The people of the Kingswood constituency will go to the polls and elect an MP who will only be in place for less than a year, following the decision by sitting MP Chris Skidmore to resign. The MP shocked both Westminster and South Gloucestershire by announcing on Friday evening (December 5) that not only was he resigning the party whip to effectively no longer be a Conservative MP, but he would be resigning as an MP altogether.
That has sparked a great deal of confusion and questions - mainly because, firstly, there’s a General Election that has to be called at some point before the middle of December this year, and, secondly, because the Kingswood constituency Mr Skidmore represents as its MP is in the process of being consigned to history.
Mr Skidmore formally tendered his resignation as an MP to Parliament today, Monday January 8, but even before that Labour have kicked off their by-election campaign, posting pictures on social media of teams of party campaigners and local councillors out in Kingswood High Street and knocking on doors in the constituency.
READ MORE: New fines to deter firms leaving bodies at mortuary for too long
Try BristolLive Premium for FREE with no ads and new features
But what will happen in the by-election, what does this mean for the new seat and who is standing to be the MP - a position that could last for literally a matter of weeks or months? Bristol Live has been inundated with questions all weekend after the news broke on Friday evening, and we’ll attempt to answer them here.
Who is Chris Skidmore and why is he resigning?
Mr Skidmore has been the Conservative MP for Kingswood since 2010, and in the Westminster Bubble is perhaps best known initially as one of the five of a new generation of MPs who, in 2012, co-authored a book called Britannia Unchained, which presented a treatise that Britain should adopt a different and radical approach to business and economics, and be much more of a low-tax economy like the tiger economies of Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
The other four authors were Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng, Dominic Raab and Liz Truss - who all went on to occupy the highest positions in Government. When Liz Truss, as Prime Minister, and Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor, enacted the principles of Britannia Unchained in their first budget in the autumn of 2022, it triggered a major shock to the British economy and both were out of their jobs within weeks.
Mr Skidmore took a different path, focussing more on science and climate change, and has been most recently something of a lone voice within the Conservative Party calling for the Government to continue towards trying to achieve a huge reduction in the amount of fossil fuels the UK burns through each year - called ‘Net Zero’. He drew up plans to do that, but under Rishi Sunak, his vision has been dropped by his party leaders. This week, the Government will put forward a Bill to create new licences for more gas and oil extraction, and Mr Skidmore said he ‘cannot vote’ for that. “To fail to act, rather than merely speak out, is to tolerate a status quo that cannot be sustained.”
Why is this so controversial?
Mr Skidmore’s position on the issue of Net Zero is not a surprise. In the autumn of 2022 and into the spring of 2023, he published reviews and reports into Net Zero, and was publicly against his own Government’s decision to allow fracking in parts of the country. Aside from the debate around climate change and Government policy, it is the timing of the decision to resign as an MP that is controversial.
Mr Skidmore had already announced that he would be stepping down as an MP at the next election - or rather, that he would not be seeking re-election. That decision was made logistically easier for him because of changes to the boundaries of constituencies that broke up his Kingswood constituency, so it would no longer exist in name or in reality. In June last year, it was announced Mr Skidmore had been appointed to a professorship at the University of Bath, to undertake research on sustainability and climate change.
The controversy is around his decision to resign as an MP, and not just see out the time until the General Election as an independent MP serving his constituents. Reform Party leader Richard Tice said Mr Skidmore should be 'held responsible' for the £250,000 costs of holding the by-election so soon before a General Election. "This is a scandal of selfishness, of hypocrisy, and of grotesque abuse of taxpayers' cash," Mr Tice said.
"He's forcing the local authority to spend about £250,000 of hard-pressed council taxpayers' cash to hold that by-election," he added.
Mr Skidmore's soon-to-be former colleagues also criticised the decision. "Resign the whip, fine," Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker told the Daily Telegraph. "But imposing another by-election this close to the general just feels gratuitous."
Will the by-election happen, and when?
Mr Skidmore’s resignation will trigger a by-election because the people of Kingswood would not have an MP otherwise. He will be the MP until that by-election, and although a date has not yet been set for it, the by-elections usually happen within around a month to six weeks. So voters in Kingswood should expect to be going to the polls at some point in February or possibly March.
Given Kingswood will no longer exist as a constituency at some point quite soon, will there actually be a by-election? The answer to that is yes - unless Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calls a General Election in the next couple of weeks and there would therefore be no need to elect a Kingswood MP.
What is happening to the Kingswood constituency?
For now, the Kingswood constituency exists, and the people who live there need an MP who wants the job. So a by-election will happen in the coming weeks. Whoever is elected will be in an unusual position of representing a parliamentary seat that will soon not exist.
