Conservatives launch election campaign eyeing a majority

Dudley’s Conservatives launched their local election campaign with a rallying call from their group leader to grab outright control of the council.

A third of the council’s 72 seats will be up for election on May 7, possibly also others vacated by current members of the authority.

As it stands the Tories are the largest group with 33 seats but require the support of other councillors to be sure of winning votes in the council chamber.

At a campaign launch event in Dudley on February 12, the borough’s Conservative leader, Cllr Patrick Harley, fired the starting gun on the Tory election campaign.

Cllr Harley said: “These are important elections and likely to be very tough elections which will need hard work by all candidates, members and volunteers across the board.

“With Reform failing to win the most recent by-election in Dudley and Labour’s vote collapsing there is an opportunity to grab control with an overall majority in May.

“Getting our vote out will be crucial – but if we do the reward will be there.”

Reform UK are currently ahead in national opinion polls with a strong line on migrants but Cllr Harely told party faithful at the event his administration was also playing hardball with companies paid by the government to house asylum seekers.

He said: “Dudley has just one hotel that Serco has commandeered and placed asylum seekers within.

“It’s one too many but at least they are families and not young single adult males.

“This administration has held Serco to account and threatened legal action against both Serco and various hotels.”

Another Conservative to address the meeting, at the Fun City in St James’s Road, was former Ukip MEP Bill Etheridge who hit out at Reform UK, led by his former political ally Nigel Farage.

Mr Etheridge said: “We see the cult of Reform they blindly follow; ‘we are going to get Nigel into Downing Street, vote Reform’ they chant, have you ever tried asking one of them why?

“They haven’t got an answer, they will say ‘immigration’, as Patrick said, unless the boats are coming up the canal there ain’t a lot we can do about that here.”

The guest speaker at the event was Mark Littlewood, founder of Popular Conservatism, an organisation arguing for lower taxation, less regulation and a smaller state.

Mr Littlewood said: “There are some deep lessons we are going to have to learn if there is a route back to forming the next government.

“The big wins, Thatcher, Thatcher, Thatcher and Johnson; don’t tell me those wins were based on pandering to the middle ground.

“When the Conservative Party pandered to the middle ground it didn’t do so well, I think the Conservative Party is now going through another period of reinvention.

“The party was reinvented in 1975 under Margaret Thatcher, I think the party needs to go through something a bit similar.”