“Tell Boris he’s a coward,” says John Molyneux, who is out walking his two dogs along the winding streets of Oswestry, North Shropshire, when approached about his views on Thursday’s by-election.
“Letting that young girl take the rap,” he adds disapprovingly. “He’s the one in charge.”
Molyneux, an army veteran, is of course referring to the resignation of Johnson’s former press secretary, Allegra Stratton, last week over what has been christened “partygate”.
In widely condemned footage, Stratton is seen joking with No.10 colleagues about a lockdown-breaking Christmas party last year that Johnson claims he had been assured didn’t happen, and making light of the rules that kept so many apart during those brutal winter months.
Already partygate has overshadowed the original events that led to the triggering of a by-election in this constituency; the resignation of former MP Owen Paterson after he was found guilty of an “egregious” breach of parliament’s lobbying rules.
If the Paterson scandal alone doesn’t cost the Conservatives the seat — with its 22,949 majority — then partygate just might. Long-time Tory voters like Margaret are feeling ambivalent about the party they usually show up for. This year, she isn’t sure how she will cast her ballot.
“We don’t really know the full story do we,” she says when asked about the Paterson scandal. “And Boris has had a lot on his plate since he became prime minister.”
But when asked whether the leaked video made her angry, her tone becomes firmer.
“Yes, it did,” she says. “I thought they were just making fun of everybody.”
“They’re all crooks,” her husband chips in from a distance. “They’re all at it.”
Geoff Elner, a Conservative Shropshire councillor, isn’t surprised at the level of anger and apathy.
“There are lots of people who are completely fed up to the back teeth at the moment,” he says.
“They are literally all disillusioned — we go forward two steps on local issues and then something happens in Westminster and that’s all you hear for the next few days.”
Elner says any anger that might have been felt towards Paterson has been superseded by fury at Johnson.
“Nobody cares about the local issues anymore, it’s all, ‘Boris has done this, or there was this party’ or whatever,” he explains.
“It would have been better if Owen had been suspended for a month — he would have been back now and everyone would have forgotten about it.”
While Elner is confident the Tories will still keep the seat, he predicts a battering of Paterson’s majority to just 5,000 votes and admits the Lib Dems are a force to be reckoned with.
“The Liberals are fighting a very determined campaign,” he concedes. “There’s bus loads of them.”
By-elections have traditionally been a strong point for the Lib Dems, and for North Shropshire the party has selected Shropshire parish councillor Helen Morgan for the fight.
Morgan believes local issues, as much as national issues, are at play in this contest, citing anxiety around ambulance waiting times as a key concern.
The Lib Dems have been mocked by their opponents for their strength of belief in a North Shropshire win, when in more recent years Labour has come second.
But Morgan believes the party has a good chance of turning the seat yellow.
“We’ve certainly had the biggest canvassing campaign, so we’re confident in our data and we are definitely in with a good chance,” she says.
“The story is that in 2019, we doubled our vote share and in the local elections this year, we doubled it again.”
Morgan attracted some negative publicity at the start of the campaign when it emerged she had drawn comparisons between refugees in small boats to Auschwitz prisoners and likened the home secretary, Priti Patel, to Nazi chief Joseph Goebbels. She has since apologised.
Has it damaged her campaign?
“No, I don’t think so,” she says. “I mean, obviously I don’t want to have it front and centre of the campaign, but it hasn’t come up on the doorstep at all.”
Over at Oswestry’s White Horse cafe, the rivalry between Labour and the Lib Dems is on display.
Despite bullish statements from the Lib Dems and rumours of an informal pact between the two parties to see the Tories out, Labour’s local candidate, 26-year-old political adviser Ben Wood, says he is in it to win it.
“Labour are consistently second in North Shropshire,” he explains.
“And I’m getting a lot of support in our five towns.
“The Conservatives have taken people for granted.
“The Christmas party in particular has cut through immensely — people are stopping us in the street to say, ‘I have voted Conservative all my life, just this once, I’m going to lend my vote to the local candidate.’”
The biggest challenge for Labour, though, may be getting Tory voters to show up at polling stations at all.
“The people who usually vote Tory aren’t going to turn out for someone who has been imposed on them in the rain the week before Christmas,” he says.
It is the first reference Wood makes to the candidate who has the unenviable task of defending this seat for the Conservatives, former British Army medical officer and NHS consultant Neil Shastri-Hurst.
Shastri-Hurst is referred to disparagingly by some here as the “man from Birmingham” due to his lack of local connections, but Elner said that he nevertheless was the “best candidate” for the job.
HuffPost UK approached the Conservative Party for an interview with Shastri-Hurst, but did not receive a response.
A spokesperson for Shastri-Hurst’s campaign said: “Dr. Neil is the only candidate offering a detailed positive plan for how he would address the local issues in the constituency including better healthcare, transport investment, improving rural broadband and backing local businesses in our towns, villages and of course farms.
“Dr. Neil was the overwhelming choice of the local party membership to be the candidate and he has received their full and active support ever since.”
It is not just the Lib Dems and Labour that fancy their chances in North Shropshire.
Smaller parties like Reform, the new-look Brexit Party, believe the disillusionment with the Conservatives and establishment politics at Westminster could benefit their campaign.
“We’re getting a really positive response,” says candidate Kirsty Walmsley, “but I will balance that by saying there’s a lot of people who are disillusioned and fed up, and don’t want to vote particularly for their traditional party.”
Walmsley says that while the emergence of parties in Downing Street is “personal” for people and “strikes to the heart”, many Tory voters were already exasperated with the party over issues such as the halting of the pensions triple lock and the adult social care crisis.
“This is just the latest in a long chapter of mistakes that has shaken confidence in the government,” she says.
“I think it’s going to be a low turnout,” she predicts. “Because people are upset and they’re thinking about not voting.
“I think the Conservative Party were naive in thinking that they could just parachute someone in.
“I think they’re going have a bit of a shock. I think it’s very unpredictable, what’s gonna happen here.”
At a train shelter in Shrewsbury, activists and residents can be seen wearily waiting for their next train home in the rain.
A Conservative activist puts on a brave face. “People are not best pleased,” they say.
“I’m disillusioned with the whole lot,” one swing voter adds.
“On December 16 we will not be casting a vote.”