When a General Election is eventually called this year, voters in what is now Kingswood will find themselves in one of four different constituencies. Almost half - people who live in the southern and eastern half of the Kingswood area in places like Hanham, Bitton, Oldland Common, Longwell Green, Parkwall and Warmley - will be voting in a new constituency called North East Somerset and Hanham, joining with areas like Keynsham, Whitchurch Village and Saltford across the river, in what is currently Jacob Rees Mogg’s seat.
Voters in just over a third of the constituency, in Kingswood town itself as well as New Cheltenham and Woodstock, will find themselves in the new Bristol North East constituency. This was the seat that Labour held a vote to choose its candidate for last summer, where the Mayor of Lewisham, Damien Egan, defeated Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees.
Voters in Emersons Green will find themselves voting in the Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency, and a tiny number in the north east corner of the constituency will be transferred to the Thornbury and Yate constituency.
For now, all of those moves are irrelevant for the voters of Kingswood - if not for the politicians themselves - because the by-election will involve the existing Kingswood constituency, and take place under the 2019 General Election boundaries. The by-election can’t do anything else, it can’t be fought under the new boundaries, because that involves four other constituencies and three other MPs who already have jobs. Kingswood still exists and will exist until the General Election, and now its voters will have one unexpected final vote.
Who will be standing?
The party branches in the area have been gradually getting themselves organised in the imminently new constituencies, so to have to go back to Kingswood has thrown something of a spanner in the works.
For example, Labour, as mentioned, organised their new North East Bristol branch and got together with branches in places like Eastville in Bristol, and duly chose Damien Egan, who grew up in Kingswood, as the party’s candidate.
Labour in North East Somerset have the task of choosing its candidate to take on Jacob Rees Mogg - with metro mayor Dan Norris rumoured to be a strong contender. Other parties are in the same situation, and could well choose a candidate for the Kingswood by-election who would already be in line to contest one of the seats - either Bristol North East or NE Somerset and Hanham, giving them valuable experience.
Labour launched its campaign at the weekend, with party chairman and shadow minister Annalise Dodds joining local activists - she said they were ‘hitting the ground running' in Kingswood. They haven’t formally announced who their by-election candidate is going to be - and expect to do so early this week. It could well be Damien Egan, who won the members’ choice to be North East Bristol’s Labour candidate in the summer, and returned to Lewisham to continue being that London borough’s directly-elected Mayor. He was waiting for the General Election to be called, to resign as mayor in south London and return to Kingswood - now he could well be returning sooner than expected.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer - a Bristol city councillor - has told Bristol Live their party will be standing. She criticised both Labour and the Conservatives for the situation that led to Mr Skidmore's resignation. "As the world burns, the Tories turn in on themselves. The government's green credentials are truly in tatters," she said. "The climate crisis is here and now and being experienced by people across the country, but the Prime Minister can't hold on to anyone who has any good intentions toward the environment.
"Labour has to be held to account as well - it refused to block Rosebank and other new oil and gas licences. How long before Labour's own green champions feel their principles are too compromised to continue? The constituency Skidmore represents is on the edge of Bristol, a city that’s very much turning Green. The Green Party is currently in the process of selecting our candidate for the Kingswood by-election," she added.
Who won’t be standing?
One political party has already announced it won’t be standing - the Reform Party. The party that emerged from the Brexit Party has said it won’t stand in protest at that controversial decision to actually have a by-election in the first place. Its leader Richard Tice even called on other parties to do the same and not stand a candidate in protest. The Brexit Party, or Reform, didn’t stand in Kingswood in 2019, so it is difficult to judge how much of an impact this decision will have.
Who will win?
The Kingswood constituency has long been considered a ‘bell-weather’ seat - whichever party wins it usually wins the General Election. The area is an old coal mining area - there were once coal mines right across Kingswood and the surrounding villages - and has traditionally been a two-way fight between Labour and the Conservatives.
It went from Labour to Conservatives in 1979 under Margaret Thatcher’s landslide, but Labour’s Roger Berry won it back in 1992. In fact 1992 was the only General Election in the past 50 years in which the winner didn’t win the national vote too. Roger Berry was the Labour MP there from 1992 to 2010, when he was narrowly beaten by Chris Skidmore.
Mr Skidmore has increased his vote share at every General Election since. In 2019, he won with 56.2 per cent of the vote, and a majority of 11,220, beating Labour’s Nicola Bowden-Jones into second place.
But the Conservatives in Kingswood and in Downing Street will be worried about the by-election. That 11,220 majority is fewer votes than the Tory majorities overturned by Labour in by-elections in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth in October last year.
