Last Tory MP in inner city Birmingham fights for future against the odds

He was a young city councillor, just turned 30, when he took the MP seat of Birmingham Northfield on a wave of post-Brexit anger and Boris Johnson charisma. Five years on, Gary Sambrook is defending a majority of just 1,640 votes at tomorrow's election.

He is odds on to lose his seat, and his job, in the most public of ways in the early hours of Friday July 5th - but says he is not throwing in the towel just yet. In a last ditch plea, he is urging voters to judge him on a local record he says he is proud of - including creating local jobs, bringing in investment, and supporting thousands of constituents.

He is also urging voters to reflect on the state of the city under a Labour administration before marking their voting card. "The city is in a mess of Labour's doing, with uncollected bins, overgrown verges, lost services and closures," he warned.

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Pollsters are strongly predicting the seat will be a Labour gain - it will have to be if the Labour Party takes over in government. Its candidate Laurence Turner is expected to be the next MP for Northfield. You can read all about his challenge here.

Sambrook also faces the prospect of haemorrhaging Tory votes to Reform UK's Stephen Peters. The Lib Dems, Greens and a trio of independents are also standing.

The seat includes the wards of Frankley Great Park, King's Norton North, King's Norton South, Longbridge and West Heath, Northfield, Rubery and Rednal, Weoley and Selly Oak. Northfield was one of the West Midlands seats that had been in the Labour 'red wall' for generations before succumbing to the Tories in 2019.

The then Prime Minister Johnson harnessed widespread pro Brexit sentiment (more than 60% of the constituency voted to Leave) and antipathy towards his left-wing rival Jeremy Corbyn, while promising to 'level up' the region.

Sambrook, a city councillor for Kingstanding from 2014 until his election, ousted Labour veteran Richard Burden, who had held the seat since 1992. At the victorious election count, he said: "The reason we have won in Birmingham Northfield is because of Brexit, because people felt let down, felt betrayed, they felt as though they had been taken for granted for far too long, and it is also because the public trust Conservatives with our public services, with the police, with the NHS and with schools."

Five years on, Sambrook believes there have been achievements nationally and locally, and he is backing the Tory manifesto. He highlighted how he had secured final payouts for hundreds of Rover MG workers after years of wrangling following the firm's demise, and lobbied for improved transport links including a new rail station for Kings Norton.

A new special education school will open soon in Northfield with 400 places for kids with autism and ADHD and other additional needs, he added. "It is great news for the parents who are waiting in vain for their kids to have a place," he said.

Sambrook backs his party's plan for a form of National Service for teenagers, recalling how he chaired his local neighbourhood watch aged just 17 and the impact that had on his future. He touches on lowpoints, like when he was unfairly maligned for standing up to a company seeking to open a children’s home locally because it lacked the credentials and experience to do so, only to be accused of being opposed to helping children in need. “It was an unscrupulous company that it was right to turn away, but that got misrepresented in a negative headline.”

He's also angry that his seat could be taken by an outsider who works in Nottingham and London and lives in Oxford (referring to Labour candidate Turner). He says it reflects poorly on the party and loyal local members that Turner was preferred to any of them.

It's fighting talk from this son of a dinner lady and a lorry driver. Sambrook said he had never given up at elections and was not about to start. "I have fought many local elections and this is my second national election. I have always given my absolute all to the end."

Standing in Birmingham Northfield:

Jerry Evans, Liberal Democrats

Rob Grant, Green Party

Dean Gwilliam, Independent

Altaf Hussain, Independent

Stephen Peters, Reform UK

Dick Rodgers, Common Good

Gary Sambrook, Conservatives

Laurence Turner, Labour Party