“Red wall” Conservatives candidates are becoming increasingly dismayed and disillusioned with the central party for in effect cutting them adrift, as the Tory campaign focuses instead on defending safer seats in the south of England.
While some Tories in such areas say they have received central help, others complain about a lack of support in terms of visits from ministers, and an apparent lack of money or volunteering from the party faithful.
“There is absolutely a sense of: you’re in this on your own, it’s everyone for themselves,” said one candidate elected in a red wall seat – the term for former Labour strongholds in northern England, north Wales and the Midlands – in 2019.
“In 2019, I was inundated with visiting ministers. This time – nothing. Silence. Every time you ask if there’s any national spending available, they say no. There’s clearly no central money. You’ve got to spend your own cash. And in 2019 there was a huge amount of national spend, getting leaflets through letterboxes.”
Amid this vacuum, some candidates in these areas have used their own money on digital advertising, training non-specialist staff to place them on Facebook. A number have turned to Boris Johnson, who has recorded 50-plus personal video messages for candidates, many in northern and Midland seats.
While the ex-PM has no formal role in the campaign and is believed to be spending the bulk of it on holiday, many MPs in former Labour strongholds say he remains popular among many local people, and have asked for his endorsement.
Johnson, who liaises with Conservative headquarters over the endorsements, responds with brief, sometimes apparently self-filmed clips, usually beginning, “Hi folks, this is Boris Johnson,” and going on to urge people to back their local Tory, warning of a Labour party intent on “wokery” and “kowtowing to the European Union”.
The Conservatives’ apparent retreat away from the red wall and towards defending seats in the “blue wall” – more affluent, often commuter belt areas under particular threat from the Liberal Democrats – has been illustrated by Rishi Sunak’s choice of campaign stops.
Since the start of the month he has ventured to the north of England just three times, one of these involving a visit to his own Yorkshire constituency, and another to take part in a TV debate in Grimsby.
He has spent notably more time in the south and south-west of England, visiting a string of constituencies with 2019 majorities of about 15,000 or above.
This retreat has not been total. About 15 red wall seats have been selected to receive extra election literature to be sent to voters, with national campaign messages removed in place of praise for the individual incumbent Tory and their local achievements.
“This is based on polling which shows that in these areas, the local candidate is significantly out-performing the party as a whole, and so they maybe stand more of a chance,” one Conservative source said. “Because, in fairness, the party brand is pretty toxic.
“In these places, the candidates aren’t being cut off – there is some support. That said, they are not getting volunteers in from other areas, but that’s mainly because there aren’t really any volunteers at all.”
This lament reflects worries among grassroots Tories that the party’s on the ground campaigning infrastructure has become severely diminished in recent years, a product of a shrinking and ageing membership and the loss of thousands of councillors in recent local elections.
With volunteers at such a premium, it is understood that some sitting red wall Tories in seats the party thinks are now unwinnable have been told to give up entirely on local campaigning and try to help nearby seats that could be salvaged.
Such concerns are generally aired in private, but a handful of Conservatives have begun to go public with their assumption that the party will get a kicking from voters on 4 July.
“There’s no great optimism out there,” David TC Davies, the Welsh secretary, who has represented Monmouth since 2005, told the Sun’s Never Mind the Ballots web show.
“I feel for everyone, and I think we’re going to get it in the neck, all of us, as a result of that,” he said, adding: “Keir Starmer will walk into Downing Street.”
One former Conservative MP said they had noted a shift in strategy during the course of the campaign: “I think they think where they can make a difference is blue wall. Which is fine but they would have made a far bigger difference by not screwing up D-day.”
