Red Wall loyalist wins voters’ backing
THE plotting against the Prime Minister has led to ‘blue on blue’ feuding on Red Wall WhatsApp messaging sites, with Johnson loyalists – such as Stoke-on-Trent North MP Jonathan Gullis – dismissed as No10 ‘stooges’ by colleagues.
In one message that aroused their ire, Mr Gullis said that in his constituency nobody had raised Partygate, lobbying him instead over the cost of living and Ukraine. He added: ‘People don’t thank politicians playing games in Westminster when there are real issues that affect their everyday life that are more important’.
When The Mail on Sunday visited Mr Gullis’s constituency, many of his voters agreed.
Melissa Perrin, 35, said of the Partygate allegations: ‘They’re annoying but they’re not at the top of my mind. I’d rather just concentrate on what’s going on .... Everything’s just a mess at the moment. In Westminster, they don’t have to worry about living pay cheque to pay cheque’.
In the former market town of Tunstall, just north of Stoke, one local said: ‘It’s like Beirut here, have you seen the state of the high street?’
Once boasting a bustling parade of shops, more than half of all the units on Tunstall High Street are now permanently closed or derelict.
Since its creation in 1950, the constituency of Stoke on Trent North had always been a Labour stronghold. In 2019, on a tide of support for Mr Johnson’s push to ‘get Brexit done’, Gullis became the first Conservative to be elected from the area.
One local told the MoS: ‘Boris has been given a raw deal, he’s no different to anyone else, he’s had his friends round for a drink.
‘Just leave him alone, let him have a go. And if he’s crap at it, that’s fine, but he hasn’t had a chance yet.’