Seats to watch tonight
A Pimlico Journal General Election special
In a few hours, one of the most uninspiring election campaigns of all time will come to an end. The exit poll will be out, and we’ll know just how bad it really is for the Tories. And then, nothing much will happen for a number of hours: various depressed, sweaty Tory talking heads will argue on air with Labour MPs crowing about their impending victory. It’s not worth watching (trust us).
In the meantime, you may instead wish to read the Pimlico Journal’s guide to the General Election of 2024.
There are four sections of this guide. The first, Conservative Future?, examines the constituencies of prominent Tory candidates, including leadership contenders. The second section, Patriots Rising?, discusses the main Reform targets. The third section — Greens, Galloway, and Gaza — is what it says on the tin. The fourth section, Woke Tory Watch, lists a number of Tories who you may particularly want to lose. Our final section discusses Northern Ireland.
Conservative Future?
‘Conservative Future’ was the ill-fated Tory youth group that was shut down in 2015 following a sordid scandal involving bullying, sexual blackmail, and suicide. But here, of course, we are talking of an entirely unrelated ‘Conservative Future’: that is to say, we are talking of the future of the Conservative Party after what is likely to be the most catastrophic General Election defeat in its history. In this section, we will survey the most likely leadership contenders according to the betting markets, as well as three other candidates who — if they are elected — may well shape the Tory Party for years to come.
North West Essex (Essex): The Conservative candidate here is Kemi Badenoch, who was previously MP for Saffron Walden, from which the new seat of North West Essex was created. (Despite the drastic name change, the boundary changes were very small indeed.) Kemi Badenoch is the current Secretary of State for Business and Trade, and is the strong favourite in the betting markets for next Tory leader. Much more will inevitably be said about Badenoch at a later date. But, broadly speaking, Badenoch has positioned herself on the right of the Conservative Party. That she is a black woman is also seen as a plus by many Tories. As such, assuming that Reform gets a high enough share of the vote, she will be well-placed to become the next Tory leader, although her stocks seem to have somewhat fallen in recent months, with some thinking her gaffe-prone, and others worrying about her relative lack of ministerial experience. We think she would be a very poor choice indeed for leader of the Conservative Party; whether that is a good or a bad thing depends on your perspective.
A large, predominantly rural seat in one of the most Tory areas of the country, North West Essex is very unlikely to fall, with both YouGov and Survation predicting a relatively comfortable Tory majority, at least by the low standards of this election. It helps her that the Reform candidate here, Grant StClair-Armstrong, was dropped by the Party after his previous support for the British National Party was revealed (though he is still on the ballot). After tonight, she will probably have one of the safest Tory seats in the country.
Previous Election (for Saffron Walden): Conservative 39,714 (63.0%), Liberal Democrats 12,120 (19.2%), Labour 8,305 (13.2%) Green 2,947 (4.7%). Tory Majority of 27,594 (43.8%).
Verdict: Solid Tory hold.
Witham (Essex): The current MP is Priti Patel, the former Home Secretary. Compared to Badenoch, Patel has not been discussed much on X, but she has quietly ascended to second place on the betting markets for the next Tory leader, albeit far behind Kemi Badenoch. Unlike Badenoch, who has sought as much press coverage as possible (not always to her benefit), Patel has mostly been operating behind the scenes, speaking more to Tory MPs and candidates than to journalists. Patel has always been positioned more on the right of the Conservative Party. However, Patel’s right-wing credentials were marred, perhaps irreparably, by the fact that immigration skyrocketed while she was Home Secretary.
Patel is likely to hold Witham, which (like North East Essex) is a large and rural seat in Essex, though some projections suggest that it might be uncomfortably close, especially if Reform perform better than expected. One difference here is that Witham is much more ‘Essex-y’ than North West Essex, being on a railway line and having far more commuters to London.
Previous Election: Conservative 32,876 (66.6%), Labour 8,794 (17.8%), Liberal Democrats 4,584 (9.3%), Green 3,090 (6.3%). Tory Majority of 24,082 (48.8%).
Verdict: Likely Tory hold.
Tonbridge (Kent): The Conservative candidate here is Tom Tugendhat, previously MP for Tonbridge and Malling. Tonbridge is a well-off constituency by national standards, but it is less posh than neighbours Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells. It is also somewhat less linked to London than these two seats, with an excellent train line going East.
Tugendhat is third in the betting markets for next Tory leader, trailing Patel by a small margin. On most matters, Tugendhat is a middle-of-the-road Tory MP: that is to say, not good, though nowhere near bad enough to find himself in Woke Tory Watch. Where Tugendhat really stands out is in foreign affairs. Alongside Tobias Ellwood, Tugendhat has consistently been one of the most rabid hawks in all of British politics, even calling for the expulsion of all Russian nationals from the United Kingdom after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. This sort of irresponsible rhetoric may well prove popular with the Tory membership.
Pimlico Journal, while certainly not dogmatically isolationist, strongly opposes many of Tugendhat’s foreign policy stances, and thinks that Tugendhat is one of the most dangerous Tory MPs out there in a very literal sense. Unfortunately for the denizens of Great Britain, Tugendhat is likely to hold his seat, although he might be worried about tactical voting: if enough Liberal Democrats hold their noses and vote Labour, Tugendhat might find himself out of job.
Previous Election (Tonbridge and Malling): Conservative 35,784 (62.8%), Liberal Democrats 8,843 (15.5%), Labour 8,286 (14.5%), Green 4,090 (7.2%). Tory Majority of 23,508 (41.3%).
Verdict: Likely Tory hold.
Portsmouth North (Hampshire): The current MP is Penny Mordaunt. Mordaunt is one of the most vapid Tory MPs out there, addicted to endless media rigmarole and pulling stunts. Despite (or perhaps because of?) this, she has built up a substantial following of sad Tory boys who are not-so-secretly turned on by the idea of being sexually dominated by a female Naval Reservist. She is also fairly Woke, albeit not quite Woke enough to find herself on Woke Tory Watch: in 2018, she proudly declared that ‘trans men are men, trans women are women’. She later rowed back from these comments, but her natural political instincts are clear enough. For those who wish the Conservative Party ill, she would be an ideal leader.
