Sir Keir Starmer kicked off a new week on the campaign trail by visiting one of his party’s key targets at the election, Bury North in Greater Manchester.
The seat ranks at number seven on Labour’s target list and is one of five constituencies in north-west England that are in the party’s top 10.
The others are Burnley (number one on the list), Leigh & Atherton (number two), Bury South (number six) and Bolton North East (number eight).
All five of these seats are being defended by the Conservatives and all would fall to Labour on a swing from the Tories of just 1.3 percentage points, with Bury North needing a swing of 1.2 points.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held an event in Bury North only last week, perhaps conscious of how pivotal this kind of ultra-marginal seat will be to the election outcome.
Mr Sunak spent his Monday morning in a very different part of the country: by the River Thames on the border between Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, visiting a rowing club in the constituency of Wokingham.
Here the Conservatives are facing a challenge not from Labour, but the Liberal Democrats.
It is a far larger swing than the one needed by Labour in Bury North, but the Lib Dems have managed even greater swings than this in recent by-elections.
Some 13 of the Lib Dems’ top 40 targets are in areas of south-east England outside London, with Wokingham needing the biggest swing of the 13 and Eastbourne in East Sussex needing the smallest (2.2 points).
Wokingham was represented in the House of Commons from 1987 to 2024 by Sir John Redwood, who twice stood unsuccessfully for leader of the Conservatives, including challenging the sitting prime minister Sir John Major in 1995.
It is number 27 on the Lib Dems’ list and would need a swing of 9.3 percentage points for the party to gain it from the Tories.
Mr Sunak has now visited 24 constituencies across the UK since the first full day of the campaign, most of which (21) are being defended at the election by the Conservatives.
Sir Keir Starmer has visited 15, 11 of which are Tory defences, while Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey – who is not campaigning on Monday – has visited 12, 10 of which are Tory defences.
