The byelection campaign in Somerton and Frome is notable for several reasons, not least the fact that the Liberal Democrat challenger, Sarah Dyke, sometimes feels as if she gets treated like the de facto local MP already.
“I’ve been dealing with a lot of David Warburton’s casework over the last year because people haven’t known where to go,” Dyke says of the Conservative incumbent, who resigned last month after a parliamentary investigation into allegations of harassment and drug use.
After the claims against Warburton emerged 15 months ago, many locals complained that he was barely seen in the Somerset constituency, with some even putting up mock “missing” posters.
Warburton claimed at the weekend that allegations of sexual misconduct against him had been withdrawn. He has admitted drug-taking but denies any sexual misconduct.
While Warburton denies he neglected local issues, Dyke, speaking on a visit to the Godminster organic dairy farm just outside the small town of Bruton, says that as a local councillor who has been the Lib Dem candidate for more than a year, she has fielded numerous queries.
“Everybody that I’ve spoken to has said they’ve tried to email him, they’ve tried to write to him, they’ve tried to knock on his office door, and every single route came up with a blank,” Dyke says. “So they turned to me.”
Another curiosity is that of the three byelections taking place on Thursday, bookmakers and pundits are near unanimous in agreeing that Somerton and Frome is the easiest to call, with Dyke set to win – despite the Conservatives defending a 19,000-plus majority in a heavily rural seat they have held since 2015.
Lib Dem campaigners are understandably cautious, stressing that the wait for Warburton’s resignation has left little more than four weeks to persuade numerous Labour and Green supporters that they should vote tactically.
“The last week is going to be crucial,” one activist said. “It’s gone well so far but there is a lot still to be done.”
Even with two other seats to defend, in Selby and Uxbridge, the Conservatives are not giving up. Chatting in a pub in Wincanton, another of the handful of towns dotted around the Somerset constituency, the Tory candidate, Faye Purbrick, recounts visits from a string of ministers including Michael Gove and Grant Shapps.
Purbrick, also a councillor on Somerset council, argues that such ties make her a better bet for local people than a Lib Dem who, she argues, would be left “shouting from the sidelines” in Westminster.
“I’m connected to a lot of people and if people vote for me they’ll get an MP who is going to hit the ground running, and knows where to go and what to do to make things happen,” Purbrick says.
Perhaps understandably, Purbrick insists that Warburton and his record are not a prime concern for locals. “It’s not a conversation I’ve been having with people,” she says.
Despite the increasingly short odds of a Lib Dem win, Somerton and Frome is a complex area to campaign in, with its stark mix of often significant deprivation and notable wealth, much of the latter coming via incomers from London, increasingly so since Covid.
This is particularly notable in parts of Frome and in Bruton, the location last weekend of the orange confetti-interrupted wedding of the former chancellor George Osborne, who has a home there.
Much of the seat is rural, which is home turf for Dyke who comes from a farming family. Touring Godminster, she chats knowledgeably to Peter Cheek, the manager, about how the farm plants a “salad bowl” of mixed grazing plants to improve the dairy cattle’s health, as well as boosting biodiversity.
As ever with Lib Dem byelection campaigns, if the party does win, a good part of the reason is likely to be the energy and resources put into campaigning.
Such is the volume of Lib Dem literature pushed through letterboxes that some locals have started referring to them as “the Daily Sarah”. Purbrick, the Tory hopeful, says that when she knocked on one door recently, an exasperated local pushed nine Lib Dem leaflets into her hands and asked if she could find a place to recycle them.
Much of this onslaught of paper is intended to reinforce the impression that it is a two-horse race. While Labour is fairly obviously focusing on Selby and Uxbridge, the Greens have fielded a popular local councillor, Martin Dimery, and are pushing hard.
Frome, Dimery’s home turf, has Green posters and placards on show, but elsewhere in the constituency it is almost all Lib Dem orange. One Conservative sign has reportedly been spotted – the mischievous theory is that it was erected out of spite by the disgruntled ex-partner of a Lib Dem councillor.
There are already some signs that the recipe is in place for another Lib Dem win – tactical voting combined with at best apathy among habitual Tories.
Returning home from the shops in Frome, Liz Rostand, a retired former radio journalist, said she was likely to not vote Conservative for the first time since 1997. “I’m not particularly impressed by anyone,” she said. “I probably won’t vote Labour. I won’t vote for the Tories. I guess it could be Lib Dem, but maybe also Green. I just don’t know.”
Chris and Becky Battle, both teachers, were more clear: they are Labour supporters but will vote for Dyke this time. “We just want to get the Conservatives out, and unfortunately tactical voting is the only way to do it,” Becky Battle said.
