From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manvine Rana.

On the south bank of the River Mersey, it's an ancient settlement built to fight the Vikings

that just a few centuries ago was a fashionable spa and health resort.

Since then, its fortunes have turned.

Rangorn itself is a traditional kind of town in the north, in many ways suffering from a lot of the

similar problems that you

would see in in many of those towns the deindustrialisation i spent some time at a place called

ronkorn shopping city which is a giant shopping centre which is essentially a relic of a past it might

have been busy on a weekend a few years ago, well, a couple of decades

ago at this stage, but now they're just empty and filled with things like pawnbrokers, bookmakers,

paring shops.

Runcorn isn't the sort of place that often features in the headlines, but this Thursday, it hosts a

by-election that's turned it into a national battleground. Nigel Farage, who's recently

become a regular visitor, has it firmly in his sights. Now we're coming for Labour.

Bruncorn is that kind of constituency.

It is Labour's 16th, safest seat in the United Kingdom.

And all I can tell you is we're giving them one hell of a run for their money.

Reform are parking their tanks on the lawns of the red wool. Will Runcorn

give Reform a fifth MP in Parliament? And as voting takes place at the same time as the local

elections, does this by-election show why reform poses such a threat to both the Tories and Labour?

The story today, Farage parks reforms, tanks, on Labour's Law.

I'm Gerry Scott and I'm the senior political correspondent for The Times.

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