She is currently fourth on the betting markets, and we suspect she would probably be higher if not for the rather pertinent fact that she is likely to lose her seat tonight. Her constituency extends out from Portsea Island itself to spillover Pompey suburbs like Paulsgrove; Portsmouth South, by contrast, contains Southsea, where the students live. Northern areas of the island, like Hilsea, are generally fairly rough, and the seat doesn’t contain the city centre. It is very much the more favourable of the Portsmouth seats for the Right, but this still probably won’t be enough to save her in the case of a Labour landslide.
Previous Election: Conservative 28,172 (61.4%), Labour 12,392 (27.0%), Liberal Democrats 3,419 (7.4%), Green 1,304 (2.8%), Independent 623 (1.4%). Tory Majority of 15,780 (34.4%).
Verdict: Likely Labour gain.
Braintree (Essex): The current MP is James Cleverly, the Home Secretary. Cleverly, like Tugendhat, is a middle-of-the-road Tory, but without some of Tugendhat’s ideological baggage. He is believed to be relatively likeable, and is also seen as a boon in terms of personal characteristics: he is mixed-race, and enjoyed a fairly long and successful career in the military. He might be a natural choice for the Tories after a disastrous defeat, being seen (perhaps wrongly?) as a safe pair of hands while the party rebuilds itself. He is currently in fifth in the betting markets.
Cleverly’s seat is next to both Patel’s and Badenoch’s, and the three seats have much in common. Insofar as Patel and Badenoch’s seats can be distinguished by the strength of their links to London, Cleverly’s seat is somewhere in between the two. Unsurprisingly then, Cleverly — like Badenoch and Patel — is likely to hold his seat, though projections suggest that the result will be more akin to Patel’s uncomfortably close majority than Badenoch’s relatively solid one.
Previous Election: Conservative 34,112 (67.5%), Labour 9,439 (18.7%), Liberal Democrats 4,779 (9.5%), Independents 2,469 (4.2%). Tory Majority of 24,673 (48.8%).
Verdict: Likely Tory hold.
Fareham and Waterlooville (Hampshire): The Conservative candidate here is Suella Braverman, another former Home Secretary. Braverman has had knives out for Sunak from the start, and is currently sixth in the betting markets. Fareham is nice and boaty; Waterlooville is a vaguely centreless place that contains a lot of Portsmouth overspill. We think that Braverman’s seat should be safe enough by Tory standards this election.
Previous Election (for Fareham): Conservative 36,459 (63.7%), Labour 10,373 (18.1%), Liberal Democrats 8,006 (14.0%), Green 2,412 (4.2%). Tory Majority of 26,086 (45.6%).
Verdict: Likely Tory hold.
Newark (Nottinghamshire): The current MP is Robert Jenrick. Jenrick is certainly one of the better Conservative MPs, opposing mass migration while supporting sensible efforts to increase housebuilding — in short, much of what we at Pimlico Journal want. In recent months, he seems to have been positioning himself for a leadership bid. He has repeatedly emphasised how he resigned over Rishi Sunak’s failures on immigration, and is presumably gearing up to run to the right of Badenoch in a leadership contest while also appearing more competent and experienced. He is currently eighth in the betting markets (in seventh place is Nigel Farage).
Unfortunately for the Conservative Party, there is a decent chance that Jenrick loses his seat to the Labour Party tonight, with YouGov projecting the Tories to win 39% of the vote against Labour’s 40%. The Conservative Party must be hoping that he clings on, lest they haemorrhage even more talent than they expected.
Previous Election: Conservative 34,660 (63.3%), Labour 12,844 (23.5%), Liberal Democrats 5,308 (9.7%), Green 1,950 (3.6%). Tory Majority of 21,816 (39.8%).
Verdict: Narrow Labour gain.
Louth and Horncastle (Lincolnshire): For reasons that escape us, Victoria Atkins, the current MP here, has found herself ninth in the betting markets for the next Tory leader. Louth and Horncastle is a Reform target. Like much of rural Lincolnshire, it is disproportionately reliant upon agriculture. It is plausibly the most remote and least visited constituency in England. It’s an extremely elderly seat: Chapel St Leonards and Mablethorpe on the coast of the constituency are pretty much the oldest places in the country. This probably isn’t good for Reform, given that the elderly are the last people who are still loyal to the Tories.
It seems difficult to predict how this specific race will turn out. YouGov projects an easy Tory hold, a full fifteen percentage points ahead of Labour and sixteen ahead of Reform, which would make it one of the safest Tory seats in the country when all is said and done. Survation, on the other hand, projects a narrow Labour gain despite significantly worse Reform performance (and thus much less vote-splitting on the Right). And, more confusing still, previous YouGov projections have even predicted a Reform gain! All this is to say: we don’t really know what will happen on the day, but we wish the Reform candidate there the best of luck. Atkins, the former Minister of State for Refugees (‘says it all, really’), is not a Tory who deserves to keep her seat.
Previous Election: Conservative 38,021 (72.7%), Labour 9,153 (17.5%), Liberal Democrats 4,114 (7.9%), Monster Raving Loony 1,044 (2.0%). Tory Majority 28,868 (55.2%).
Verdict: ???
West Suffolk (Suffolk): The current MP here, Matt Hancock, is standing down. The Tory candidate here is Nick Timothy; in the neighbouring constituency is Will Tanner (see below). Both are former advisers to Theresa May, architects of the end of stop and search, the Modern Slavery Immigration Scam, the disastrous 2017 election campaign, and the Onward think tank.
Timothy, to his credit, has attempted selection before. He came second to Rishi Sunak for Richmond in 2014, and won the West Suffolk selection reasonably fairly in Summer 2023. Despite his bearded post-liberal obsession with industrial strategy, protectionism, and subsidy, he claims to be an immigration restrictionist, and has devoted many Telegraph columns to the subject. His self-styled intellectual presentation makes him a likely rival to Danny Kruger in the race to be the party’s philosopher-MP, who ruminates much but does little.
This seat, like Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, is rural East Anglia with a few nice market towns. It is an area which — for historical but now irrelevant reasons — has no real Liberal Democrat presence. This means it all comes down to the Lab-Con swing. It also has the most Americans of any constituency, due to RAF Lakenheath and Mildenhall, both used by the US Air Force. Timothy’s seat is next to Tanner’s. It has much in common with its neighbour (see below), though YouGov think it is a little bit safer.
