Will Rishi Sunak lose his Richmond and Northallerton seat at the election?

For a Prime Minister to lose their seat, it requires a storm so perfect that it can only be described as a freak of nature.

The problem for Rishi Sunak at this election is that something very freaky is happening in North Yorkshire: they’re not voting Tory.

At the 2019 general election, save for the comparatively Liberal cosmopolis of York Central, Labour won a grand total of zero seats across the county.

One year ago things began to change.

The Selby and Ainsty by-election saw a Tory majority of over 20,000 disappear, with a record-breaking swing towards Labour returning a 4,000 majority in its place.

The seat, with different boundaries, has been Labour before, but the party’s victory here was an early sign of what all the polls are now pointing to: a near-total collapse of Conservative support among its own voters.

Last month the North Yorkshire mayoral contest cemented this, with Labour winning the contest that party insiders were talking down for months.

Given Labour’s dominance in the city, it’s easy to say that “it was the York wot won it” but analysis of the results in the rest of the county paint a catastrophic picture for Tory hopes.

Labour finished around 2.5 points behind the Conservatives in the area that not only did it win no seats at the last election, but trailed the Tories by 71,940 votes to 196,734.

The largest of these majorities belongs to Rishi Sunak in Richmond and Northallerton, but this week one poll by Savanta suggested that the unthinkable is well and truly on the cards: that he will lose it to Labour.

Following the poll, it was reported that Mr Sunak will get additional resources for his constituency in order to avoid becoming the first prime minister in British history to lose his seat.

“The result in North Yorkshire has created an attitude change on what is achievable,” says Tom Wilson, Labour’s candidate in the seat, while out canvassing in Northallerton, the main population centre of the constituency.

“As you drive in, the roads are usually lined with Vote Tory signs, but not this time,” he adds.

For a Tory seat with a majority of 27,000 there were remarkably few supporters to be found, and after an hour of door knocking one voter had put a Labour poster up in their window, the only indication I could find in the town that day that there was an election at all.

The issue that faces the Conservatives in the seats where it has had the biggest support is that its own voters are switching off.

One focus group conducted for The Yorkshire Post by 38 Degrees and JL Partners found that none of its participants would vote for the Conservatives next month.

All of them voted for the Tories in 2019.

Despite running a somewhat presidential campaign, voters’ concerns were not contained to the failures of the Conservatives over the last decade and a half, they were about him personally.

On a national level, such personal issues are damaging, but in a leader's own seat they can be utterly toxic, as Nick Clegg found out in 2017 when facing the ire of a spurned Yorkshire electorate.

Despite Richmond’s reputation for being, well, rich, the cost of living crisis has introduced more and more sections of the electorate to the concept of struggling. Even if they are not struggling, chances are that their either know someone who is, or are at the very least aware that others who are.

Visiting Mr Sunak’s home in the village of Kirby Sigston, it’s easy to see why it’s hard for him to be seen to relate.

The £2 million house, or to give it its actual name, Kirby Sigston Manor, is a sprawling complex which boasts, aside from its new heated swimming pool, a lake.

Mr Sunak’s comments about having “gone without” Sky TV as a child have worsened this concept that he is out of touch.

Renee, a midwife, told our focus group: “There’s children starving, mums and dads having to go to foodbanks, foodbanks are at a record high of being used because people literally can’t afford to eat, and he said that he’s ‘poverty stricken’ was to go without Sky.”

The Conservatives’ current polling deficit, that refuses to narrow, first came from the drop of support during Partygate and other assorted sleaze scandals.

Recent events have reminded voters of why so many of them have turned their backs on the Tories and a perceived looseness around morals, after Mr Sunak’s aides were accused of betting on the date of election.

Emma, a school teacher, and participant in our focus group, said: “It almost reminded me of during Covid, when Boris Johnson and everybody else went against Covid regulations,” adding that it was “a mockery”.

Richmond and Northallerton has the highest number of veterans of any seat in Yorkshire, with over 6,000 either serving in the regular armed forces, or the reserves.

The seat contains the military town of Catterick Garrison, the largest British army garrison in the world.

Mr Sunak’s decision to leave D-day celebrations early has gone down about as badly as you would expect.

Financial services worker Kate told our focus group: “The forces are a big presence in this area, and it’s another way that he’s out of touch, he doesn’t care about his local constituency because there’s a lot of members of his local constituency who are in the forces. I grew up in Catterick garrison, my dad was in the army, and it just made me angry because it was completely disrespectful.”

Another veteran in the seat, unfortunately for the Prime Minister, is Lee Taylor, Reform UK’s candidate, who has seen support rise following Nigel Farage’s return as leader, with some polls putting the party ahead of the Conservatives nationally.

Mr Taylor described the D-day incident as “another clear resignation point, offending our veterans and much of the nation.”

“This action arguably demonstrates a lack of understanding of British culture and traditions,” he said, adding: “I cannot understand why anyone would vote for Mr Sunak now.”

“I have honestly never seen a Prime Minister’s brand in worse shape personally with voters,” says Tom Lubbock, co-founder of JL Partners.

The conditions are ripe for the unthinkable to happen in North Yorkshire, but there is a reason that the unthinkable usually doesn’t happen.

Other MRP polls point to a relatively comfortable hold for the Prime Minister, with YouGov’s most recent modelling suggesting that he will win by around 15 points.

The results of a second focus group conducted this week by More in Common, shared with The Yorkshire Post, found some voters in the seat still view him somewhat positively, especially in comparison to the rest of his party.

“He just seems like a decent person. He should have stayed at the D-Day thing, but that doesn’t make him a worse MP for us,” said one voter, while another said: "They are all as bad as each other. I don’t have a particular problem with Rishi Sunak to be honest.”

Just as with the North Yorkshire mayoral result, Labour does not really think it can win here.

As Daniel Callaghan, the Lib Dem candidate for the seat, points out, the party’s resources locally are not aimed at the seat.

Labour’s “how to help” page for local would-be-volunteers recommends people head to Darlington, Scarborough, or Hull West to canvas so that it can take seats with much smaller swings than required here.

Winning here for Labour would be the icing on the cake on election night, but, understandably, when fighting an election on so many fronts, there is only so much resources that it can put into winning the hitherto unwinnable.

Though Richmond is ostensibly voting for its MP for the next half a decade, there are few that feel that Rishi Sunak will last that long, with speculation that he will up sticks and move to California at the earliest opportunity following a seemingly inevitable Conservative loss nationally.

Though the Prime Minister has repeatedly denied this, it’s worth noting that there is no reason for him not to lie about this.

“He’s been parachuted in and he'll helicopter back out,” says Mr Callaghan.