John Major was re-elected to the Huntingdon constituency in 1997, with a still very healthy majority of over 18,000, despite the Labour landslide victory under Tony Blair. He left parliament in 2001 and Jonathan Djanogly was then selected as the Conservatives’ candidate for the seat, which he won comfortably and which he has held until now. However, he was deselected by the local Conservative party in April last year after the scandal broke about the way the servants at his family home were treated.
The boundary changes brought in this year mean that only about 2/3 of the former Huntingdon constituency will be in the new one. Given the large Conservative majority at the last election (19,383), Huntingdon would seem to be a safe Conservative seat – yet there are a few buts…
Huntingdon: a house divided
The first “but” concerns the Conservative party itself. The local party split over whether or not to deselect Djanogly. In the subsequent contest between four short-listed contenders to be the party’s candidate, Ben Obese-Jecty was selected. Obese-Jecty served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now works in the financial sector in London. In the 2019 general election, he stood against Diane Abbott, when he was subjected to racial slurs from other black people because he was standing for the Conservative party.
The second “but” concerns the strength – or otherwise – of the local Conservative party. Until 2022, Huntingdonshire District Council had been dominated by the Conservatives but in the election that year they failed to retain their majority and a “rainbow alliance” of other parties took over, led by the Liberal Democrats. Since then, one Conservative councillor in the constituency has defected to the LibDems. The current representation at district council level in the constituency is: Conservatives, 11 seats; Liberal Democrats, 10; Independents, 6; and Labour, 4. Added to that, two of the Conservatives’ county councillors in the constituency recently left the Conservative group at New Shire Hall and now sit as “non-aligned independents”.
The third “but” is the threat to the Conservative vote from two former Conservatives who will be standing in the election, one for Reform and the other as an Independent. The candidate for Reform, Sarah Smith, lives in the constituency and previously stood for the party in the district council election in 2022. Dr Chan Abraham is the only Independent candidate to have declared so far and he has already started his campaign by holding public meetings in six population centres in the constituency.
The competition in Huntingdon
Our recent report More bad news for Conservatives in our region showed that Survation’s polling implies, in a worst case scenario, the Conservatives could lose 32 of the 52 parliamentary seats they currently hold in our region. In many of those constituencies, of which Huntingdon is one, both Labour and the Lib Dems will each take a large share of the anti-Conservative vote, so the degree of support for those parties and the level of tactical voting could well decide the extent of the Conservatives’ losses.
In Huntingdon, Labour’s Alexandra Bulat and the Liberal Democrats’ Mark Argent are both campaigning to take the seat from the Tories, and Georgie Hunt, of the Green Party, will hope to improve on the party’s showing in 2019. With a total of six candidates in the field, the outcome could be more of a lottery than a shoo-in for the Conservatives.
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