Previous Election: Conservative 33,842 (65.8%), Labour 10,648 (20.7%), Liberal Democrats 4,685 (9.1%), Green 2,262 (4.4%). Tory Majority of 23,194 (45.1%).
Verdict: Narrow Tory hold.
Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Suffolk): Will Tanner, the Conservative candidate here, is not a leadership candidate just yet, but might be in the future. The previous MP was Jo Churchill.
Tanner is an altogether more superficial character than Timothy (see above). Tall, skinny, perpetually grinning, when he launched Onward he decided to accompany it with a photoshoot of himself standing on the wall of the Vauxhall embankment opposite the Houses of Parliament — an amusingly grandiose statement from a man who runs a political events and PR company masquerading as a think tank. Like Timothy, he is another post-liberal, believing that voting to leave the European Union was actually a vote for nationalising football clubs, mandatory brass bands, and moving government jobs to former coalfields.
He was selected for Bury St Edmunds only a few weeks ago, having worked in Sunak’s No. 10, and was given a red carpet to selection, unlike his former Onward colleague Sebastian Payne, who might be counting his blessings that no safe seat ever emerged for him.
YouGov has the seat on a knife-edge, with the Tories ahead by less than 1% of the vote. We think that this is overestimating Labour, and that Tanner will still win the seat, but only just.
Previous Election (Bury St Edmunds): Conservative 37,770 (61.0%), Labour 12,782 (20.6%), Green 9,711 (15.7%), Independent 1,694 (2.7%). Tory Majority of 24,988 (40.4%).
Verdict: Narrow Tory hold.
South West Norfolk (Norfolk): Why are we bothering to look at a seat currently held by Liz Truss? Well, the former Prime Minister still seems interested in involving herself in frontline politics: immediately after the election, there will be a ‘PopCon’ rally (which seems a strange choice given how low spirits will likely be). We haven’t seen the end of Truss just yet — so long as she keeps her seat.
The projections suggest that the Tories are ahead, but it is close: they lead Labour by just two percentage points. Reform are projected to do fairly well here, massively eating into the Tory vote, and if they do better than expected they might well gift the seat to Labour. Do we want that?
Previous Election: Conservative 35,507 (69.0%), Labour 9,312 (18.1%), Liberal Democrats 4,166 (8.1%), Green 1,645 (3.2%), Monster Raving Loony 836 (1.6%). Tory Majority of 26,195 (50.9%).
Verdict: Narrow Tory hold.
Patriots Rising?
The Reform heartlands at this election are clearly rural and coastal Essex and Lincolnshire, plus Lee Anderson’s Ashfield (a very weird seat, see below). Many of these seats were among the safest Tory constituencies in the country before tonight. Although we suspect that the Tories will hang on in most of them, they won’t be so safe — either in absolute or relative terms — after tonight.
The two MRPs readily available to us, YouGov and Survation, are both predicting a relatively low vote share for Reform: 15% in the former, and just 12% in the latter. We think that this is too low, and expect Reform to win at least 17% of the vote, and perhaps even higher. As such, we are erring on the side of optimism when it comes to Reform’s vote share; but, as we shall see, that does not mean that we think Reform will be winning many seats. Such is the nature of FPTP. Without wishing to disappoint, we only feel confident enough to predict four Reform gains, but — fingers crossed — they may just sneak in elsewhere.
Clacton (Essex): The current MP here is the Tory Giles Watling, but almost everyone agrees that he won’t be in a job for much longer. Clacton, of course, was the only constituency which UKIP won at a General Election. Clacton, despite many negative preconceptions, really isn’t such a bad place, with the notable exception of Jaywick (and even Jaywick isn’t quite as bad as people say). The town is a bit tired, and is certainly very ‘retro’ (it even has a Wimpy), but it is fundamentally just another case of white flight from London to Essex — it has rather little in common with, say, Blackpool or Scarborough. Some people living there will even commute into London, despite the slow and expensive train journey. Frinton-on-Sea, which is also in the constituency, is fairly wealthy, with a high street that hasn’t allowed anything but a fish and chips shop and a pub in the last ten years: very Essex ‘posh’, with a fantastic golf course.
Almost certainly the most discussed constituency for this election, we have little more to add except that Nigel Farage seems likely not only to win Clacton, but to win it with a solid majority. Reform signs are everywhere, and energy in the constituency for Farage is palpable.
Previous Election: Conservative 31,438 (72.3%), Labour 6,736 (15.5%), Liberal Democrats 2,541 (5.8%), Green 1,225 (2.8%), Independents 1,342 (3.1%), Monster Raving Loony 224 (0.5%). Tory Majority of 24,702 (56.8%).
Verdict: Solid Reform gain.
Ashfield (Nottinghamshire): Ashfield is a very strange constituency. Indeed, it is quite possibly the strangest constituency in the entire country. The current MP here, originally elected as a Conservative but now standing as the Reform candidate, is Lee Anderson. Ashfield is basically the Nottinghamshire coalfield, now the M1 corridor. Outwardly, it’s not really a remarkable place, and it’s sort of random that it has the politics it does.
At the last election, the second-placed party were the Ashfield Independents, who won 27.6% of the vote. The party currently hold 32 out of 35 seats on the Ashfield District Council. The Wikipedia page for the party offers few clues as to what they stand for, but it does tell us that six of their councillors (including their candidate at the 2024 General Election) were arrested in 2022 for fraud, election offences, money laundering, and misconduct in public office.
The candidate for the Ashfield Independents at both this and the previous election is a very strange character indeed. Jason Zadrozny, a former Liberal Democrat, first stood for PPC to protest a supposedly politically-motivated arrest relating to sex with children (the charges were dismissed after no evidence was offered by the CPS). In 2023, he once again found himself in legal trouble, charged with fraud, income tax evasion, and possession of cocaine; the trial will take place in 2025.
