Byelections Labour hopes high in seats haunted by Tory ghosts

Alistair Strathern hates the photo chosen to be splashed across his advertising boards. "Good poster," shouts a A schoolboy at the gently blushing Labour candidate across Dunstable Street in the centre of Ampthill, one of the 48 towns and villages that make up the constituency of Mid Bedfordshire.

- Daniel Boffey 

"I look smug," Strathern explains. "Maybe you think I always look smug, but I don't think I look that smug." 

It's a shame that Strathern feels this way, as his boards are absolutely everywhere. His face pops up out of hedges, emerges smiling from behind trees and stares back from front gardens, daring voters to have the gall not to back Keir Starmer's Labour party.

There's a strategy behind this. Strathern is a reassuring prospective parliamentary candidate for today's byelection. He is on unpaid leave from his job at the Bank of England, where he specialises in the regulation of climate insurance, but the 33-year old has had numerous other roles on Threadneedle Street. In short, he knows money. He is empathic, personable and does not dodge the questions asked of him on the doorsteps, including on Starmer's unusually outspoken comments on the need to face down local opposition to housebuilding.

Strathern is also not known to hold any views about dark, deep state forces in Downing Street conspiring to oust Boris Johnson. He is not, to be clear, the area's former MP and conspiracy detective, Nadine Dorries.

Mid Beds, a rural constituency 50 miles north of central London where the Conservatives enjoyed a 24,664-vote majority at the last general election, is one of two seats up for grabs today along with Tamworth, 80 miles farther northwest, where the Tory majority in 2019 was almost 20,000. Despite these figures putting the constituencies squarely in safe Tory seat territory, they are very much in play.

Mid Beds is a three-way fight, with polling suggesting the Tory vote has collapsed from 60% to 29%, with Labour also on 29% and the Lib Dem candidate, Emma Holland-Lindsay, a close third, with 22%. There hasn't been any polling in Tamworth but it is looking tight between the Tories and Labour.