Disgruntlement with the Tories and the rise of Reform: Can the Conservatives hang on in Sherwood Forest? | Politics News
We started off this election talking about the battlegrounds of this campaign: The Red Wall that stretched from Bishop Auckland and Blythe in the North East to Wolverhampton in the West Midlands.
And then there’s the East Midlands, where the Conservatives are dominant – on the new boundaries they hold 39 of 47 seats – but are also defending 11 seats with majorities under 10,000.
As we enter the final week, with the Tories still 20 points behind in the polls, and the more granular MRP constituency polls predicting a possible near extinction event, it seems in this campaign that no seat is completely safe.
And so we find ourselves on the campaign trail in the constituency of Sherwood Forest.
Here, the Home Secretary James Cleverly was wheeled out for a campaign pit stop at a sports car manufacturer in Labour’s 183rd target seat – former cabinet minister Mark Spencer is defending a 16,000 majority – which tells the story in itself.
The Conservatives are dominant in the East Midlands, holding 39 of 47 seats
The Conservatives are playing a hugely defensive campaign as their vote collapses.
Labour need a 15.6 point swing to win this seat. If they get it, they are heading for a 50-seat majority.
And to put that in context, it would mean Keir Starmer has likely achieved more seat gains than Tony Blair won in 1997 when he added 146 seats to the tally for his 179 majority.
Can the Conservatives hang on in Sherwood Forest?
That is a distinct possibility amid huge disgruntlement with the Conservatives and the rise of Reform.
One Conservative insider told me that much depends on how Reform polls in this part of the world.
“In a nutshell, if Reform polls 5,000, the Conservatives hold on, if they poll 10,000 Labour wins,” they said.
‘Parliament needs a shake-up’
In the Hollybeck garden centre that sits on the border of Sherwood Forest constituency and neighbouring Tory seat Newark, voters are split on whether the Tories can hang on here.
But what they can agree on is two things: their disillusionment with the current Conservative government and victory for Labour in just over a week’s time.
Pensioner Maggie says the Conservatives have been a “shambles”, their behaviour “not very honourable” and that she is going to vote Reform.
Pensioner Maggie says Nigel Farage’s Reform are bringing a lot to the table
“I think they need a shake-up and some different people in parliament. I think it’s very stale,” she says.
A past Conservative and Lib Dem voter, Maggie tells me “Reform is really bringing a lot more to the table” while “the Tories at the moment are just lost”.
Fellow pensioner Mary says she’s going to vote Labour and thinks the Conservatives are “in a really dark place”.
She wouldn’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn but says she’s come back to Labour with Starmer in charge.
Her son Rob, who voted Conservative in 2019, also says he’s voting Labour “reluctantly” this time around.
Why is he reluctant? He replies: “I think possibly because Keir Starmer’s, shall we say, changed his opinion on certain things quite often instead of sticking to his guns.”
Rob is reluctantly voting for Labour
Only retired couple Jill and John are prepared to vote Conservative, and they tell me they are doing so as a vote for their local Conservative candidate rather than the party nationally.
“I’m a bit disillusioned to be honest,” says John. “I’ve been a Labour man all my life, but until the last few years. Corbyn put me off and I’ve gone the other way.”
What is clear from our conversations is a sense of obvious frustration, even contempt, with the Tories, while Starmer evokes, at best, qualified and lukewarm support.
A vote to oust the Tories
This election seems to be carried not on the Labour slogan of change but rather from a unity of purpose to oust the Conservatives.
Starmer might be heading for a big win that reaches across the country but the width of his support is matched too by how shallow it seems, which could begin to hurt when governing gets tough.
It is hard to reconcile the scale of the defeat that could be about to befall the Conservatives in the context of the lack of enthusiasm for the likely victor.
But the Tories are facing – if some of the more granular constituency polls are to be believed – a near extinction event, with some projecting a bigger defeat than that of Arthur Balfour in 1906 when he lost 246 seats, and saw the Conservative seats slashed to 156.
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Mr Cleverly, who is being touted as a possible leadership contender (which he doesn’t rule out to me), is clear that he intends to fight on to the end, even as the Conservatives languish still 20 points behind in the polls after weeks of campaigning.
He admits that “at this point in an election that is unusual” and acknowledges voters are “frustrated with us” and speaks of his anger around gamblegate, which he says has stopped the Conservatives being able to talk about the issues of the campaign.
Cleverly at a sports car manufacturer
He tells me Labour have “not sealed the deal”.
“All we can do is campaign for every vote to try and get as many Conservative MPs as possible,” Mr Cleverly says.
“Of course we want to form a government, but if that isn’t possible, if the voters say no to that, we want to make sure that we hold the Labour Party to account.”
How that is done, and by whom will be a battle beyond this election. Mr Cleverly is emphatically clear to me when I ask him whether a future Conservative Party should do better to stick to the centre right or move further to the right.
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He says: “The Conservative Party has always been a centre right party. Centre right. And it has to be both.”
If in his heart Mr Cleverly secretly thinks this election is lost, he also knows the battle to come is not with Labour but – should he hold onto his Braintree seat in Essex – with Conservative colleagues about what comes next.
And just as the choices the Conservatives took in government have helped catapult Starmer into touching distance of a truly historic election victory, what they choose to do next will determine how effectively they can get back into the fight, and into favour, with the public.
The full list of candidates in the Sherwood Forest constituency is:
• David Dobbie – Liberal Democrats
• Sheila Greatrex-White – Green Party
• Helen Rose O’Hare – Reform UK
• Mark Spencer – Conservative Party
• Jeremy Paul Spry – Independent
• Lee Waters – Independent
• Michelle Welsh – Labour Party
