Rare is the Wakefield resident who has not had to avoid a politician or a charming reporter in recent weeks, as expectations for Thursday’s ballot increase. If the polls are correct, Labor will have to regain the seat they lost to the Tories in 2019 – the party’s first pre-election victory since Korby in 2012. But after an early poll that gave Labor a 20-point lead, party figures rushed to lower expectations. “I can categorically say that we are not 20 points ahead and we are fighting for every vote. The fact that we won only one repeat election [rather than successfully defended a seat] in 25 years shows the scale of the project. “It’s not a given that we are winning,” said Louise Haigh, the shadow transport secretary who is leading the Labor campaign. Conventional wisdom suggests that Wakefield should be a shambles for Labor: a run-off election when the prime minister’s acceptance rates were just below, triggered by the imprisonment of incumbent Imran Ahmad Khan for sexually abusing a 15-year-old . . And yet, the Guardian repeatedly heard Johnson described in Wakefield as “the best of a bad hand,” with almost no reference to Cannes’s proven pedophilia. lamented a Labor MP who has been to the polls several times: “They realize they have a solution with Johnson and so to get out of it. they paint it as unusually bad and tar us with the same brush “. Support worker Gary Firm, enjoying the sun with a client on Friday, portrayed the Labor problem. “I do not believe in any of the politicians around us at the moment,” he said. “I see Boris in my head and yes, he has made some mistakes. It was pretty awful in part. But in the big picture, he has done good things. So I would support him. “ There is no love for Starmer in Wakefield, who made his third constituency visit on Saturday. “She is a critic. “He is not a man of action,” said Hall. Caroline Walker, an art teacher, was not impressed either: “What do they call him? Captain Hindsight. He is in a T-shirt. [He should] come up with something that is believable. But it does not. “It just has to go all the time.” The idea that Johnson received the “big calls” correctly is widespread. “I feel that Boris Johnson handled Covid well. “I feel that if someone else was in his place, he might not be doing as well as he was,” said Ayesha Ahmed, an 18-year-old student. He also endorses Johnson’s extension of the right to purchase municipal housing: “I think it’s very good, because paying rent is more than just a mortgage.” He weighs in on the vote for Conservative candidate Nadeem Ahmed, or popular local independent Akef Akbar, who could take a bite out of Tory and Labor votes. He left the Tories in March after becoming the first Conservative in decades to win the normally safe Labor area in the Wakefield East, a wing larger than the average Asian population. A Wakefield voter said Keir Starmer (right) was “awkward” compared to Boris Johnson, who “would make us scream and laugh”. Photo: Dave Higgens / PA Ahmed’s friends look on in horror as they hear her praise for Johnson. Zahrah Nadir, 17, wants to win over “anyone but Conservatives”, citing racism and the government’s immigration policy. “We’re not really stealing jobs, are we?” he said. “And some of the comments [Johnson] made for the burqa – it’s not right “. Teacher Sarah McGarry said she voted for Labor to try to oust the Tories. “I was a big fan of Corbin personally, so I’m probably a little more lukewarm towards Kir Starmer. But then I just have to compare it to the current [government] and the state of the country as it is at the moment and the fact that [the Tories] I have been in power for 12 years and the country is going downhill in my opinion, especially in education “. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST Peter Bagshaw, who worked at the Kellingley coal mine, Britain’s last deep coal mine, until the end of 2015, expects a Labor victory. The Tories really won Wakefield only in 2019 because of Brexit, he said. Mary Creagh, a Labor MP since 2005, was “too, too much to stop in Europe. “He was very much against Brexit,” he recalled. Labor himself until 2019, when he switched to the Tories, Bagshaw said he was not ready to return under the leadership of Keir Starmer. “I do not think he is the right person for the Labor Party. I think there lives a guy right on the hill, Dan Jarvis [MP for Barnsley]. I think he would be a much better leader for the Labor Party. “He is more down to earth and I think he would pull a lot of the fluctuating votes back to … Keir Starmer appears to be weak.”
