Geoff Lawler: How the voters put Yorkshire back on the Tory map

A Northern Board for the Party was established under William Hague, new campaign offices were opened and money raised locally was kept in the region to pay for building up the Party locally. Now the results are in, the Conservatives can assess whether it has paid off.

The number of Conservative MPs has more than doubled to 19 (assuming that they win the safe Thirsk and Malton seat next week) and the share of the votes cast has risen to 32.5 per cent, just 2.2 per cent behind Labour. Compare this to the 14.5 per cent gap five years ago.

Conservative support in Yorkshire can generally be tracked geographically. It's strong in the North of the region, it is weak in the South and it's variable in the middle.

This election has reinforced that, with North Yorkshire now being virtually all blue following the re-taking of Harrogate and Selby and with the new York Outer seat going Conservative, leaving only central York in the hands of another party.

Conservative representation in West Yorkshire, and the south bank of the Humber, ebbs and flows with the Party's fortunes nationally.

Although not rewarded with any MPs, one of the most notable achievements of the election for the Conservatives was that some of its largest increases in vote share came in what used to be known as the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, formerly a no-hope area for Conservatives.

With swings of 14 per cent in Barnsley East, eight per cent in Wentworth & Dearne and 11 per cent in Don Valley, putting it in the marginal category, this marks a significant change showing that at long last the almost visceral hatred of Tories, partly due to the legacy of the miners' strike, is beginning to break down.

Despite an overall swing from Labour to the Conservatives of 6.6 per cent across the region, much higher than the national swing of 5.1 per cent, there were a few seats where lower swings frustrated Tory ambitions.

Generally the Conservatives didn't do as well in marginals, despite some of the Labour incumbents being tainted by the expenses scandal. Seats such as Halifax, Bradford West, Leeds North East and Batley and Spen remained Labour, with the swing to the Tories less than three per cent.

One factor in some of these seats is that support for Labour held up more in seats with a significant ethnic minority population. Many Muslim voters returned to Labour after deserting it over the Iraq war. The Conservatives still have more work to do to gain their trust.

The two strongest messages from the Conservatives that got through to voters were "time for a change" and that voting Lib Dem would lead to Brown remaining in power.

An area where the Conservatives remain weak is in the large cities where they have struggled to make headway other than on the outer fringes. The better-off areas of Sheffield (although partly distorted because of Nick Clegg representing the most likely Tory seat) and Leeds remained predominantly in Labour or Lib Dem hands.

Part of the explanation may be that many of these areas have large numbers of people working in the public sector, many of them in well-paid and secure positions who thought themselves threatened by a Conservative government pledged to reduce spending.

In the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s, the region produced its fair share of Conservative Ministers, with the likes of Sir Keith Joseph, Sir Giles Shaw, Sir Donald Thompson, Sir Marcus Fox, Timothy Kirkhope and David Curry.

What is the make-up of the new intake and who might at some stage over next few years expect to receive a red box?

There's no doubting the Yorkshire authenticity of the new group, with only one of the 12 new Conservative MPs (including those replacing former MPs) not being Yorkshire-based.

Seven have served on local councils. This will be encouraging for those who will looking to them to stand up for the region in a new Conservative-led government, particularly on issues like high-speed

rail.

Some of the new MPs might find themselves making the decisions themselves. The ones to watch include Julian Smith in Skipton and Ripon, Simon Reevell in Dewsbury, Nigel Adams in Selby and and Andrew Jones in Harrogate.

The Conservatives will feel pleased with a result which re-established the Party as a major Parliamentary force in the region, with some positive indications that more can be achieved.

To make further inroads, particularly into South Yorkshire, all the effort that has been put into building the Party's position locally in recent times needs to be replicated.

Geoff Lawler was a Conservative MP for Bradford from 1983 to 1987. He now runs The Public Affairs Company, a Leeds-based firm of lobbyists. He writes in a personal capacity.