Blue Wall Tories could give Boris a bloody nose in Bexley

Nestled in a middle-class, suburban corner of south-east London, the constituency of Old Bexley and Sidcup has long been a safe seat for the Conservatives.

Voters there were once represented by a Tory Prime Minister, and live in houses that are 50 per cent more expensive than the national average. Since the seat's creation in 1983, they have never returned an MP for another political party.

But for many, a by-election there triggered by the death of James Brokenshire last month is an opportunity to send a message to Boris Johnson that trust in the Conservative Party is not what it once was.

Like Louie French, the Tory candidate, 38-year-old Sidcup resident James Barfield, pictured below, works in banking and is a card-carrying member of the Conservative Party.

He feels that Mr Johnson has lost his shine in the 23 months since the 2019 election, and thinks Thursday’s vote will produce a substantially reduced majority for his party.

“I think they will take a bit of a battering, actually,” he says, when stopped while walking his dog, Fleur, to Costa Coffee on the high street.

“I was saying to my wife the other day that when he initially got in, I think he was quite endearing.

“He initially came across as a man of the people, and I think people are now getting a bit more clued up to what he’s actually like.”

Concerns over that speech

Top of the list of Tory gaffes is Mr Johnson’s speech to the CBI conference last week, in which the Prime Minister mislaid his notes and spoke at length about his recent visit to Peppa Pig World.

“More than anything else, it was just cringey. I felt really awkward for him,” Mr Barfield says.

He adds that, for him, the row over MPs’ second jobs “all seems a bit shady, really”.

He is not alone.

Paul Harrison, 52, has long voted Conservative but says the constituency should use the election to warn Mr Johnson he cannot take its support for granted, especially after the sleaze allegations.

“It’s time to stick it to them and say, look, you’ve got to buck your ideas up. So that’s why I’m not going to vote Conservative,” he says.

Mr French, who looks set to take his place in the Commons next month, is a former deputy leader of the local council. He is defending a majority of 19,000 votes.

On Sunday, he visited a local rugby club, where members said he stayed for two hours, speaking to parents of children playing a match, before tweeting a photo of a branded woolly hat he had been given.

Mr French has refused to do any interviews with national media outlets, including The Telegraph. A Conservative spokeswoman said party HQ had decided to run a “local” campaign instead.

But his opponents suggest that decision may be linked to an interview with the local New Shopper earlier this month, in which he sparked a row by refusing to rule out continuing his job as an investment banker if he was elected on December 2.

He later said that he would resign from his role as a sustainable portfolio manager at the Mayfair-based firm Tilney if he won the seat.

Tories could see their share of the vote dwindle

James Johnson, a former Downing Street pollster, says that unlike in other recent by-elections, the Tories could see their share of the vote fall.

“Hartlepool and Batley and Spen, which both saw a significant swing towards the Conservatives, took place in a very different world to the one we’re in now, with that big lift for the Conservatives through the vaccine bounce,” he says, adding that in Old Bexley and Sidcup, and upcoming votes in North Shropshire and Southend West, Number 10 will see that “exception come to an end”, in favour of a “series of quite traditional by-election results”.

“As we are moving to Christmas, people are feeling quite frustrated by the cost of living, energy prices going up and so on.

“A lot of people do give the benefit of the doubt on that, but it’s still happening under this Government and people are putting the blame on that on the Government.”

In Old Bexley, Labour are the second-largest party by a significant margin, and have selected Daniel Francis to contest the seat.

Mr Francis, a former Remainer, says that the constituency now lives in a “post-Brexit, post-Covid world,” and that voters who have not supported Labour since Gordon Brown’s premiership are turning to the party once again.

“I first knocked on doors as a 17-year-old, when the Labour Party had been through a difficult time and was back on a path to government,” he says.

“Having knocked on doors at every election since then, I feel that Labour is back on that path.

“We are beginning to see a number of people coming back to Labour.”

Richard Tice enters the race

Sensing disgruntlement with the Government, the by-election has also attracted the candidacy of Richard Tice, who leads Reform UK - once called the Brexit Party.

He is running on a ticket of low tax and opposes the government’s plans to install “useless” heat pumps in voters’ homes.

“There is no difference between Labour and the Tories now,” he says. “If you’re not content with Boris, then send a message”.

Pointing to a database on his iPhone that shows a mass of undecided voters, he declares that in advance of Thursday’s vote, Mr Johnson and his advisers are “terrified”.

A passing Tory campaigner calls back: “They’re not terrified in the slightest!”