Labour MP fears poll findings as party faces test in key marginals
LABOUR MUST show it can win in key marginal seats when voters go to the polls in May, shadow cabinet minister Jon Ashworth has said.
With “challenging” opinion polls showing Jeremy Corbyn’s party trailing the Tories, Mr Ashworth indicated the local elections would represent a key test for Labour.
He said projections by election expert Professor John Curtice that there could be a 12-point swing from Labour to the Conservatives in the contests were “pretty depressing”.
Mr Ashworth told BBC One’s Sunday Politics: “We have to be winning seats. We cannot be falling back on the scales that have just been suggested.”
He added: “Generally, we have got to be winning in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, those types of places, because they contain a lot of the marginal constituencies that decide general elections.”
He acknowledged the West Midlands was a “swing region” with some crucial areas.
Mr Ashworth rejected the arguments made by some on Labour’s hard-left that the party should not try to win over Tory voters.
“Some of the debate you see online, on Twitter and so on, suggests that if you want to get people who voted Conservative to switch to Labour, that is somehow a betrayal of our principles,” he said. “It’s absolutely not.” Reports at the weekend suggested Labour has built up a £4m war chest to fight a snap election and Mr Ashworth insisted the party was ready if Theresa May went to the country ahead of the scheduled ballot in 2020.
“We have been on an election footing since Theresa May became Prime Minister,” he said.