Lee Anderson himself has an unusual background: a former coal miner who was inspired by (among others) Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn, Anderson was first elected as a Labour councillor in 2015. Three years later, he was suspended from the Labour Party after using boulders to block Irish travellers from setting up camp in the area. He then defected to the Conservative Party. Just one year later, he was selected as the Conservative candidate for Ashfield, beating the incumbent Labour MP, Gloria De Piero, who he had previously worked for for five years.
Anderson has constantly found himself in controversy, openly opposing Black Lives Matter and suggesting that people could feed themselves for just thirty pence a day (earning himself the nickname ‘30p Lee’). Despite this, to shore up Rishi Sunak’s right-wing credentials, he was promoted to Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party. He later resigned over amendments to the Rwanda scheme, and then had the whip suspended after he refused to apologise for claiming that ‘Islamists’ had ‘got control’ over Sadiq Khan and Keir Starmer. After this, he joined Reform, and since then has been the Party’s second most prominent figure after Farage.
Does Lee Anderson have a personal following here? Who knows, especially with local media being as useless as it is nowadays. We nonetheless predict a narrow Reform gain, amply assisted by yet another instance of extreme vote-splitting.
Previous Election: Conservative 19,231 (39.3%), Ashfield Ind. 13,498 (27.6%), Labour 11,971 (24.4%), Brexit Party 2,501 (5.1%), Liberal Democrats 1,105 (2.3%), Green 674 (1.4%). Tory Majority of 5,733 (11.7%).
Verdict: Narrow Reform gain.
Great Yarmouth: The current Tory MP, Brandon Lewis, is standing down. This has probably helped the Reform campaign — if only marginally — by removing any incumbency bias.
Many centuries ago, Great Yarmouth was a member of the Hanseatic League, and one of the biggest towns in England. More recently, people went on holiday there, before Michael O’Leary tanked the price of air travel. Not many people go there now. Great Yarmouth is favourable to Reform for much the same reasons as Clacton: indeed, the constituency map is very similar, with the constituency either being rural or on the seaside. YouGov projects that Reform will win here, and we hope they are right.
Previous Election: Conservative 28,593 (65.8%), Labour Co-op 10,930 (25.1%), Liberal Democrats 1,661 (3.8%), Green 1,064 (2.4%), Veterans and People’s 631 (1.5%), Independents 584 (1.4%). Tory Majority of 17,663 (40.7%).
Verdict: Narrow Reform gain.
Boston and Skegness (Lincolnshire): The most pro-Brexit constituency in the country, the current MP is the Tory Matt Warman, and his Reform challenger is Richard Tice. Boston was noted as an area which saw rapid changes due to high levels of Eastern European immigration, with Poles, Romanians, and Lithuanians working on the many farms in this constituency. It’s a slightly odd seat: partly a case of very specific resentment against agricultural immigration, and partly a bog-standard, poor seaside town; a perfect storm for right-wing populists. This is a constituency that is as friendly to Reform as they get, and Reform would be very disappointed not to win it, not least because of the prominence of their candidate. One wonders what the political effect of Lithuanians being replaced by even more obscure ethnicities, like Uzbeks, has been.
Both YouGov and Survation are projecting a very narrow Tory hold, with Reform behind by only around one percentage point. On the assumptions outlined above — that YouGov and Survation are underestimating the Reform vote, particularly in constituencies that are inherently more friendly to Reform — we predict a Reform gain.
Previous Election: Conservative 31,963 (76.7%), Labour 6,342 (15.2%), Liberal Democrats 1,963 (4.7%), Independent 428 (3.4%). Tory Majority of 25,621 (61.4%).
Verdict: Narrow Reform gain.
Basildon and Billericay (Essex): The current MP, John Baron, stood down in 2024 after twenty-three years as an MP. Basildon was something of a bellwether in previous decades, held by Labour until Thatcher in 1979, then switching to Blair in 1997. The seat then went heavily Tory after the old constituency was merged with the more prosperous, true-blue Billericay to the north in 2010.
Basildon is your typical South Essex town, with lots of work in manufacturing and logistics. It has a few expensive areas and a fair number of awful areas. It is very white, and largely made up of second- or third-generation ex-Londoners. They aspire to live in Billericay. Billericay is wealthy: think small business owners who have got money, but little class. Some middle class people have started moving in as it is nice, on a train line, and quiet. Gavin and Stacey is set there.
This is a good area for Reform — it is Essex, after all — but certainly not the best. Nonetheless, one earlier YouGov projection had Labour, the Conservatives, and Reform neck-and-neck, but with Reform narrowly ahead. More recent projections are less optimistic for Reform, however.
There is a special factor in this race which we think needs to be taken into greater consideration: the Tory candidate, Richard Holden, is extremely unpopular with the local constituency association. Holden, who is the Chairman of the Conservative Party, was parachuted into the seat by Central Office. Holden was previously MP for North West Durham, which had a sizeable (around 17,000) majority, but has now been completely abolished by boundary changes. This will certainly have made it more difficult for Holden to obtain canvassers, but whether the negative reaction to this specific chicken run has reduced the Tory vote share more directly — cutting through to the wider public, rather than just activists — is harder to say. As such, we are more optimistic about this race for Reform than YouGov and Survation.
Previous Election: Conservative 29,590 (67.1%), Labour 9,178 (20.8%), Liberal Democrats 3,741 (8.5%), Green 1,395 (3.2%), SDP 224 (0.5%). Tory Majority of 20,412 (46.3%).
Verdict: Too close to call.
Louth and Horncastle (Lincolnshire): See section on Victoria Atkins above.
Previous Election: Conservative 38,021 (72.7%), Labour 9,153 (17.5%), Liberal Democrats 4,114 (7.9%), Monster Raving Loony 1,044 (2.0%). Tory Majority 28,868 (55.2%).
Verdict: ???
Gainsborough (Lincolnshire): The Tory MP here, Edward Leigh — an old-school Tory, mostly in a good way — has been around for years: he was first elected here in 1983. Recently, however, Leigh has caused outrage in the constituency for supporting investment into housing migrants in the former base of RAF Scampton. This will almost certainly help Reform.
Gainsborough is one of those seats that Reform might just win through the middle. There’s quite a big difference between West Lincolnshire and East Lincolnshire. West Lincolnshire is pretty much standard rural England, and votes that way; Grantham and Stamford is a very normal seat, and Lincoln a fairly normal city. It’s near enough to the A1 and East Coast Mainline that it’s sort of plugged into the country in a way East Lincolnshire isn’t.
