On top of failing to make headway in Conservative seats, the party managed to lose a great many seats to its blue-tinged rivals, some of which had shockingly been held for over a century.
Rother Valley
Created by the Representation of the People Act 1918, this constituency would be held for the next 101 years by Labour. Rother Valley is poor – its working population’s average income is slightly below the national average, there’s widespread reliance upon social housing, and about 30 percent of locals lack qualifications.
Brexit was widely supported in the area in June 2016 – which may have contributed to Labour’s unprecedented defeat, the party losing by 6,000 to the Conservatives.
Newcastle-under-Lyme
Newcastle-under-Lyme is one of the oldest constituencies still in operation in the UK today. Created in 1354, it’d been a dependable Labour seat for a century – returning an MP from the party in the 29 elections since 1918. However, Tory Aaron Bell now holds the seat, the first Conservative to grace the constituency since 1885.
LeighSituated in Greater Manchester, this constituency had been a Labour stronghold since 1922, electing among others Andy Burnham, who served as the MP from 2001, and Shadow Home Secretary in Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet until October 2016.
He stood down following his victory at the 2017 Greater Manchester mayoral election, and was succeeded by Labour and Cooperative Party's Joanne Platt. She went into the 2019 election with a 9,554 majority – Tory James Grundy would pip her to the post with a majority of just over 1,000, the first Conservative MP for Leigh in history.
Don Valley
Created in 1918, the constituency is a former coal mining area which elected only Labour MPs 1922 - 2019, and had hitherto never returned a Conservative.
This time round, MP Caroline Flint, elected in the 1997 New Labour landslide, lost by around 4,000 votes. She like Ruth Smeeth blamed her defeat on Corbyn’s leadership, saying it was “self-evident…many long-standing Labour supporters” had rejected his bid for Downing Street, "along with the politics around him”.
Wakefield
Situated amidst a rolling landscape, this South Yorkshire seat had been in Labour’s hands since 1932 – but from 2010 onwards, its prospects looked ever-increasingly less safe for the party, with previously dependable five-digit majorities whittled down to 1,000 – 2,000 roughly.
Incumbent Mary Creagh was defending a 2,176 majority in 2019 – but Imran Ahmad-Khan unseated her by a margin of around 3,000.
