Canterbury: A cautionary tale for Labour and Tories
Canterbury, UK. (Shutterstock)
The constituency of Canterbury had been Tory for 185 years until 2017, when 9,000 students at the city’s three universities registered and voted for Rosie Duffield, the unknown Labour candidate. It was a great surprise — not least to Ms Duffield — when, by the narrowest of margins, she defeated the incumbent Sir Julian Brazier, who had spent 30 tranquil, largely blameless years en poste.
Canterbury’s Tories (trigger warning: I am one) berated Brazier and themselves for complacency, and vowed to win the seat back at the first opportunity. To this end they selected Anna Firth, a barrister, as their candidate in the 2019 general election.
Despite its previously solid Tory history, the constituency is a heterogenous one. The city itself is fairly prosperous, with pockets of deprivation, and is surrounded by mostly well-to-do villages. A romantic might say that there remains, even in the 21 st century, something of the robust yeoman about the people who live there. There are also three universities: Kent, Christchurch and the University of the Creative Arts, which between them bring more than 40,000 students into the city in term time.
The locals were strongly for Leave, and before 2017 the Tories felt they were vulnerable to UKIP, not to Labour. No one had thought of the potential student vote. But with Jeremy Corbyn riding high in the Labour Party it was inevitable that Momentum would seize its chance.
They were back in force during the recent election in which Rosie Duffield increased the Labour majority to 1,830. This disappointment came despite a strong campaign by Anna Firth with a good “ground game” by the local Tories. Contrary to the usual media stereotype, many young people pounded the pavements, knocked on doors and distributed leaflets. The party ran a vigorous social media campaign to counter Labour’s undoubted strength in this area.
Anna Firth took 45.2 per cent of the vote on a 75.4 per cent turnout, the highest share for a Tory candidate at Canterbury since 1992. Labour took 48.3 per cent, up from 45 per cent in 2017. The Liberal Democrats were traditionally the second party in Canterbury, but their vote share has been shrinking since 2010, when they polled more than 16,000 votes. This time they were down to 3,408, suggesting a degree of tactical voting in favour of Labour.
In future, Tories will have to consider how to deal with the student vote, which completely alters the character of the constituency in term time. In the Duke William pub at Ickham the night after the election, Anna Firth pointed to the electoral map of southern England. The only red dots in a sea of blue are the university towns: Canterbury, Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton, Exeter.
Canterbury conservatives feel strongly that the constituency has missed a trick in rejecting Anna Firth, a lively and attractive candidate who is obvious ministerial material. Her good connections in Boris Johnson’s likely first cabinet would have helped her achieve campaign pledges to replace the dilapidated Kent & Canterbury Hospital, as well as desperately needed road improvements to deal with the city’s chronic congestion.
However, there’s no denying that the result was a personal triumph for Rosie Duffield, and one that contains lessons for the wider Labour Party. She didn’t win only because of the student vote. She is a local woman, who, having taken the seat in 2017, set out to make herself known throughout the constituency. Her appeal was not restricted to the core Labour vote.
Rosie Duffield’s widely publicised Commons speech in which she spoke honestly and movingly about her experience of domestic abuse attracted admiration and support across the political spectrum and throughout the country. She showed support for the armed forces, pledging to fight the threatened abolition of the Royal Marines and backing the renewal of Trident.
She made it clear that she was no fan of Jeremy Corbyn, and, in particular, attacked his failure to deal with anti-Semitism. In other words, she is in many respects a traditional Labour MP capable of appealing to voters of all stripes. Corbyn and his wretched cabal will take no notice, but their successors would be daft not to.