Previous Election: Conservative 33,893 (66.4%), Labour 10,926 (21.4%), Liberal Democrats 5,157 (10.1%), Independent 1,070 (2.1%). Tory Majority of 22,967 (45.0%).
Verdict: Narrow Tory hold.
South Holland and the Deepings (Lincolnshire): One of the most unusual constituency names in England (‘Holland’?). Yet another big, mostly rural constituency in Lincolnshire which is disproportionately reliant upon agriculture, this is a seat that is traditionally one of the bluest in the country. These Lincolnshire seats really are quite obscure, and are thus hard for us to write about: few readers will have been to these places, which are not especially well-connected, don’t have any real tourism, and are not on the way to anywhere. There’s really no reason to go there unless you’re from there (no offence!).
At the last election, it had the third-biggest Tory majority in the country. The current MP here is another old-school, right-wing Tory, John Hayes, who has been an MP since 1997. The seat, while friendly to Reform, somewhat lacks the perfect cocktail that makes nearby Boston and Skegness so favourable; that said, it has also seen a lot of agricultural-related immigration, which will give them a boost.
It would be something of an upset for this seat to fall to Reform. We think that it is likely that enough elderly voters here will remain loyal to Hayes to deliver him victory tonight, but he will be more than a little nervous at the count.
Previous Election: Conservative 37,338 (75.9%), Labour 6,500 (13.2%), Liberal Democrats 3,225 (6.6%), Green 1,613 (3.3%), Independent 503 (1.0%). Tory Majority of 30,838 (62.7%).
Verdict: Narrow Tory hold.
Castle Point (Essex): The current MP is Tory Rebecca Harris. This is not a ‘posh’ area of Essex: a working class seaside constituency that’s more on the muddy brown estuary rather than the actual sea. It has a big caravan park, and every house on Canvey Island, which is in the constituency, seems to be a cheaply-constructed bungalow. In Essex, there is a bit of a saying that islanders never leave once they move there.
There is strong disagreement between YouGov and Survation on this Essex constituency, though both suggest that Reform are far behind the winning party. YouGov project that Reform will actually beat Labour by four percentage points, winning 28% of the vote, but will be far behind the Conservatives on 41%. Survation, by contrast, project that Labour will win nearly 40% of the vote, the Conservatives 34%, and Reform just 21%, a result that at least on the face of it seems implausible.
The massive disparity between these two projections suggests not only the difficulty in projecting this election more generally, but more specifically the difficulty in predicting seats where Reform are expected to perform relatively well. We predict that Survation’s projections will be completely wrong, and that while Reform will somewhat outperform YouGov’s projections, it will still not be enough to displace the Tories.
Previous Election: Conservative 33,971 (76.7%), Labour 7,337 (16.6%), Liberal Democrats 2,969 (6.7%). Tory Majority of 26,634 60.1 (17.9%).
Verdict: Likely Tory hold.
Normanton and Hemsworth (Yorkshire and the Humber): The idea that a Labour seat might fall over anything other than Palestine is not something that has been taken seriously or indeed even much thought about over the course of this campaign. So when the seat was projected by Survation to be on a knife-edge last night, but leaning Reform, we were surprised to say the least.
Yet a brief look at the result in 2019 suggests that the seat might indeed be a little more complicated than we thought: incumbent Labour MP John Trickett held the seat with a majority of just over 1,000 over the Tories, while the Brexit Party got nearly 6,000 votes. Nonetheless, despite considerable uncertainty, we think that an upset here — and it really would be a massive one — remains very unlikely.
It perhaps helps Reform that the Tory candidate here is Alice Hopkin, a so-called ‘nepo-spad’ who Central Office repeatedly tried and failed to have parachuted in to various (relatively) safe seats, eventually finding herself here. Better luck next time!
Previous Election (Hemsworth): Labour 16,460 (37.5%), Conservative 15,280 (34.8%), Brexit Party 5,930 (13.5%), Independents 2,623 (6%), Liberal Democrats 1,734 (3.9%), Yorkshire 964 (2.2%), Green 916 (2.1%). Labour Majority of 1,180 (2.7%).
Verdict: Likely Labour hold.
Barnsley South (Yorkshire and the Humber): To somewhat reiterate upon what was said above, we still don’t really know how well Reform will do up north — in the so-called ‘Red Wall’ (remember that discourse?) — because so little of the election campaign has been fought there. Nonetheless, we can see that the Brexit Party got big, big votes in the previous constituencies of Barnsley East and Barnsley Central: 29.2% in the former, 30.4% in the latter. (The Conservative Party got 27.3% and 21.4% of the vote respectively.)
Barnsley, a former mining town, is probably a bit better than you expect it to be: like everywhere in Yorkshire, it’s nicer than its Lancashire equivalent. Barnsley has a reputation for being the most ‘Yorkshire’ place in Yorkshire — the thickest accents, et cetera. It’s less diverse than many nearby places — 95.5% white in the 2021 Census — and this will be reflected in the result.
See also Barnsley North — which YouGov is projecting to be even closer than Barnsley South — as well as Sunderland Central and Houghton and Sunderland South, which Survation’s final MRP predicted Reform to get 34% and 31% of the vote respectively — far behind Labour, but nonetheless some of the highest Reform vote shares in the country.
Previous Election: N/A (boundary changes too big to be comparable).
Verdict: Likely Labour hold.
South West Devon (Devon): The current Tory MP here, Gary Streeter, is not standing at this election. A little noticed feature of certain constituencies outside of the Reform heartlands of Lincolnshire and Essex, especially rural ones, is extreme vote-splitting. South West Devon is one such potential case of this, with the latest Survation projecting Reform to be just four percentage points behind the Tories.
For other seats where Reform may just slip through due to extreme three- or four-way vote-splitting between the Tories, Reform, and the Liberal Democrats and/or Labour, see also Mid Norfolk and North West Norfolk. A substantial Green vote or an unusually strong showing for Labour might also help push Reform over the line. This, however, seems unlikely.
