Uxbridge by-election, 1997
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The Member of Parliament for Uxbridge, Sir Michael Shersby, (Conservative) died on May 8, 1997, just seven days after being re-elected in the 1997 General Election.
A by-election to fill the seat was held on July 31. The seat had been very marginal between Conservative and Labour in May, but the Labour Party candidate in the general election was not placed on the shortlist for the byelection candidacy. This was widely assumed to have been because he was considered unacceptably left-wing. The Conservative Party selected John Randall, the manager of Uxbridge's Department Store which had been operating for more than a century. The Labour Party candidate Andy Slaughter was the Leader of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, selected over Willie Bach, a Barrister from Nottinghamshire. Liberal Democrat candidate Keith Kerr was a senior executive with British Airways.
Labour fought an energetic campaign with an unusual visit by the sitting Prime Minister Tony Blair to campaign in person for a byelection candidate (Prime Ministers do not normally campaign personally in byelections because in the event of defeat, it might reflect on their own popularity). However the rejection of the previous locally based Labour candidate harmed the party. The Liberal Democrat suffered a classic third-party squeeze and the Conservative candidate was returned with a comfortable majority.
Results
The turnout was 55.5%.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share | Change |
| John Randall | Conservative | 16,288 | 51.1% | +7.6% |
| Andy Slaughter | Labour | 12,522 | 39.3% | -2.5% |
| Keith Kerr | Liberal Democrat | 1,792 | 5.6% | -5.4% |
| Screaming Lord Sutch | Monster Raving Loony | 396 | 1.3% | |
| Julia Leonard | Socialist Party | 259 | 0.8% | -0.1% |
| Frances Taylor | British National Party | 205 | 0.7% | |
| Ian Anderson | Monster Raving Loony | 157 | 0.5% | |
| John McAuley | National Front | 110 | 0.3% | |
| Henry Middleton | Independent Liberal | 69 | 0.2% | |
| James Feisenberger | UK Independence Party | 39 | 0.1% | |
| Ronnie Carroll | Pro-Life Alliance | 30 | 0.1% |
General Election result, 1997
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
| Sir Michael Shersby | (C) | 18,095 | 43.5% |
| David Williams | (Lab) | 17,371 | 41.8% |
| Andrew Malyan | (L Dem) | 4,528 | 10.9% |
| Garrick Aird | (RP) | 1,153 | 2.8% |
| Julia Leonard | (SP) | 398 | 1.0% |