PM faces ‘dilemma’ over ‘red wall’ seats and shires

BORIS JOHNSON faces a “big political dilemma” as he tries to keep voters happy in former Labour ‘red wall’ constituencies in the North and those in traditional Tory shires, a leading academic has warned.

Professor Anand Menon, the director of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative, said the Conservatives’ General Election gains mean they now hold 45 per cent of constituencies in northern England.

The academic, who grew up in Wakefield, said the former Labour strongholds have “very different political priorities to traditional Tory constituencies”.

He told the State of the North conference, in Newcastle, that many of the new Tory-held areas have lower average incomes and tend to be more heavily manufacturing-based.

Prof Menon said: “This will create a very big political dilemma for the Prime Minister going forward, because the fact of the matter is, the majority of Tory voters and the majority of Leave voters are not the left behind, it is the Tory shires.

“At a certain point, even if we assume that the Government is serious about its ‘levelling up’ agenda, the other part of the Tory party is going to squeal. We saw that slightly with Flybe when the Thatcherite wing of the Conservative Party said ‘hang on a sec, why are we bailing out a company’, we will see that again in spades if the government seriously intends to borrow to invest in the poorer parts of the country.

“I simply have no idea which way that battle goes, I don’t know whether ultimately Boris Johnson will try and keep the traditional Tories together, or actually prioritise his new MPs across that so-called Red Wall.”