Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
‘Middle-class Guardian readers’ could swing election outcome
A senior Labour figure believes Remain-backing candidate Rosie Duffield will hold on to her seat thanks to the support of middle-class constituents. Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth made the comments in a secretly-recorded chat with “old friend” Greig
Baker - which the former Canterbury Conservative association chairman then leaked. In the conversation, Mr Ashworth expresses doubts about Labour’s chances - but says Canterbury could buck the trend. He says: “It wouldn’t surprise me – for sake of argument – if we held Canterbury because of sort of middle-class, Guardian-reading people, but then the Tories take Bolsover off of Labour it wouldn’t surprise me. “The electoral map has being going topsy-turvey because of Brexit and Corbyn. Outside of the city seats, if you are in small town midlands and north, it’s abysmal out there. “They don’t like [Boris] Johnson, but they can’t stand [Jeremy] Corbyn and they think Labour’s blocked Brexit. “Asked by Mr Baker if Mr Corbyn would “be as bad as I suspect”, Mr Ashworth added: “I don’t know, on the security stuff; I worked in No.10, I think the machine will pretty quickly move to safeguard security (I mean the civil service machine).”
He later told the BBC: “Of course it makes me look like a right plonker, but it’s not what I mean when I’m winding up a friend, trying to sort of, pull his leg a bit.”
He said he was “having a bit of banter” with Mr Baker, adding: “I thought he was a friend, but obviously he’s not.”
Mr Baker, who oversaw the selection of Canterbury candidate Anna Firth, later tweeted: “If someone tells you about a threat to national security - that they say could only be avoided by asking civil servants to act unconstitutionally - there’s a duty to tell people about it.”