From the crumbling ramparts of Runcorn’s Halton Castle, the view stretches across the Mersey Valley like a tapestry of time. Below, the river snakes through a landscape scarred by industry and reborn through regeneration. The silver arches of the Mersey Gateway Bridge gleam in the distance, a modern marvel spanning a waterway that has witnessed centuries of change. Here, atop this ancient mound, one can almost hear the echoes of clashing steel and the cries of men fighting for king and country. But today, the battle is not for a fortress of stone, but for a seat in parliament.
Halton Castle has stood sentinel over this land since the Norman Conquest, a bastion of power in a region that has always been contested. In the English Civil War, it was a royalist stronghold, defiant against the tides of change. Yet, in the 1640s, after a protracted siege, the parliamentary forces breached its walls, proving that even the mightiest fortresses can fall to determined rebels.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the constituency of Runcorn and Helsby, a new seat first contested in 2024, finds itself at the heart of a different kind of siege. Once part of the Halton and Weaver Vale seats, this electoral battleground has been a Labour fortress for decades. But the political winds are shifting, and the by-election here on 1 May promises to be a clash of ideologies as fierce as any medieval skirmish.
The resignation of Mike Amesbury, the former Labour MP caught battering an annoying constituent, has thrown the constituency into turmoil. Labour, scrambling to hold on to a seat it won comfortably with 53 per cent and a majority of almost 15,000 a mere nine months ago, has selected Karen Shore, a local councillor, as its champion. But the challengers are circling. Reform UK, buoyed by its second-place finish here in the General Election, senses an opportunity to storm the ramparts. The Conservatives, diminished, are nigh-on invisible, and the Greens and Liberal Democrats are loud in their absence.
In the pubs and cafés of Runcorn, the talk is of betrayal and opportunity. ‘Labour’s had it too easy for too long’, says a local café owner, who wishes to remain anonymous. ‘Maybe it’s time for a change.’ As I am driven to the high street, my taxi driver – all hacks talk to their taxi drivers to pretend to have a greater knowledge of a place than they do, and I am no exception – tells me that he has always voted Labour, but is now Reform.
In Frodsham, a farmer grumbles about national policies affecting his livelihood. ‘The government’s forgotten us’, he mutters, eyeing the campaign gazebo and activists with suspicion. Indeed, the rural parts of the constituency, making up 60 per cent of the area, are simmering with discontent. Labour’s decision to extend inheritance tax to agricultural properties has sparked outrage among farmers and landowners. ‘It’s a betrayal’, the farmer tells me at the Frodsham market, yards from where Amesbury downed his constituent. ‘They’re taxing us out of existence.’
As the by-election approaches, the air is thick with anticipation. Labour is fighting hard and is expected to win. But though it is defending its turf, Labour must navigate a landscape fraught with disillusionment and anger. Reform UK, with its populist rhetoric, is capitalising on the discontent. The outcome is far from certain, and the battle is hard-fought.
Labour’s grip on this area has been tight. Yet, with Amesbury’s fall from grace and the electorate’s growing restlessness, the party is clearly vulnerable. Reform UK, as the plucky upstart, is sniffing blood. It’s a two-way scrap, and in such chaos, anything can happen. The castle may stand tall, but its foundations are shaking.
For Reform, its activists think that they might just pull it off. Their tails are up. As for Reform’s strategists, even a tight second, as feels most likely, would allow them to point to the Tories as letting Labour back in. In a send-up of the Tories’ tired rhetoric, they will be able to point out that voting Tory means getting Labour.
In the shadow of Halton Castle, the people of Runcorn and Helsby will soon decide their fate. Labour, like the royalists of old, may find their defences tested as never before. The challengers, emboldened by the spirit of rebellion, are ready to storm the gates. And just as the castle eventually yielded to the relentless assault of the parliamentary rebels – an uphill fight to take a fortress that had withstood all comers for an age – so too might the political landscape shift today in ways unforeseen.
In politics, as in history, no stronghold is eternal, and even the mightiest of fortresses can fall in the end. In an irony that won’t escape anyone, the castle was first built in the 1070s, by Nigel, first Baron of Halton. Things can go full circle.
Gawain Towler is a commentator, former director of communications for the Brexit Party and a consultant for Reform UK.
