Opinion: Suffolk gears up for this year's general election

Let's be clear. Labour have every right to crow about the results in Kingswood and Wellingborough. In both seats they overturned a five-figure Tory majority.

And those victories came at the end of a week when the Party had come under considerable fire over its green policies U-turn and its handling of antisemitism allegations among some candidates.

However while both seats might be considered "safe" in some people's eyes, both had been held by Labour before. The party held Wellingborough from 1997-2005 and Kingswood from 1997-2010.

Kingswood will cease to exist in the general election - it is being split four was in boundary changes - and what will happen to Labour's 6,500 majority in Wellingborough at the next election, especially if the Tories don't choose the disgraced former MP's girlfriend as its candidate, is by no means certain.

I do think, however, that we can learn some things from these by-elections that will be very relevant in Suffolk.

And there is one other piece of news that came out last week. A Survation Poll commissioned by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) suggested Labour was ahead of the Tories in the countryside - and that well-known figures including Therese Coffey in Suffolk Coastal could lose their seats.

Suffolk Coastal MP Therese Coffey (Image: Newsquest)

Looking at recent by-election results, and at the CLA poll, I am increasingly confident in my prediction that a 1997-style result is looking likely this year.

Labour could win the most votes in Suffolk like it did in 1997 (I wouldn't bet on it) but I am pretty confident that the Tories will end up with at least five and a half MPs in Suffolk at the end of the year - Waveney Valley straddles the Suffolk/Norfolk border.

If it was a straight fight in Suffolk Coastal I might believe Dr Coffey could be in trouble. But it isn't.

Labour finished in a clear second place in 2019 but both the Liberal Democrats and Greens think they have a chance there - especially with all the arguments about energy policy swirling around - and the opposition parties are likely to cancel each other out leaving the Tories in top spot, albeit with a much smaller majority.

Last week's results clearly spooked the Tories - especially the success of the Reform UK candidates who were attacking the party from the right.

This has prompted some MPs to urge the party to tack in that direction to see off the danger of the Faragist right.

But that would be a big mistake. The fact is the Tories are being squeezed from both sides - if they go too heavily on tax cuts and hostility to immigration they risk losing the of more traditional "One Nation" supporters.

I've had long-standing Tories in Ipswich telling me they're not worried about a Jack Abbott/Sir Keir Starmer victory and how concerned they are that their own party is veering to the right.

They don't make as much noise as the other wing of their party - but the risk to the Tories comes from the left as well as the right.

And while some Conservatives insist that their 2019 election victory was based on a demand for Brexit and support for Boris Johnson, those of us who were following the campaign without the aid of rose (or blue)-tinted spectacles know the real reason for the Tory landslide was the voters' distrust of Jeremy Corbyn!

Leading Conservatives might make much of their desire for tax cuts - but a series of opinion polls recently (and believe me politicians are fascinated by opinion polls in the months before an election) suggest that more people are more worried about the under-funding of vital public services than they are about tax cuts.

The figures have tended to be about 50% want more spending on services, 30% want tax cuts and 20% don't know.

I have no doubt that most of the 30% wanting tax cuts will be predisposed to vote Tory - but that really isn't a large enough figure to build a successful election campaign!

The long-term trend in opinion polls and by-elections tells me that we are heading for a Labour landslide later this year. 

But in Suffolk the party really can't expect to sweep the board.

The opinions expressed in this column are the personal views of Paul Geater and do not necessarily reflect views held by this newspaper, its sister publications or its owner and publisher Newsquest Media Group Ltd.