26th June poll shows Truss in third place in South-West Norfolk seat

26^th June Poll shows Truss in third place in South-West Norfolk seat

Liz Truss has a majority of 26,000 in her South West Norfolk seat. She has said (Sunday Times 2nd June) that she is focused on winning the seat at the Election on local issues and has no ambition to return to Downing St. That doesnt quite fit with the extensive publicity her political memoir has received where she styles herself as the saviour of Western civilisation.

There are also two other right-wing candidates James Bagge a former Tory standing on an anti-Truss platform, who usually describes himself as the ‘Turnip Taliban’ and Toby McKenzie for Reform. With the potential for a split vote on the right there could be a, very welcome, Labour surprise here. The candidate is on X @CllrTerryJermy

26^th June

A new Electoral Calculus poll (based on MRP large scale sampling) published on 26^th June predicts the following outcome:

Labour 38.5%

Reform 34.8%

Tory 15.4%

I remain doubtful about how accurate such polls are but a Labour lead has been suggested by earlier polls by other polling outfits

Earlier Updates

21st June

A well-attended Hustings organised by Friends of the Earth on 20th June saw seven of the eight candidates attend. This missing candidate was Truss. She was watching the football in a pub elsewhere in the Constituency.

Meanwhile Jonathan Freedland reported from the Constituency in the Guardian (22ndJune). Freedland’s point is that while we will rejoice if Truss is defeated, the likely Tory crisis can lead to an opening further right around Farage and Co that a Starmer Government may struggle to head off. That is the start of another discussion

“I’m not voting Conservative, because it’s her,” was how Carrie Batty put it, as she and her husband, Chris, soaked up some long-awaited summer sun on a park bench in the centre of Swaffham earlier this week. “Because of the chaos she’s caused our children with her wonderful budget.” The sarcasm was acid, as Batty, who’s 62 and retired, told me of the mortgage payments her two children were struggling to meet. She’d always voted Tory, “but not now, because I don’t want Liz Truss as an MP. She’s never apologised. She’s never taken responsibility for anything.”

Others confessed astonishment that Truss is even allowed to stand as a Tory candidate, given the damage she’s done. To show me what they’re up against, one senior Norfolk Conservative pinged over an image of a recent Eastern Daily Press front page. Its splash headline: “Truss: ‘I’m not worst PM ever’”.

As elsewhere, some of the disaffected Conservatives of South West Norfolk are moving to Labour, but most are considering two other options: the couch – several told me they’ll stay home on 4 July – or a vote for Reform. By his own admission, its local candidate, Toby McKenzie, a former teacher now involved in education management, is not fighting an all-out war for those votes – he’s a newcomer to politics, with a day job, so most campaigning is confined to weekends – but formerly habitual Tories are coming to him anyway. “They just don’t want to vote Conservative any more,” he says. When Nigel Farage jumped in the race, things took off: 30 new people joined up in a single day and McKenzie suddenly found he had a team of volunteers

25th June

Sky despatched a reporter to see if they could find any evidence of Truss on the campaign trail or anyone prepared to go on record in her support. They could not.