Over the past week or so I have been suggesting that the best value political bet at the moment is the 20/1 or thereabouts that you can get on the LDs taking Chesham and Amersham which votes on June 17th. This has been reinforced by this report from the Independent .

With a 16,223 majority to overturn from the 2019 general election, Lib Dem candidate Sarah Green has a mountain to climb to challenge for a shock victory in the 17 June vote, but internal party memos seen by The Independent have described the improbable target as “a by-election we can win”…Party polling of the seat has found Tory support down by nearly 10 percentage points since the general election on 45.5 per cent, with Lib Dems up almost nine points on 35.1 – a swing to Davey’s party of 9.35 per cent but still well short of what is needed to capture one of the Conservatives’ safest seats…But the same survey found more than 60 per cent of Labour and Green supporters are ready to consider voting tactically to oust the Conservatives, raising party hopes that a serious challenge may not be so fanciful.

At the Richmond Park (2016) and Brecon (2019) by-elections the LDs made available similar data that proved to be indicative when the votes were counted.

C&A was held by the Tories at GE2019 with a vote share of 55.4% – but that was 5.3% DOWN on what happened there at GE2017. So C&A went very much against the country as whole when the average Tory vote share went up. This is not explained by a Farage party not contesting the seat at either GE2017 or GE2019.

It could be that the politics of seats like this are the opposite of the “Northern Wall” where Boris appears to have a special appeal?

Mike Smithson