Can Labour cling on to its most unlikely gain?

After 185 years as a Tory seat, Canterbury turned red in 2017. Patrick Cockburn finds out how Brexit has changed generations of political allegiance in this knife-edge seat

Labour candidate Rosie Duffield campaigns to win her Canterbury seat for a second time (Reuters)

Rosie Duffield won Canterbury for Labour in 2017 by 187 votes, her unexpected victory ending an uninterrupted 185 years of Conservative governance. She did so by uniting the anti-Conservative vote and she must do so again tomorrow if she is to hold her seat.

“It is a dogfight,” says Paul Todd, a Labour organiser in south Canterbury, but he adds that on the doorstep he is finding that “Rosie is popular – everybody knows who she is”. Her personal popularity and reputation for political moderation may be decisive in persuading the large Lib Dem vote along with Greens, who are not standing, along with Conservative Remainers and independents, to turn out for her.

Last time round, Labour did not expect to top the poll. Duffield, 48, a former assistant teacher and single parent, recalled: “I was very, very surprised. I thought that we might reduce their majority, but not that we would win.” Another Labour activist says that just before the result was announced he was feeling that “we are up against 100 years of history”. The Conservative Party was confident that ingrained voting habits would prevail and even sent the sitting MP of 30 years, Sir Julian Brazier, to campaign in other constituencies they believed to be under threat, a miscalculation he remembers with some bitterness.