Conservatives acknowledge battle in Banbury is tight

Incumbent MP urges supporters not to hand Keir Starmer a supermajority

With just two weeks until polling day Victoria Prentis has acknowledged the battle to win in the Banbury constituency is tight. In a letter to Conservative supporters the incumbent MP urged readers not to hand Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer the “supermajority” he wants.

Mrs Prentis alluded to being aware that some people weren’t happy with the Conservatives. She wrote: “I know you might not agree with everything my party has done. I know you feel frustrated, and sometimes I have shared this frustration. But if you vote Labour or Reform, it could hand Keir Starmer the supermajority he wants.”

The email was sent as postal votes began to land on doormats across the area.

It came as the Daily Telegraph predicted a “Tory wipeout” on July 4, citing its own exclusive opinion poll. The paper predicted that Rishi Sunak would become the first sitting prime minister ever to lose their seat at a general election.

Mrs Prentis told Conservative supporters: “This is going to be a very tight race locally. I worry a lot about what a Labour Government would mean for our area. I am really concerned that Keir Starmer will impose higher taxes for you, and Labour would just see Oxfordshire as a distant location for their top-down housing targets imposed from Westminster.”

Victoria Prentis was first elected in 2015 and has held the role of Attorney General in Rishi Sunak’s government. At the last election she had a majority of nearly 17,000, but the redrawing of constituency boundaries removed Bicester from the Banbury area and added in Chipping Norton.