The Red Wall rosy views that could save PM
PEOPLE from Yorkshire famously don’t like being told what to think. So it is inevitable that many in Wakefield disagree with opinion polls that suggest Labour has a 23-point lead over the Conservatives in the June 23 by-election.
Labour’s candidate, NHS communications executive Simon Lightwood, is understandably confident but cagey.
He predicts that he will win by about eight to nine percentage points, that would see him to snatch back the heartlands ‘Red Wall’ constituency in West Yorkshire that remained rock-solid Labour for 87 years until 2019.
Certainly, he’s cashing in on widespread worries about the cost of living, a struggling local transport system, Partygate and the fact that the election was triggered after the Tory MP, Imran Ahmad Khan, was convicted of sexually assaulting a schoolboy.
Yet Brexit remains a factor among voters, about 63 per cent of whom chose to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.
Graham Pitchforth, 73, of the Wakefield Antiques and Collectables shop, believes Boris Johnson has handled Brexit, Covid and the Ukraine war ‘superbly’.
On Partygate, his view seems fairly typical: ‘The Prime Minister was under huge pressure.’ Aneta Ford, 42, of the Little Westgate Flower Shop, agrees: ‘He’s not perfect – but Churchill wasn’t either.’
Fifteen candidates are standing in the seat which the Tories won with a 3,358 majority in 2019.
They include the Yorkshire Party candidate, David Herdson, a former Conservative who says: ‘Boris Johnson still doesn’t understand that he did anything wrong. He even says he’d do it again.’ Labour hasn’t had a clear run during the campaign, with its candidate, who lives near Halifax, selected against the will of the local constituency party.
There are suspicions that the Liberal Democrats have put less effort into the fight than expected in order to ensure the Conservatives lose.
The Lib Dems don’t even have a campaign base in Wakefield.