Labour mounts the defences in West Midlands stronghold

Corbyn’s party resists Tory push in Brexit-voting Coventry to stem May’s confidence

Dave Touson and Priya Dev, parliamentary staff and campaign volunteers for Labour MP for Coventry South Jim Cunningham at his constituency office in the city. Photograph: Simon Carswell
Dave Touson and Priya Dev, parliamentary staff and campaign volunteers for Labour MP for Coventry South Jim Cunningham at his constituency office in the city. Photograph: Simon Carswell

Standing next to the naked Lady Godiva statute in Coventry, schoolteacher Steve Davis dismisses the chances of the city electing its first Conservative MP in 20 years in simple terms: the Tories are too rich for Coventry.

“Unless you are earning over £100,000, you are not going to vote Conservative because you have to have money to vote Conservative. Coventry doesn’t have that much money,” he said.

“Most places have John Lewis; we have Primark – that says it all. Most places serve decent lagers in your local; we still serve Carling.”

People in Coventry like to say, "We make things here." The West Midlands city, 140km northwest of London, is the birthplace of the country's car-manufacturing industry and home to Jaguar and Rolls-Royce. But like other industrial hubs, Coventry's manufacturing has experienced a long decline.

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That has shifted politics in the city. The Tories spy an opportunity to take seats in this Labour stronghold after Coventry backed Brexit by 56 per cent, one of the highest Leave votes of any UK city. That vote pitted the people against the employers in the carmakers and other manufacturers who wanted to remain in the European Union.

The Tories see a chance to attract Brexit voters from the United Kingdom Independence Party. In their battle plan drawn up after prime minister Theresa May called her snap election, the Conservatives put Coventry North West – home to a big Irish community in Coundon (or "Co Coundon" as it is more known locally) – and Coventry South among eight West Midlands seats in their top-50 targets.

Tough Brexit negotiations

Taking these two seats would likely represent quite a sweep for the Conservatives and push May's majority at Westminster ahead of tough Brexit negotiations in Europe well up into double digits and into landslide territory.

Standing in her way are two septuagenarian Labour Party stalwarts who have no plans to shuffle off into retirement. Betting odds from bookmaker Paddy Power earlier this week showed the Tories the favourites to win the two seats but the two Labour men have been edging back, driven by a focus on local concerns and their long-established profiles in the constituency.

"You never get into a fight unless you think you can win it," Jim Cunningham, Labour MP for Coventry South, told The Irish Times after a long day of knocking on doors in his constituency.

The former Rolls-Royce engineer (76) is fighting his seventh election since 1992 and is protecting a 3,100 majority against Conservative Michelle Lowe, an unsuccessful candidate in Coventry North East in 2015.

On the other side of the city, Geoffrey Robinson – yes, that Geoffrey Robinson who lent money to Peter Mandelson to buy a house – is, at 79, seeking re-election for the 11th time since taking the seat in 1976.

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to vote in the British general election at a polling station in Islington, north London. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to vote in the British general election at a polling station in Islington, north London. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

He has taken this late-career fight in his stride. Robinson was out on the stump when The Irish Times telephoned him on Wednesday "still campaigning hard late into this evening".

After The Irish Times provided a brief explanation to "what are you intending to do with this article?" Robinson gave his take on the battle in his constituency. "Coventry South is basically pretty safe and my own North West is probable Labour but it is a very tight race. We are not taking anything for granted," he said, in an accent that might win him the prize of Britain's poshest socialist.

Better campaign

The big unknown in both constituencies is what happens to the votes cast two years ago for Ukip, the rebels (mostly) without a cause now that they are getting Brexit. There’s almost 6,000 in Cunningham’s constituency, dwarfing his majority, and 7,000 in Robinson’s, eclipsing his majority of 4,000.

That had Conservative eyes bulging but then May started campaigning.

“I think more will go that way than to us but we have got things coming in our favour such as we have a better campaign,” said Robinson. “The Tories have had a very bad campaign. The fact that we know the area very well. I am an established MP and have worked very hard in the constituency.

“But none of that should count. You can’t sit back and count your chickens.”

Labour has gained here on May’s fumbles: her refusal to debate the man she was attacking, the focus – in light of the London Bridge attacks – on her past tenure as home secretary when she cut police numbers and her flip-flops on policy that raise questions about her credibility to lead the Brexit negotiations.

Cunningham says May’s “blunder” on her U-turn to cap social care – brilliantly branded by her opposition as a “dementia tax” – was the “turning point”.

“That doesn’t suggest to me that she is going to be a strong leader when she negotiates Brexit,” he said.

The Ukip candidate in Coventry South, Ian Rogers, believes the Brexit vote showed Coventrians could ignore the advice of the Labour Party and that they could split the vote for the two main parties in this ballot.

“We feel that Labour will hold Coventry North West and North East and that the main battleground is Coventry South,” he said. “We may split the vote and we don’t know which party it is going to affect.”

This is the unpredictability of trying to map Brexit referendum politics along party lines in a general election campaign where the two main parties hardly touched on Brexit.

Populist backlash

Matt Qvortrup, a politics professor at Coventry University, says that had the Conservatives focused on policies "for ordinary people" they might have fared better. Had the populist backlash of the Brexit vote continued into the election campaign, this Conservative demographic might have voted for May.

“Here the voters who lend their vote to the Conservatives and Ukip previously might have been the traditional Labour types,” he said, standing in the bombed-out ruins of Coventry’s old cathedral.

“Once you get the immigration or Brexit issue out of the way, they will probably go back to their original tribes.”

There are also the so-called re-leavers, people who voted to remain in the EU but have come to accept the Brexit vote and are sticking with the party they have always supported.

“We certainly meet a lot of these people on the doorsteps,” said Dave Touson, one of Cunningham’s campaign volunteers at his office in Coventry South.

At the city’s train station on Wednesday evening, Dave Nellist, a Corbyn ally and fellow member of the white beard club, was in full fight at a small rally. Labour Brexiteers in former Labour strongholds and working-class areas, he believes, will return to the party.

The former Labour MP for Coventry South implored people to get out and vote to “stop the risk of a Tory MP being elected in Coventry” and to “maximise the Labour vote in this Labour city”.

He told The Irish Times that he believed May was confident when she announced the election 50 days ago that, based on the polls, she was going to land a majority of more than 100 seats.

“I think she was over-confident of that and now we have a chance to prove it tomorrow by wiping that smile off her face,” he said.

Labour hope the Tory leader is facing an embarrassing Godiva-like ride back to Westminster.