Previous Election: Conservative 33,286 (62.4%), Labour 11,856 (22.2%), Liberal Democrats 6,207 (11.6%), Green 2,018 (3.8%). Tory Majority of 21,430 (40.2%).
Verdict: Narrow Liberal Democrat Gain.
Greens, Galloway, and Gaza
We must ask ourselves the question: are British Muslims actually even pollable? Even more than seats where Reform are expected to do well, these could be some real wildcards. Labour have been quietly haemorrhaging votes to the Greens, the Workers Party, and various independents over their stance on Gaza. The situation is particularly bad with Pakistanis (less so with Bangladeshis), who are firmly off of the reservation. Is this the moment when a cohesive Muslim bloc vote finally crystallises?
Islington North (London): Okay, we’re somewhat cheating on this one, but we needed to put it somewhere on this list. Can Jeremy Corbyn win? The former Labour leader, who was suspended for alleged anti-Semitism on his watch as leader, is standing here as an independent. Half of the Constituency Labour Party there is supporting him, rather than the Labour candidate, local councillor Praful Nargund; supporters have flocked from across the country to campaign for him. YouGov are projecting that this seat will be close; Survation, on the other hand, think that Labour will win fairly comfortably. We think YouGov’s prediction will be closer to the mark.
Previous Election: Labour 34,603 (64.3%), Liberal Democrats 8,415 (15.6%), Conservative 5,483 (10.2%), Green 4,326 (8.0%), Brexit Party 742 (1.4%), Monster Raving Loony 236 (0.4%). Labour Majority of 26,188 (48.7%).
Verdict: Too close to call.
Rochdale (Greater Manchester): Projections all seem to suggest that George Galloway will lose the seat that he just won, which is not an especially Muslim seat in any case. It is probably best to think of the by-election as a freak result, not to be repeated.
Previous Election: Workers Party 12,335 (39.4%), Independent 6,638 (21.3%), Conservative 3,731 (12.0%), Azhar Ali 2,402 (7.7%), Liberal Democrats 2,164 (7.0%), et cetera. Workers Party Majority of 5,697 (18.4%).
Verdict: Likely Labour gain.
Birmingham Ladywood (West Midlands): ‘Ladywood’ refers to a white-ish council estate area on the edge of Birmingham City centre (mostly inside the ringroad), but this is a very misleading name for the constituency. The big powerhouses for the seat are always Nechells and Aston on the other side of town, which are mostly populated by Pakistanis and Somalis, with some Jamaicans. Birmingham Ladywood should really be renamed ‘Birmingham Central’, as that would much better describe what it actually is. In the city centre, there is also the whiter hipster millennial area of Jewellery Quarter (think Northern Powerhouse IPA).
Independent candidate Akhmed Yakoob stood in the West Midlands Mayoral election earlier this year, winning nearly 20% of the vote in Birmingham itself on a pro-Gaza platform — something that seems to have been little noticed nationally. The current MP is Labour’s Shabana Mahmood, who has a massive majority, and won nearly 80% of the vote in 2019. But is she safe?
Boundary changes have made this the Muslim seat in Birmingham, containing areas such as Alum Rock. This is a title which (according to the 2011 Census) used to belong to Birmingham Hodge Hill, but this has now become Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull (which may also be worth watching, as will Birmingham Yardley). Most projections suggest a comfortable win for Labour, but we are going to go out on a limb here and predict that Yakoob, who has a big profile here, will win this seat. Both the politics and the demographics seem perfectly set up for an upset. And in any case, best not to be boring.
Previous Election: Labour 33,355 (79.2%), Liberal Democrats 4,773 (11.3%), Green 931 (2.2%), Brexit Party 831 (1.9%). Labour Majority of 28,582 (67.9%).
Verdict: Narrow Independent gain.
Birmingham Perry Barr (West Midlands): Birmingham Perry Barr is somewhat similar to Birmingham Lady Wood, but not quite the same. They have more white areas, such as the more upmarket Handsworth Wood, Birchfield, and Oscott A34 lower-middle class corridor. But you also have Lozells, home of race riots; Handsworth itself, which is mostly populated by subcontinentals of all types; and parts of Aston. The demographics are quite not as favourable here for the Muslim vote here as they are in Birmingham Ladywood. We predict a fairly solid Labour hold.
Previous Election: Labour 26,594 (63.1%), Conservative 11,277 (26.8%), Liberal Democrats 1,901 (4.5%), Brexit Party 1,382 (3.3%), Green 845 (2.0%), Independent 148 (0.4%). Labour Majority of 15,317 (36.3%).
Verdict: Likely Labour hold.
Leicester East (Leicestershire): Leicester East is a more intriguing seat than Labour’s odds on 4/9 price suggests. Corbyn loyalist Claudia Webbe is the incumbent MP, standing as an independent after being expelled from Labour after a harassment conviction in 2020. Webbe’s predecessor Keith Vaz is also standing again, this time for One Leicester.
Part-time washing machine salesman Vaz commands significant local support in the constituency, having served as Labour MP from 1987 to 2019. Vaz is popular locally and could corral the plurality Hindu vote away from Labour. In 2023, Labour HQ overruled local councillor selections, resulting in a small number of defections. Curiously, the seat’s Green candidate, Mags Lewis, isn’t benefitting from a Palestine bounce, as witnessed in other seats with significant Muslim populations.
The Hindu and Muslim clashes of 2022 happened largely within this constituency, and subsequently voting could be on sectarian lines. Vaz stands to benefit from the Hindu bloc, although it remans to be seen if the Liberal Democrat Candidate Zuffar Haq will benefit from the Muslim vote.
Ever since 2015, the Tories have increased their absolute number of votes in the seat, with Bhupendra Dave receiving 19,071 votes in 2019, against Edward Yi He’s 12,688 in 2017. Set against a backdrop of national decline, it could perversely yield a strong Tory showing owing to local ethnic intrigue.
A very messy seat indeed, and definitely one to watch, as an upset might well be on the cards.
Previous Election: Labour 25,090 (50.8%), Conservative 19,071 (38.6%), Liberal Democrats 2,800 (5.7%), Brexit Party 1,243 (2.5%), Green 888 (1.8%), Independent 329 (0.7%). Labour Majority of 6,019 (12.2%).
