Selby byelection shows the Conservatives have a problem convincing the North that they are listening - Andrew Vine

Selby and Ainsty was, until the early hours of Friday morning, one of the 100 safest Conservative seats in the country, seemingly a lot more secure than many in the party’s traditional strongholds of the south.

That’s why, when I talked to some Conservative activists in Selby a few weeks before the by-election, they were reasonably confident of holding onto it, even if with a much-reduced majority than the 20,000-plus the former MP Nigel Adams won at the 2019 election. But Mr Mather and Labour changed all that, with the sort of electoral swing in a by-election the country hasn’t seen since the run-up to Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.

That 23.7 per cent swing away from the Conservatives hasn’t just stunned the people I spoke to, but their colleagues all over Yorkshire.

If the people of Selby and Ainsty are that disillusioned with the party, and demonstrated so decisively their desire for change, then there is every reason to suppose fellow voters across vast areas of our county feel the same and won’t hesitate to make that plain when they have the opportunity.

The problems faced by Mr Mather’s constituents are shared by innumerable people across Yorkshire and the wider north.

If people in this comparatively affluent part of North Yorkshire are worried about paying their mortgages, meeting their energy bills, putting food on the table or getting treated by the NHS, then so are the people of places that are less well-off in West, East and South Yorkshire.

In talking to Conservatives around Yorkshire in the days since Mr Mather’s election, I’ve found some very worried people. For some, there is a growing feeling of fatalism that the game is up at the next general election and opposition looms.

For others, there is a sense of uncertainty over how their party can turn its fortunes around before Rishi Sunak leads them into the election campaign.

In particular, they are not convinced that even if Mr Sunak makes good on his pledges to improve the economy, it will be enough to combat a widespread feeling that the Conservatives have run out of steam and it is time to give Labour a chance.

These people are not only worried. Some are angry as well that decent MPs and local party members with their areas’ best interests at heart are going to be rejected by the electorate because of the recklessness and dishonesty of Boris Johnson, compounded by the economic idiocy of Liz Truss.

The self-aggrandisement and arrogance of both these failed Prime Ministers were raised by voters in Selby and Ainsty in any number of interviews before and after the by-election.

That intense dislike is certain to be mirrored in other seats. So is the widespread feeling expressed before the poll that Selby and Ainsty was one of the myriad left-behind places in the north, not on anybody’s radar in Westminster, not getting the help it needs. This is where local issues meet national politics, and the Conservatives have a problem in convincing the north that they are listening, given the abject failure of the much-vaunted levelling up agenda.

Mr Sunak might have taken some comfort from hanging on to Boris Johnson’s former Uxbridge seat, thanks to the divisive local issue of a Labour mayor of London wishing to charge drivers to enter an extended low-emissions zone, but there isn’t a comparable controversy in Yorkshire seats the Conservatives need to win to stay in office.

It doesn’t diminish Mr Mather’s achievement in winning Selby and Ainsty in any way to view his election as an expression of furious dissatisfaction by northern voters at the way that the country has been run in recent years. Through no fault of their own, they are poorer and the public services they rely on, from health to transport, seem to grow ever worse. That bodes ill for the Conservatives at a general election. Mr Sunak will have his work cut out to convince innumerable other northern voters who are exactly like the residents of Selby and Ainsty that he has the answers to their concerns.