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Tories abandon ‘unwinnable’ northern seats to target south
Candidates even in areas with small majorities told to be ‘pragmatic’ and focus on shoring up support elsewhere
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The Tories have told candidates in “unwinnable” northern seats to shift campaigning to the south in an effort to avoid a historic defeat at the general election.
Even Tories trying to win seats which have Conservative majorities of up to 7,000 have been told to effectively give up and help to hold on to safer seats.
It comes after a Telegraph poll published on Wednesday predicted the party will retain just 53 MPs in a historic defeat with even Rishi Sunak among those voted out.
The Conservatives continue to trail Labour by around 20 points with just under two weeks until polling day.
One email from a regional Tory head of field operations, seen by The Telegraph, was sent last weekend with the subject: “Campaign support – Not in the north”.
It thanked candidates for standing in northern constituencies but asked them to take a “pragmatic approach” and instead focus their campaigning efforts on seats in the south.
The message, sent to candidates standing in seats currently held by Labour, said: “Thank you for standing up north.
“As much as I would like to see you helping a target seat in the north, taking a pragmatic approach I am sure there is one much closer to home [or] work.”
It added: “If you feel the need to pop up and shoot a couple of videos, great, but there is no pressure from me. Time is valuable and hours in a car isn’t (sic) gaining votes, thanks.”
The Telegraph has also learned that candidates across the UK seeking election in seats with Tory majorities as big as 7,000 votes at the 2019 election have been effectively told to give up as they will lose and campaign elsewhere.
The fact that Tory candidates in seats held by the party are being told to no longer fight for their own election is a stark sign of how dire the campaign sees the state of the race.
The Conservatives have seen their support take a hit from the rise of Reform and Nigel Farage’s return. On Thursday, Redfield & Wilton Strategies became the third polling company to show Reform on a greater share of the vote than the Conservatives.
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Mr Sunak, in a speech in Wales on Friday, will deliver his harshest assessment so far in this campaign of voters’ views about his party, as he urges them not to let Labour “waltz” to victory.
He will say: “I know you are frustrated with our party, frustrated with me. But do not let Labour waltz into office without scrutinising them, without seeing what their policies would mean for our country and your family’s security.
“Do you really know what you are going to get with Labour?”
The speech is deliberately written to echo one given by Sir John Major, then Tory prime minister, in the 1992 campaign which urged voters to “wake up” and see the dangers of a Labour government. He ended up pulling off a surprise victory.
Sir John said in that speech: “I warn the people. Don’t fall into Labour’s trap. Don’t sleepwalk into Thursday. This is not a by-election. It will determine who forms a government on Friday and who governs our country for five years.”
Voter anger
Mr Sunak’s admission that voters are personally frustrated with him, rather than just the Conservative Party, goes further than his usual acknowledgement of voter anger.
The Tory campaign has been marred by mis-steps including a row that ended in Mr Sunak apologising after leaving D-Day commemorations in Normandy early.
Tory strategists and senior cabinet ministers have changed campaigning tactics in recent weeks, warning voters not to hand Labour a “super-majority”, in a seeming admission that they expect to lose.
It is against this backdrop that party bosses have asked MPs with slim majorities and candidates in “unwinnable” Labour seats to effectively give up their campaigns and join efforts to defend safer constituencies.
One Tory candidate in a Labour-held northern seat said: “Everyone’s been given another seat to go and campaign in. If you’ve got connections elsewhere, go to them – that’s the message. More resources are definitely being put into the south.”
A second added: “If you’re in a completely unwinnable Labour seat, you get assigned marginals nearby.”
It is not just Tory candidates in Labour-held seats but ones in constituencies won by the Conservatives who have been asked to abandon their races, some with majorities as big as 7,000 votes at the 2019 election, The Telegraph understands.
This only applies to new candidates. Incumbents who were Tory MPs before the election and are seeking re-election have not been given these instructions, it is understood.
One MP fighting for re-election in a Red Wall seat that turned Tory for the first time in a generation in 2019 suggested he was getting no central support.
Another noted he had only had one ministerial visit, whereas at the same point in the last election he had been visited by the then prime minister Boris Johnson and two Cabinet ministers.
Defenders of the approach told The Telegraph it is common for campaigns to make tough decisions about resources as election day nears.
One Tory candidate claimed that the decisions should even have been made sooner, adding: “It took too long to make these calls.”