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This week Rishi Sunak appeared to offer a glimpse of how concerned he and his party are about the level of support for the Conservative Party in rural areas.
On Tuesday, he became the first prime minister in more than 15 years to directly address the National Farmers’ Union Congress. The last resident to do so at number 10 was Gordon Brown.
For Labor, the reasoning was clear. “The Conservatives are rattled about the local vote numbers,” the source said. I. “They’re getting desperate.”
Mr Sunak was even noted to have rescheduled his cabinet meeting, usually scheduled every Tuesday morning, to address farmers.
The Conservative Party denies claims that Mr Sunak attended the NFU to shore up local votes, with a senior party official saying: I: “He respects the farming community, frankly.”
But in a sign that a fierce election battle for the countryside has already begun, the source highlighted how the Welsh Labor government was “treating Welsh farmers miserably”.
The comments were in reference to ongoing protests by Welsh farmers over a labor regime that requires farmers to give up 20 per cent of their land to planting trees and wildlife habitat in exchange for subsidies.
This has led to farmers using tractors to block roads in parts of the country, similar to protests in Europe over EU rules.
The Conservatives’ plan to weaponize the protests reflects their regular attacks on the performance of the NHS in “Labour-run Wales”, which lags behind the UK.
A Downing Street source said: I He said British farmers “will look at what’s happening to their Welsh colleagues and say ‘no thank you'” when it comes to the general election.
In a speech to farmers at the ICC in Birmingham, the Prime Minister insisted that food security “can never be taken for granted” and told farmers: “I have your back. “I’ll do it,” he said.
But current opinion polls show that rural areas, where the Conservatives desperately need support to avoid defeat in the general election, do not believe in him.
The latest figures highlight the difficult situation for the party in rural areas, areas with many traditional Conservative voters.
Support for the Conservative Party has plummeted since 2019 across the largest farming community, said Deltapol founder Joe Twyman, who gave a presentation at the NFU on Wednesday.
Mr Twyman said the rural vote was once a big “strength” for the Conservative Party, but voters had “drifted away” from the party over the past five years.
He said key voting intention statistics showed the Conservatives were just four points behind Labor in the 100 constituencies with the highest numbers of NFU members, at 32% and 36% respectively. But when you compare this to how voters in these regions voted in 2019, the picture looks bleak.
Since 2019, support for the Conservative Party has fallen from 58% to 32%, while Labor’s support has increased from 20% to 36% over the same period.
Mr Twyman told the audience: “A huge proportion of people in these constituencies voted Conservative in the last election and they left the party.”
“Just over half of those who voted last time are voting Conservative this time,” he added. “Labour, on the other hand, has significantly increased its standing.”
He warned: “This is bad news for Conservatives nationally and bad news for Conservatives in NFU constituencies.”
The improvement in local political conditions has encouraged Labor, with shadow environment secretary Steve Reid this week pledging to close remaining loopholes in hunting laws that abolish fox hunting.
Labor officials said a 2022 poll showed little difference in support for tougher laws between rural and urban voters, with 76 per cent and 78 per cent respectively supporting the move. (FindOutNow survey).
In an interview with I Last month, Mr Reid pointed out that Labor’s last return to power in 1997 was achieved by winning a majority of local seats.
“The idea that local seats are all naturally Tory territory is not true. That is very recent history,” he said. “If Labor has proposals that are sufficiently attractive to the whole country on important issues such as sewage, the cost of living, the state of the NHS, levels of crime, then we will have strong enough proposals for the whole country on all of those things. “We need to win seats across the country.” ”
But Mr Twyman said that despite the level of undecided voters in both local and national seats facing a real “challenge” for the Conservatives to win, many votes were still “in hand”. He warned that this meant that he could be taken in. The battle for the countryside has only just begun.