Herald Express (Torbay, Brixham & South Hams Edition)
Tories feel the heat in ‘safe’ Devon seats
WITH the major political party conference season in the rear-view mirror, all attention is now being focused on the next general election.
Although it only has to be called by January 28, 2025, the Government will be seeking an advantageous polling date likely either in the spring, or early autumn.
And with that in mind the major political parties have started their pre-election campaigns in earnest, prioritising what they see as votewinning policies and directing resources to seats they need to defend or think they can win.
And even though it still has a commanding lead in national polling, the Labour Party won’t be ploughing resources into trying to beat the Conservatives in some South West strongholds, leaving those contests instead to Liberal Democrat challengers.
According to a leaked Labour document, Torbay is one of five of Devon’s parliamentary constituencies to appear on a list of ‘non-priority’ seats for Labour. The others are Honiton and Sidmouth; Tiverton and Minehead; Torridge and Tavistock and North Devon.
And, according to a top pollster, many Conservative MPs are expected to be safe in their seats come the next election.
Speaking at the recent Conservative Party conference, American political analyst Dr Frank Luntz said any sitting MP with a majority of less than 8,000 should be concerned about being re-elected.
The pollster, who counts former prime minister David Cameron and former US president Barack Obama amongst his fans, had earlier told Tory backbenchers any MP with a margin of less than 15,000 should prepare to lose their seats. He later backtracked, saying this figure was “provocative”.
Polls can be notoriously unreliable, as was demonstrated twice in the most recent US presidential elections and in the snap election called by Boris Johnson in 2019, where the Conservatives won an overwhelming 365 seats, which amounted to a vote share of 43.6%.
A most recent poll at the weekend suggests Labour will win a landslide victory on the scale of 1997, with the Conservatives losing every red wall seat secured at the last election.
According to a new constituencyby-constituency model, the Tories are also likely to lose seats in its ‘safe’
South West strongholds, taking just 149 seats nationally to Labour’s 420 seats, a 190-seat majority. The Lib Dems would win 23 seats, according to the data produced by the 38 Degrees campaign group and carried out by the Survation polling company.
More tangible evidence of polling trends can be found in by-election results, the most recent of which in Devon was in 2022, following the resignation of Conservative Tiverton and Honiton MP Neil Parish. In a shocking turnaround Liberal Democrat Richard Foord overturned a 2019 Conservative majority of 24,239 to win by 6,144 votes, a swing of 29.9%.
Then, earlier this year, in Somerset, the Liberal Democrats again overturned a huge Tory majority, this time of 19,213 in Somerton and Frome, to win by 11,008, a swing of 29%. On the same day, in Selby and Ainsty, Labour won its biggest ever by-election victory, overturning a 20,137-vote Conservative majority to win by 4,161 votes, a 23.7% swing.
The Conservatives did, however, manage to hold on to Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson’s former constituency, although with a slender majority of just 495 votes, with that election dominated by the row over the extension of the ultralow emission zone (Ulez) anti-pollution scheme, implemented by Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan.
And, in what could be a harbinger of things to come, just last week voters in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, a suburb south of Glasgow in Scotland, signalled they had had enough of the Scottish National Party (SNP), the dominant force in Scottish politics in recent years, but recently beset with allegations surrounding former leader Nicola Sturgeon and her husband amid an investigation into the party’s finances.
Nearly 59% of voters chose Labour in the first concrete sign the party can restore its fortunes in Scotland. In 2010 Labour won 41 of Scotland’s 59 seats in Westminster. In 2019 it held only one.
This recent by-election evidence would suggest, that despite Dr Luntz’s assessment, which was given at a Tory party conference, that all of Devon’s Conservative MPs should have cause to be concerned.
In Torbay Kevin Foster has a majority of 17,749, slightly ahead of Anne Marie Morris’s 17,501 in Newton Abbot.
But Totnes MP Anthony Mangnall will be defending a 12,724 majority in the newly named South Devon constituency, to reflect the fact it includes towns such as Brixham, Dartmouth and Kingsbridge.
There will also be changes elsewhere in the county, where unfamiliar names on ballot papers will include Honiton and Sidmouth; Exmouth and East Exeter; Tiverton and Minehead and Torridge and Tavistock.
Simon Jupp, who beat an Independent by 6,708 votes in East Devon in 2019 will now contest the Honiton and Sidmouth seat with Mr Foord at the next election.
The remaining Conservative Devon MPs are South West Devon, Gary Streeter, majority 21,430; Torridge and West Devon, Geoffrey Cox (24,992); Plymouth Moor View, Johnny Mercer (12,897); North Devon, Selaine Saxby (14,813) and Central Devon, Mel Stride (17,721).
Labour currently holds Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport with Luke Pollard and Exeter with Sir Ben Bradshaw, who is retiring.