Party faced perfect storm in ‘red wall’ constituency
THE first Labour candidate to ever lose in Dudley North said the party was fighting against “a perfect storm”.
Dudley North elected its first ever Conservative Member of Parliament, with former Walsall Mayor Marco Longhi taking the seat with a majority of more than 11,000.
The constituency had been held by former Labour MP Ian Austin since 2005, and before then had always been a Labour seat since being formed in 1997.
However, Mr Austin dramatically stepped down earlier this year, urging his former constituents to vote Conservative rather than Labour in last week’s election.
Labour candidate Melanie Dudley, who lost out to Mr Longhi, believes it was a combination of several factors which saw the public back her opponent.
She said: “I think the simplicity of the message from the Conservatives helped – I will also be fair and say that Corbyn didn’t always play well on the doorstep at all.
“And when we asked people if they liked Boris Johnson, if I’m being truthful they didn’t. But they seemed to prefer him to Corbyn.
“I think on a local level – and I don’t want this to come across as excuses at all – we did have a 73 per cent Brexit vote, which is almost the highest in the country.
“We had a 22 vote majority, which was the lowest in the country, bar two, and we’ve also got a massive Conservative surge across the country tonight.
“And then we had our MP of 15 years saying don’t vote for the party that I represented for 15 years, vote for the opposition.
“I’m not for one second saying that letter was the defining factor, it wasn’t, but if you could put together a perfect storm of all the things that might make life a little harder, this was it.
“I think low majority, high Brexit vote, Conservative surge nationally and your own MP of 15 years telling people not to vote for the party he’s represented, then it’s not a great picture is it?
“This has to be time for a long, hard look at ourselves. We need to look again at ourselves. We have to go back to fundamentals and say ‘OK, where is it we need to go next’.”