Shadow minister says Labour is ‘too urban’
The shadow environment secretary has said the Labour party has become “too comfortable with being too urban.”
Luke Pollard, MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport and Luke Raikes, of the Fabian Society, addressed a debate chaired by rural campaign group the Countryside Alliance’s president, Baroness Mallalieu QC, at Labour’s annual party conference this week in Brighton.
The event focused on the party’s poor performance in rural areas, as discussed in the Alliance’s 2020 report.
At the 2019 election Labour left won just 17 of 199 rural seats.
“The catastrophic decline in rural Labour seats is nothing new,” James Legge, the Alliance’s public affairs director said, adding: “It is a trajectory of decline since Labour held over 100 rural seats in 1997.”
Mr Pollard said he accepted that the Labour Party had “become too comfortable with being too urban”, and promised that their Labour manifesto would be the “most rural positive manifesto since 1945.”
The Countryside Alliance have argued that Labour’s rural performance is unlikely to change as long as the party continues to campaign against hunts, shooting and wildlife management.
