May elections: Party warned GE handling of ‘non-battlegrounds’ could cost votes

Labour members fear the party’s attitude towards so-called ‘non-battleground’ seats at the general election could impact its prospects at the county elections in May, a senior figure has warned the party’s new general secretary.

Concerns have been raised by national executive committee member Ann Black, who said she had collated and shared more than 100 pages of members’ feedback with Hollie Ridley, who recently replaced David Evans leading the party.

Meanwhile two general election candidates in harder-to-win seats echoed members’ frustration, with one telling LabourList decisions like cutting off software access felt “counterproductive”. Another was “extremely unhappy” after feeling little choice but to cancel hospital appointments in order to travel, as many non-battleground candidates were expected to, to campaign in more winnable twinned seats.

Opposition parties were quick to suggest Labour was writing off its chances in more than 200 seats in the run-up to the election, after the party publicly acknowledged it was treating at least 211 seats as ‘non-battleground’ constituencies to focus on the most winnable seats. The party still went on to win more than 30 such seats, and coming within 1,000 votes of winning ten others.

READ MORE: Labour fires starting gun for May 2025 campaign with call to help boost ‘seriously depleted’ party reserves

Many of these “non-battleground” seats faced long waits for candidate selection contests in the run-up to the general election, with a limbo after the first advert for candidates in 94 seats only went out in July 2023, and then another ad going out for a wider list of 211 seats only in December 2023.

LabourList reported that around 100 candidates had still not been picked even in May 2024 around the time the election was called, despite the NEC twice voting to accelerate selection processes.

Yet as county council elections loom in May – and with the party telling supporters we must “put as much red on this map as possible” –  NEC members were reportedly told this month that “many candidates are still needed” once again. Black said she hoped that “some have been chosen but not yet recorded”.

Other concerns raised by Black about the GE campaign included:

• the “impact on the 2025 county elections of preventing all work in every non-battleground seat” at the GE.
• CLPs being “locked out” of the party’s online voter database, Contact Creator, and claims this was also applied “inconsistently”
• Alleged attempts to “threaten rather than persuade”
• A “lack of official communication” about matters like selection processes
• Member claims that twinning arrangements were “impractical” due to distance and public transport challenges
• Some candidates reportedly never having visited their seats
• Some local applicants reportedly being unable to find out why they had been rejected

Black wrote in a summary of a recent NEC meeting: “Ultimately every member is a volunteer, and cannot be made to do anything.  I do not believe it is better for those in non-battleground seats to be left unoccupied if they cannot travel, otherwise they will not offer again.”

“So going forward I would like to replicate the amazing results of the twinning strategy but take members with us through improved communication and understanding.”

‘I wasn’t expecting to be hindered by the party’

LabourList spoke to one general election candidate who stood in a “non-battleground” seat, who said they had access to important campaign tools cut off and were forced to travel long distances several times a week to their twinned constituency.

The candidate told LabourList: “I never expected any support whatsoever. I was clear that from day one we were supporting the marginals and I didn’t have a problem with that at all.

READ MORE: Full list of ‘non-battleground’ seats

“I wasn’t expecting any money, I wasn’t expecting any visits from anybody or any paid support. We were quite happy to be on our own.

“I wasn’t expecting to be hindered by the party.”

‘They’d have got more out of people if they had treated people better’

The candidate said that they never had contact during the election with the party to discuss how the campaign was going locally.

“We knew that we actually had a real chance of winning, but nobody stopped at all during the campaign to ask us that,” they said.

“I think if you asked any of the non-battlegrounds, they would say actually what they were picking up on the doorstep was actually there’s a real possibility. That wasn’t misguided optimism ‒ there was a genuine sense of something happening in certain seats.”

The candidate added: “I wanted a Labour government. It was right to target resources at the marginals but the way the party went about it was counterproductive in my view, upsetting long-standing and active members with a barrage of emails and instructions.

“They’d have got more out of people if they had treated people better.”

GE candidate ‘extremely unhappy about the way I’ve been treated’

Candidates in “non-battleground seats” were assigned a twin constituency, often a more marginal seat, to support the campaign in. In some cases, these seats were further away from the constituency they were standing as a candidate ‒ with The Guardian reporting that Labour’s Clacton candidate Jovan Owusu-Nepaul was “seconded” to the West Midlands.

The Voice also reported that Owusu-Nepaul was repeatedly called by a Labour HQ official and told not to campaign in his constituency, according to a local campaigner.

The candidate who spoke to LabourList said that they were expected to travel to a twinned constituency more than an hours’ drive away three times a week, costing them around £1,000 in fuel bills.

They said the regular trips to and from the twinned constituency was “not right”, particularly for their physical and mental well-being but also because of caring and work responsibilities they had to juggle alongside the campaign.

Another candidate in a “non-battleground seat” also told LabourList about the pressure they felt as a low-income worker commuting to and from their twinned constituency, which was over an hour’s drive away.

They claimed that the strain led to exhaustion, impacted their ability to parent and forced them to cancel a number of hospital appointments.

They said: “I was disillusioned with the strategy and campaigning in this non-battlefield seat. I am extremely unhappy about the way I have been treated.”

READ MORE: Member anger as around 100 Labour GE candidates still not unveiled

Asked about such issues in the lead-up to the general election, a Labour Party spokesperson said ahead of the general election that the run a rigorous selection process, prioritising selecting candidates in seats we need to win at the next general election.

Labour did not respond to a request for comment, but told LabourList earlier this year:  “Delivering our historic general election win was only possible thanks to the hard work and enthusiasm of party volunteers sharing Labour’s message of change across the country.

”Where we sent volunteers changed over the course of the campaign, and we remained in contact with volunteers throughout to ask them to campaign where they would make the most difference.

“We are currently undertaking a review of our general election campaign so that we can build on our successes and identify ways to improve our campaigning for future elections, and this will be informed by the feedback we have received from a survey of party members.”

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