Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tollis.

We need to look ahead to next week's by-election triple header,

and what it means for the political party's fortunes as we head into Parliament's summer break,

is Salma Shah, former government special advisor,

Robert Ford, Professor of Political Science

at the University of Manchester. And it's starting with you, Rob, obviously voters go to the polls

next week in Uxbridge and South Reislipp in West London after Boris Johnson resigned his seat there,

in Selby and Aenecy in North Yorkshire where Nigel Adams resigned his seat, and Somerton

and Throne in Somerset where

David Warburton stood down after allegations against him and you know just looking at it now could

Richard Seneca have more of an electoral headache given that he's now got to defend a blue wall

southern sea a suburban sea and also a northern heartland sea all on the same day well yeah I mean

that's that's a good way of framing it. It's three very different

kinds of targets. Uxbridge has been drifting away from the Conservatives for a while in terms

of its demographic mix, and probably there's a larger than average personal vote there because

of Boris Johnson being the MP. It's the kind of seat we would very much expect to fall at the next general

election. So there, in the sense, Sunak has helped because expectation is very much that Labor should win it,

but there is the kind of local complication of the ultra-low emission zone, which makes the Labour incumbent mayor unpopular.

So an upset can't be ruled out, and that would be very,

very good news for Sunak and what is a key battleground seat. Then Selby and Ainty, somewhat the

other way around in that, you know, that's not a seat that we would expect to fall to labor at the general

...