‘For 14 years it’s been despicable. Enough’s enough’: in the ‘red wall’, Tory support is crumbling

Boris Johnson swept to power in 2019 by winning a swathe of northern English seats – but voters in Penistone, South Yorkshire, are moving back to Labour

It sounds odd to describe a well-to-do village with neat privet hedges, freshly mown lawns and three cars on each driveway as a no-go area. Yet for almost three decades, the pretty parish of Silkstone, on the edge of the Pennines, was unwelcoming territory for Labour folk.

The village, centred around a 12th-century church four miles outside Barnsley, was a bastion of Conservative blue surrounded by Labour red. But last May, Silkstone elected its first Labour councillor in a generation. A second followed a year later.

Continue reading...