The Cholmondeley Arms is set just off the main road of the quaint, red-bricked market town of Frodsham. Not that this watering hole is much of a tranquil escape: it’s lavishly draped in Union Jacks and VE day memorabilia and boasts a spacious beer garden out the back. It doesn’t serve food and features a healthy crowd of regulars sat by the bar. It plays clubland classics from 11am to 2am, when it ejects its clientele.
Ex-Labour MP Mike Amesbury should be able to testify to that, given this is the pub he stayed at ‘til closing last year before he decided to knock one of his constituents for six. His subsequent suspension and suspended sentence resulted in the first parliamentary by-election of Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership and Friday morning’s Runcorn and Helsby by-election result conferred a similar – while not quite as physically bruising – injury to Labour. Amesbury’s was a safe seat at the July election: the Yorkshire-born man won 52 per cent of the vote, leaving Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in a distant second place.
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