Voters in North Shropshire have only ever elected Conservative MPs.
The by-election here could not, however, come at a worse time for Boris Johnson. The Tory majority is 23,000 and the last opposition party to have any success no longer exists — the Liberals won a by-election in the abolished seat of Oswestry in 1904.
Despite this, the Liberal Democrats hope to emulate their forebears with a huge upset on Thursday in a contest triggered by the resignation of Owen Paterson.
Paterson, who held the constituency for 24 years, was found by the Commons standards authorities to have engaged in paid lobbying after contacting ministers on behalf of two companies from which he received £112,000 a year.
Johnson attempted to spare the former cabinet minister a 30-day suspension by ripping up the standards rulebook but was forced into a humiliating U-turn after a public outcry. Paterson, 65, then quit the Commons.
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The Tories have lost their national poll lead to Labour after a damaging week in Westminster. No 10 was forced to reimpose coronavirus restrictions amid surging cases of the Omicron variant and Johnson had to answer more questions about the funding of his Downing Street flat. Most dangerously, leaked video showed the prime minister’s aides giggling about holding a Christmas party last year.
North Shropshire, a vast rural constituency on the border with Wales, is made up of several poorly connected market towns separated by farmland.
Turnout is expected to be low this week with days left before Christmas. In the recent Old Bexley & Sidcup by-election, the Tory majority was squeezed when supporters refused to go to the polls.
In the aftermath of that contest, Tory MPs were ordered to travel to North Shropshire to support their candidate, Neil Shastri-Hurst, 38, a barrister and former army doctor. The prime minister himself came to Oswestry to watch Shastri-Hurst deliver booster jabs, but blundered by calling him “Neil Shastri-Hughes”. In recent hustings, Shastri-Hurst has been asked as much about what happened in Downing Street last December as whether local rail lines closed by Dr Beeching will reopen. The Tory candidate declined to be interviewed by The Times.
If the Liberal Democrats do reduce the Tory majority, they will be indebted to Sir Rowland Hill, an MP from the reign of Henry VIII. Hill was famous as a principled politician — “a foe to vice, and a vehement corrector” — who fought corruption. He built a magnificent manor house called Soulton Hall near the town of Wem.
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The grounds now serve as the Lib Dem campaign base and it is from here that the party dreams of taking a second Tory scalp this year after winning the Chesham & Amersham by-election. Helen Morgan, the Lib Dem candidate, is leveraging local issues such as ambulance response times and farmers’ frustrations with the Australia and New Zealand trade deals in the hope of improving on a third-place finish behind Labour in the 2019 election.
Unlike Shastri-Hurst, who started renting in the constituency shortly after being selected, Morgan, 46, is a local. “My sense is that turnout won’t be that great and that there are quite a lot of demotivated Conservatives,” she says. “Local people really do think they want somebody who is embedded in their community.”
While Morgan is critical of Paterson’s conduct, she has not put sleaze front and centre of her campaign fearing that it could play into voters’ wider sense of disillusionment with the political class.
She has herself had to apologise about social media posts comparing the government and the Nazis, including one likening Priti Patel to Goebbels. “I’ve got a history degree and I’ve drawn some historical comparisons, but to the extent that they caused offence, I’ve apologised for that,” she said.
An unknown quantity is the performance of Reform UK, whose leader Richard Tice came third in Old Bexley & Sidcup. There has been no challenger to the right of the Tories in North Shropshire since 2015, when Ukip picked up over 9,000 votes. The party’s candidate, Kirsty Walmsley, 39, is the daughter of the former Tory leader of Shropshire council, and Reform UK has been buoyed by the defection of the Tory deputy mayor of Market Drayton.
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Last week voters were having difficulty getting excited about the contest. In Market Drayton Nathan Wilson, a delicatessen owner aged 47, said there had been a mixed reaction to Paterson’s resignation and that he would stay at home on what will be his birthday.
Rose Darlington, 72, a retired community worker and Conservative voter, said she had not paid close attention to Paterson’s resignation but that she would “vote Boris”.
In Oswestry, however, Ginny Thurston, 70, a retired marketing consultant, and lifelong Tory voter, has moved away from the Conservatives and said the prime minister was a “babbling buffoon”. So upset was she by the video last week of Downing Street aides wondering how to spin the party that she may vote Labour.
Malcolm Clarke, 75, a retired schoolmaster and Conservative voter, will either stay at home or tactically vote Lib Dem. “If I’d still been head of sixth form, there would have been no Christmas party last year,” he said. “I’d say, ‘Boris, engage your brain’ .”