Verdict: Narrow Labour hold.
Bristol Central (City of Bristol): The main Green target seat at this election. Created from four constituencies, making it difficult to say what will happen here due to a lack of data, we think that the Greens are slight favourites, though with a high degree of uncertainty. The Green candidate is the party’s co-leader (‘Woke’), Carla Denyer. The Labour candidate is Thangam Debbonair.
The only Green seat in 2019, Brighton Pavilion, is not quite safe. However, due to a mediocre Labour campaign that has alienated much of the left, we predict that Sian Berry — replacing the former MP, Caroline Lucas, who is retiring — will hold it.
Previous Election: N/A (boundary changes too big to be comparable).
Verdict: Narrow Green gain.
North Herefordshire (Herefordshire): North Herefordshire is one of two rural seats — the other being Waveney Valley — where, for reasons that are somewhat unclear to us, the Greens might make gains. This should not be entirely unexpected: the Greens have a substantial share of the seats on the two respective councils. Recently, pollution in the River Wye got a fair bit of media coverage? Either way, it would be a real coup if they do end up winning, given that they came dead last in the previous election with just 9.3% of the vote.
Previous Election: Conservative 32,158 (63.0%), Liberal Democrats 7,302 (14.3%), Labour 6,804 (13.3%), Green 4,769 (9.3%). Tory Majority of 24,856 (48.7%).
Verdict: Narrow Tory hold.
Bradford West (West Yorkshire): Bradford West is a heavily — around 58% — Muslim seat, currently represented by Labour’s Naz Shah. Not much has been said about this constituency, but she faces a challenge from a ‘pro-ceasefire’ independent.
Previous Election: Labour 33,736 (76.2%), Conservative 6,717 (15.2%), Brexit Party 1,556 (3.5%), Liberal Democrats 1,349 (3.0%), Green 813 (1.8%), Independent 90 (0.2%). Labour Majority of 27,019 (61.0%).
Verdict: Solid Labour hold.
Woke Tory Watch
As readers might have gathered from our previous output, the Pimlico Journal has not been at all impressed by the Conservative Party’s performance in government over the last fourteen years. That said, not all Tories are made equal. Some we might even be sad to see lose their seats, even those of us who are strong believers in ‘Zero Seats’ as a point of principle. But here at Woke Tory Watch, for your viewing pleasure we have listed some of the worst Tory MPs: the sort of people you should raise a glass to celebrate when (or if) they go.
Newbury (Berkshire): The current MP is Laura Farris, the only member of the Tory Class of 2019 to take the knee for Black Lives Matter in 2020. For some reason, Farris (who previously worked for Hilary Clinton) was gifted the handsome Tory seat of Newbury — which boasts a majority of over 16,000 — despite her total lack of right-wing credentials. Safe? Not anymore: Survation give the Liberal Democrats a 97% probability of winning this seat.
Previous Election: Conservative 34,431 (57.4%), Liberal Democrats 18,384 (30.6%), Labour 4,404 (7.3%), Green 2,454 (4.1%), Independent 325 (0.5%). Tory Majority of 16,047 (26.8%).
Verdict: Solid Liberal Democrat gain.
Rutland and Stamford (Leicestershire, Rutland, and Lincolnshire): The current MP is Alicia Kearns. Need we say more? Perhaps the definitive left-wing Tory. A former civil servant, an active trans activist, and an open borders enthusiast, she represents the blue-to-the-bone heartland seat of Rutland and Melton (now Rutland and Stamford after boundary changes), with a majority of over 26,000.
This is a seat so safe that it was considered a potential landing zone for Boris Johnson a few years ago, but instead it was inexplicably given to a left-wing former Foreign Office official. Sadly, as this is the thirty-third safest Tory seat in the country, Kearns is likely to keep her seat even in the most cataclysmic of scenarios.
Previous Election (Rutland and Melton): Conservative 36,507 (62.6%), Labour Andy Thomas 9,583 (16.4%), Liberal Democrats 7,970 (13.7%), Green 2,875 (4.9%), UKIP 917 (1.6%), Independent 458 (0.8%). Tory Majority of 26,924 (46.2%).
Verdict: Likely Tory hold.
Stratford-on-Avon (Warwickshire): The current MP, Nadim Zahawi, is standing down. The new Conservative candidate is Chris Clarkson. Clarkson is a noted hedonist who mostly hangs out in the seedier corners of the Carlton Club. His purpose in Parliament has been to veer between advancing the agenda of the left-wing Tory Reform Group — the worst caucus within the Tory Party, even worse than the ‘One Nation’ gang — and blindly following the Whip. To the delight of many, he announced that he was standing down this year before he was inevitably voted out of his previous seat of Heywood and Middleton, which has a majority of just 663. Unfortunately, he realised he could be given the seat of Stratford-on-Avon, which has a far more solid majority of 20,000. This chicken run seems unlikely to have paid off, with the Liberal Democrats strong favourites to win.
Previous Election: Conservative 33,343 (60.6%), Liberal Democrats 13,371 (24.3%), Labour 6,222 (11.3%) Green 2,112 (3.8%). Tory Majority of 19,972 (36.3%).
Verdict: Likely Liberal Democrat gain.
Romsey and Southampton North (Hampshire): The current MP is Caroline Nokes. Nokes has used her tenure on the Women and Equalities Select Committee to advance any and every slice of progressive left orthodoxy. The daughter of a Tory MEP, Nokes has been a consistent open borders advocate, and is also a principal of RAMP (which stands for ‘Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy’), a Quaker-funded migrants’ rights organisation which has fingerprints all over a large number of parliamentarians.
Her majority is slightly smaller than the others listed here: today it is only 10,000, down from a peak of 18,000 in 2017. Despite this, YouGov has Nokes holding her seat by only a few votes, while Survation has her narrowly losing it to the Liberal Democrats. We can only hope that the good people of Romsey and Southampton North do their duty and put her out of a job.
Previous Election: Conservative 27,862 (54.2%), Liberal Democrats 16,990 (33.1%), Labour 5,898 (11.5%), UKIP 640 (1.2%). Tory Majority of 10,872 (21.1%).
Verdict: Narrow Liberal Democrat gain.
