Man On The Mayk

Rishi Sunak arranged this coup in the first place. He is the point of it. If he did not win this time, then there would be another coup in this Parliament, when he would be the only candidate.

A Yorkshire MP he may be, although hardly a Red Wall one, but he oozes the City and the Home Counties, and since he is not proposing tax cuts, then any reorientation towards those two is plainly and simply a reorientation towards the EU.

The plan is to realign with the Single Market and the Customs Union, which would be the only thing even worse than being in them and at least having some small amount of say over them. Even Keir Starmer now pretends to be more of a Brexiteer than that.

Labour has lost Hartlepool to the Conservatives, and it has barely taken back Wakefield. Clearly, the Conservative Party sees its real opponent as the Liberal Democrats, who have taken three of its seats by landslides since the last General Election, two of them from third place.

The Conservatives feel no threat from Labour, and if anything expect to pick up scores more of its seats as even only one in 20, never mind one on 10, of its 2019 voters abstained or went elsewhere. 

Here at North West Durham, Richard Holden is backing Sunak from the supremely confident position of having no Labour opponent. Labour lost this seat for the first time ever and by a mere 1,144 votes, yet it has not begun the process of selecting a parliamentary candidate.