Although, by law, the next general election may as a long as 25 months away, the battle is already starting to heat up in Swindon.

Most commentators say the next election is most likely to be in May 2024 rather than January 2025 – but after the last 12 months, which saw us with three prime ministers, and with Rishi Sunak facing an increasingly factional backbench party and poor opinion polls, an election is 2023 is far from an impossibility.

As the bellwether town, which has always elected an MP or MPs from for the winning party for the last 40 years since 1983, Swindon is seen as increasingly important as the main parties prepare themselves.

In South Swindon order of battle is largely drawn up – Sir Robert Buckland, now a backbencher after his second stint as a cabinet minister, will defend the seat facing former shadow cabinet minister Heidi Alexander for Labour and Rod Hebden for the Greens. The Liberal Democrats are likely to also field a candidate but have yet to make a selection.

The surprising news in North Swindon is that Labour still don’t have a candidate – although they did for about three weeks.

Justin Tomlinson, the Conservative MP is expected to be standing again when a poll is called. He stepped down last year as deputy chairman of the Conservative party and is again on the backbenches.

At this point his only declared opponent is the Green candidate Andy Bentley.

Labour selected Chris Lloyd, who has family links to Swindon but who is currently a councillor in London, to fight the seat, aiming to give him a long run-up to build some support.

But three weeks after being selected Mr Lloyd resigned saying family commitments conflicted with the demands of a parliamentary campaign.

The South West regional Labour party is understood to be assessing its options for choosing and announcing a new candidate.

The current opinion polls, which have Labour leading the governing Conservatives  by anything between 15 to 25 percentage points have been translated by some to suggest South Swindon would be won by Labour, with North Swindon being a tighter race, but still in Labour’s sights.

Over the next 12 months expect more visits to Swindon by government ministers and, with Labour leader Keir Starmer having visited twice in the last four months, we can expect plenty of visibility from senior party members keen to build on good poll results.