Labour 'plots pact with Lib Dems in Tiverton and Honiton by-election'
Labour ‘plotting electoral pact with Lib Dems’: frontbencher claims party will ‘soft pedal’ Tiverton and Honiton by-election campaign to give Ed Davey’s party a better chance of removing Tories
- MP said senior Labour politicians asked to stay away from Tiverton and Honiton
- Seat previously held by porn-shame MP Neil Parish, has a large Tory majority
- But Ed Davey’s party hopes to pull off upset like it achieved in North Shropshire
- Tory: ‘Starmer and his poodle Ed Davey have clearly agreed an electoral pact’
- Labour said it would ‘campaign for every Labour vote’ in June 23 by-election
Labour faced fresh claims of an electoral pact with the Liberal Democrats to carve up Tory seats today after a senior party figure suggested it will not campaign very hard in an upcoming by-election.
One of Keir Starmer’s frontbenchers claimed they have been asked to stay away from Tiverton and Honiton ahead of a by-election next month, saying they were ‘soft-pedalling’.
The seat, previously held by porn-shame Tory Neil Parish, has a large Conservative majority but Sir Ed Davey’s party is hoping to pull off a similar upset to that it achieved in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham last year.
The Conservatives have previously accused the two opposition parties of a conspiracy that would allow them to avoid cancelling each other out in target seats, a claim Labour has denied.
But a Tory source today said: ‘For all their denials, Starmer and his poodle Ed Davey have clearly agreed an electoral pact.
‘None of the membership of the parties, nor their MPs have been consulted about this grubby arrangement which is now plain for all to see. It’s time for dodgy Davey and his boss Sir Shifty to come clean with the voters.’
The Labour figure told Politics Home that rural Devon was ‘hardly our heartlands’ and the focus was on the Wakefield seat in Yorkshire also being contested on June 23.
One of Keir Starmer’s frontbenchers claimed they have been asked to stay away from Tiverton and Honiton ahead of a by-election next month, saying they were ‘soft-pedalling’.
The seat, previously held by porn-shame Tory Neil Parish (below), has a large Conservative majority but Sir Ed Davey’s party is hoping to pull off a similar upset to that it achieved in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham last year.
Tory chairman Oliver Dowden claimed Sir Keir Starmer was standing down candidates ‘in swathes of the country’ where Lib Dem support is strong to avoid splitting the anti-Tory vote in the May 5 local elections.
And he alleged Sir Ed’s party has returned the favour where Labour is dominant elsewhere.
His comments sparked a political storm, with both Opposition parties denying his accusations. If the alleged tactics are replicated at a General Election, it could see a return to the days of the Lib-Lab pacts of the 1970s.
But the claim was again denied by Labour today, with a spokesman for the leader telling reporters it would be ‘campaigning for every vote as we do in every election that there is’.
‘I’m not gonna go into discussing resourcing but you know, we’ll be fighting strong campaigns in both constituencies. We are campaigning for every Labour vote,’ he added.
Mr Parish quit politics after admittinghe watched pornography twice in Parliament.
The farmer, who has represented Tiverton and Honiton in Devon since 2010, said the first incident had been a ‘moment of madness’ after stumbling on the X-rated images by accident while searching for tractors online but landing on ‘another website that had a very similar name’.
The Wakefield by-election on the same day is being held after the conviction of MP Imran Ahmad Khan for a sex offence against a 15-year-old boy.
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