08of the Chiltern Hundreds.
04:10These ancient administrative districts are the sort of nominative honorific that is given
04:16to a resigning MP.
04:19It's likely that Mr Amesbury will take the Chiltern Hundreds, as it's known.
04:24That means that he will have the title of being the Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern
04:29Hundreds until the next MP, or perhaps the next MP but one, because it sort of alternates
04:34between the two of them, resigns.
04:37Usually over the course of a Parliament, we'll have several Stewards and Bailiffs of the
04:40Chiltern Hundreds and of the Manor of Northstead.
04:44It's a quirk of British tradition, but I think that's one of the most wonderful things about
04:48our peculiar and ancient constitution.
04:51When you have a monarchy that has lasted for a thousand years, when you have a Parliament
04:57that has lasted almost as long as that, you get these quirks and these peculiarities and
05:02that's what makes this country so very special.
05:06But let's return to the hard politics of this now, because Runcorn and Helsby has been a
05:11Labour seat for some time.
05:13Of course, the boundaries have shifted.
05:15The seat didn't exactly exist in the previous election the way it did in our most recent
05:20election.
05:21And if you go back into the 2010s, well, in 2010, the Tories won a similar version of
05:27this seat.
05:28But it's clear that the Labour Party has been gaining in this ground for some time.
05:32The majority for Mike Amesbury was strong and indeed it was held by the Labour Party
05:38for the two previous elections too.
05:40So in some form, this area, not always this exact seat, well, for the most recent elections
05:47has been healthily in the Labour camp.
05:51It would be an uphill task for an opposition party to win this seat.
05:55But it does seem that the groundwork has already started to go in.
05:59The Reform Party has been working this seat now for months, since the possibility of a
06:05by-election began to be discussed.
06:08There have been leafleting rounds by the Reform Party.
06:11There have been poster campaigns in the seat by the Reform Party.
06:15They see this as a make or break moment.
06:19After the difficulty that the Reform Party has had in the last couple of weeks, they've
06:23had to suspend one of their MPs, suspend the whip from Rupert Lowe.
06:27This has caused huge consternation and has coincided with a slight dip in the polls for
06:33the Reform Party.
06:34Now, on average, just slightly behind the Labour Party, whereas last month the Reform
06:40Party was in poll position, first place across the average of all the pollsters.
06:46Now, is this dip to do with the internal wranglings of the Reform Party, the perceived division?
06:52Or could it be that the Labour Party is having a slight boost, with Keir Starmer's visit
06:56to the White House going seemingly successfully, with the UK government seemingly taking a
07:01sort of leading role in organising what they're describing as a coalition of the willing to
07:09create the conditions for peace in Ukraine?
07:13Could there be a slight poll boost by making Keir Starmer look slightly more prime ministerial
07:18than perhaps he did in recent months?
07:22There's always a slight boost when prime ministers are able to strut around the world stage,
07:27be praised by politicians and shake hands with powerful countries.
07:31That could, of course, be feeding into this too.
07:34But maybe there's something deeper going on.
07:38And that is, of course, we're in the run-up to these local elections on the 1st of May.
07:42We're in the run-up to this by-election.
07:44We don't know yet the date of it.
07:46But this will be a moment to have a moment of realisation for the Reform Party.
07:51Have these polls been ethereal, or will they be borne out with real votes?
07:57There is one word of warning.
08:00Some research done by Britain Elects has revealed that across the council by-elections that
08:06we've seen over the course of this parliament so far, the Reform Party has slightly underperformed
08:12its polling expectations, as indeed has the Labour Party.
08:18Meanwhile, the Conservative Party have overperformed their polling expectations.
08:23But by far and away, the largest overperformers have been the Lib Dems.
08:27The polling would have suggested that they've got close to around 10% in these council by-election
08:32seats that we've seen so far.
08:34And instead, they've got almost double that.
08:36Now that shows that the Lib Dems have incredibly efficient organisation on the grounds.
08:42They know where their voters are.
08:43They knock on those doors.
08:44They get that vote out, particularly in low-turnout elections like local elections, local by-elections
08:52and indeed by-elections to parliament too.
08:55So, could this be the undoing of the Reform Party?
08:59If there are lots of people minded to vote Reform, but there isn't the infrastructure
09:04on the ground to knock on their door, remind them that an election is on and get them out
09:08to vote.
09:09Could that be what comes unstuck for the plans of the Reform Party?
09:14Of course, they are new.
09:15Their organisation is less embedded than the older parties.
09:20And perhaps we've seen some data in those council by-elections to back that statistic
09:25up.
09:26The Reform Party are very good at what's known as the air war through the media, through
09:30social media too.
09:32But are they good at the ground war?
09:34This will be a big test for Nigel Farage's Reform Party and its attempts to modernise
09:40both in these local elections and this upcoming run-corn by-election.
09:45We'll be following it all here on GB News, trying to sort the facts from the fiction
09:50and weave a story through it all.
09:52And the only way for you to keep fully informed, of course, you know what to do.
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10:04few weeks in the run-up to these elections.