Mike Amesbury to trigger a by-election

Sound the by-election claxon, Runcorn is a-go! Yes, that’s right – five months after his kerfuffle on the kerb, Mike Amesbury has (for once) done the decent thing. In an interview with the BBC, the disgraced ex-Labour MP today declared it is his intention to resign from the House of Commons ‘shortly’ and trigger a by-election in his Cheshire constituency. It will be the first by-election of the parliament – and a chance for Reform to replace the gap left by Rupert Lowe.

Amesbury told the BBC that he will begin the ‘statutory process’ of winding up his office before resigning as an MP ‘as soon as possible’. He was last month given a 10-week prison sentence, suspended for two years, after he admitted assaulting Paul Fellows. In his first interview since the sentencing, Amesbury said he ‘regrets’ attacking Fellows ‘every moment, every day’ but says he would have tried to remain an MP – a job he said was his ‘calling’ – had he been given a lighter community sentence.