Epping Forest (Essex): The current MP, Eleanor Laing, is standing down. The new Conservative candidate is Neil Hudson, the current MP for Penrith and the Border, which was previously Rory Stewart’s constituency. Hudson is widely regarded by activists as a Liberal Democrat in Tory clothing. After being soundly beaten by the legitimately right-wing Mark Jenkinson in the selection meeting for the new seat of Penrith and Solway, Hudson embarked on a chicken run to Essex, where he was gifted Epping Forest, a seat with a normally solid majority of 22,000. This is the latest example of a wet Tory being handed a staunch constituency on a plate. It is notable who the Tory party chooses to look after.
Epping Forest is quiet, rural, and expensive. Chipping Ongar, North Weald, and Loughton are middle class towns. It is probably more ethnically diverse than the other Essex constituencies listed.
Fortunately, there still is a chance that Hudson might come a cropper: according to Survation, the seat sits on a knife edge, with Labour and the Conservatives both predicted to win 41% of the vote — and that’s with the benefit of this constituency having no Reform candidate.
Previous Election: Conservative 32,364 (64.4%), Labour 10,191 (20.3%), Liberal Democrats 5,387 (10.7%) Green 1,975 (3.9%), Young People’s Party UK 181 (0.4%), SDP 170 (0.3%). Tory Majority of 22,173 (44.1%).
Verdict: Too close to call.
Northern Ireland
Unionists could return to Westminster with as few as five MPs if Alliance win all of their targets. Superficially, this would appear to be a humiliation for unionism, which held eleven of Northern Ireland’s eighteen seats after the 2017 election. However, this papers over the fact many Catholics vote for nationalist parties out of communal solidarity while also supporting the constitutional status quo. Furthermore, any Alliance victories will be built on the backs of Protestant voters who would boomerang to unionism in any border poll. But expect this to be forgotten in any post-election coverage. Unionism has been written off for over one hundred years, yet it has never surrendered.
North Belfast: Just two of Northern Ireland’s eighteen constituencies are playing host to a classic sectarian contest, and this is one of them. The seat which had the highest per capita death rate during the Troubles. It is the home of the Ardoyne/Ligoniel parade dispute (where Sir Keir Starmer cut his teeth in managing ‘community relations’), and the Holy Cross dispute of the early noughties, which saw children being escorted to primary school by the army.
In the 2015 UK election the Sinn Féin candidate, Old Bailey bomber, and Maze prison escapee Gerry Kelly used campaign literature which told his constituents they could ‘make history’ by electing the first republican MP for North Belfast, because the previous census had shown Catholics outnumber Protestants in the constituency for the first time.
The DUP’s Nigel Dodds retained his seat until the 2019 election when the SDLP stepped aside to unite behind the Sinn Féin candidate (as the UUP had done for the DUP at the previous two elections). John Finucane, the product of a ‘mixed marriage’, and son of assassinated ‘human rights lawyer’ Pat Finucane, won by just four percent of the vote.
Several men in Finucane’s paternal family were members of the Provisional IRA, and Finucane employed the Shankill bomber, Seán Kelly, as a canvasser in the 2017 and 2019 elections. Loyalist supporters of Nigel Dodds responded by hoisting banners which read ‘The Real Finucane Family — Human Rights Abusers — Steeped in the Blood Of Our Innocents’.
This election could become incendiary. The long standing agreement to the aforementioned parade dispute has broken down, and pictures have emerged of Protestant youths removing Irish tricolours from lampposts during their annual marches.
The constituency occupies an important role in the Protestant psyche. Edward Carson was elected to Westminster in the similar seat of Belfast Duncairn. Edward Harland, of Harland and Wolff shipbuilders, served as an MP for North Belfast for seven years. The seat will likely stay in Sinn Féin’s hands because of the most important political trend in Northern Ireland, the demographic momentum of the Catholic community.
Previous Election: Sinn Féin 23,078 (47.1%), DUP 21,135 (43.1%), Alliance 4,824 (9.8%). Sinn Féin Majority of 1,943 (4.0%).
Verdict: Sinn Féin hold.
Fermanagh and South Tyrone: The only other sectarian marginal. The constituency has changed hands eight times since its creation, and counts Bobby Sands among its former representatives. The demographics of the constituency — 60% Catholic, 34% Protestant, 1% Other, and 5% None (mostly ethnic Protestants) — should leave nationalism with an easy win. But Sinn Féin won the 2019 election by just 57 votes, as unionist parties coordinated to run a single candidate and nationalist parties did not.
The long-time Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew chose to stand down in order to contest this year’s European election in Ireland, in which she failed to win a seat to the pro-cannabis independent Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan (who has an autism diagnosis), the newly formed right-wing Independent Ireland, and the traditional parties. Appearing on the ballot paper for Sinn Féin is the former Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, Pat Cullen, who led our NHS nurses on their most prolific period of strike action in their union’s 108-year history.
The lack of incumbency bias combined with unionism uniting behind a single candidate could lead to a UUP victory, but the Alliance Party’s polling surge will eat into the Protestant vote.
Previous Election: Sinn Féin 21,986 (43.3%), UUP 21,929 (43.2%), SDLP 3,446 (6.8%), Alliance 2,650 (5.2%), Independent 751 (1.5%). Sinn Féin Majority of 57 (0.1%).
Verdict: Too close to call.
East Belfast: There will be no changes in the seven traditional nationalist seats, so the other story of the election is the DUP being stretched by the UUP and Alliance Party to their left, and the TUV to their right, in majority Protestant constituencies.
Alliance could gain seats from the DUP in East Belfast, Lagan Valley, and Strangford, building on the seat they won in middle-class North Down in 2019, where they face DUP- and TUV-backed independent candidate Alex Easton at this election. The DUP’s former former leader Jeffrey Donaldson has declined to defend his seat in Lagan Valley due to his ongoing trial for rape and sexual assault, and has been replaced by rising star of the party, Jonathan Buckley.
Verdicts: East Belfast and Lagan Valley gain for Alliance; Strangford too close to call; North Down hold for Alliance.
Jenrick keeping his seat was a pleasant suprise
Finished this just in time. You're right about Barnsley - "actually pretty nice" should be the town's official slogan.