Labour ‘ will keep losing’ if it doesn’t pick up rural seats

THERE is no route to power for Labour without winning over rural seats, the party’s Shadow Environment Secretary has admitted.

Luke Pollard, inset, said his main priority is making sure the impact of policies on rural communities is a thread running throughout shadow departments.

But he stressed that as well as shaping successful policy, there is a challenge to change perceptions of Labour to a wider section of the electorate.

“If we only try to win in urban areas, we will continue to lose General Elections,” Mr Pollard said.

He said many of the former Red Wall seats lost in December would be classed as semi- rural or rural, so winning them back would help.

But he added: “I think what we need to understand is that the route back to power, the way of winning back many of those communities, is to recognise that we need to be there.

“And I think one of the key things that I think we have to do, and it’s the first step, is we have to turn up.

“I think the Conservatives have taken rural communities for granted for quite some time, and I don’t think Labour has always turned up in the way that we need to.”

Mr Pollard said there had been an internal feeling that rural seats were unwinnable, which he said was “politically false”.

He added: “It handcuffs our aspiration, and it means that those communities for whom we could win, that there is an immediate barrier to engaging and listening.

“Just because there is rolling countryside or farmers, that’s a reason to engage further, not to hide away.”

Mr Pollard maintained that issues such as good quality broadband or transport were key to broadening his party’s appeal.

But he added: “I think there is a genuine risk that our farmers will be undercut by foreign trade deals, whatever Ministers are currently saying

“I think there will be a real issue when the Government starts cutting the farm subsidy because they’re projecting a 40 per cent cut in the subsidy, and they can’t accurately explain what a new system will look like for farmers.

“There are many astute Tories who are waking up to the fact that the current set of policies is opening the door to voters who have been traditionally Tory voting to vote Labour.”

By 2024, he said his goal was to make Labour “the party of the countryside”.

“That does mean making sure that we have real specific policies, but it doesn’t mean rural proofing, because rural proofing makes it sound like the policies were written for urban environmentsand just have to be checked against rural environments.

“We need to make sure that our policies work in every single one of those communities, whether it’s rural, coastal or urban, and to make sure it all works.”