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

The Conservatives have a majority of more than 20,000 in Selby and Ainsty, but with Labour leading in the polls, Thursday’s by-election is still far from a sure thing. Colin Drury visits to find out what the voters think about the candidates

Sir Keir Starmer with Keir Mather, Labour candidate for the Selby and Ainsty by-election (Getty Images)

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.