Jack Blanchard: Outer suburbs will be litmus test for Cameron

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Tory strategists looking for an answer in Yorkshire next week will be turning to three seats around the leafy outskirts of Leeds – Pudsey, Elmet and Rothwell, and Leeds North East.

Despite the Conservatives' progress in middle England, it is voters' reactions in and around the northern cities which may offer the best yardstick of how far the Tories have come.

And, as any political analyst will tell you, the scale of the challenge facing Mr Cameron in Yorkshire's largest urban area is daunting.

Of the eight constituency seats in Greater Leeds, seven are currently held by Labour, and the other by the Liberal Democrats. It is a pattern repeated over and over again across the great cities of the North, where the occasional Conservative MP pops up as a tiny patch of blue amidst an electoral map swathed in yellow and red.

Yet in Leeds, at least, it has not always been thus.

It was not so long ago that the Tories held four of Leeds' eight parliamentary seats, with the city hosting several long-standing Conservatives including the diminutive former Rowntrees executive Sir Giles Shaw at Pudsey – fondly remembered as the most popular MP of his age in the House of Commons.

But the party's disastrous showing in 1997 saw them lose every MP in the city.

Now, however, the haemorrhaging of Labour support has left

Conservatives with a real chance of seeing the Northern suburban vote swing back in their favour for the first time in almost 20 years.

While inner city districts such as Leeds Central and Leeds East look safe for Labour in even the most dramatic of electoral wipe-outs, other seats appear more vulnerable.

In Pudsey, and in the newly-formed constituency of Elmet and Rothwell, the Tories' chances of overturning notional Labour majorities of between 5,000 and 6,000 have been boosted by the decisions of popular sitting MPs to stand down.

Pudsey's Paul Truswell suffered a serious car crash last year, while Colin Burgon announced his resignation from Elmet with a public swipe at Labour's leadership.

As ever, boundary changes will play their part – the addition of Liberal-supporting Rothwell to the Elmet constituency will do little to help the Tories, but equally the changes to the Pudsey constituency – which also incorporates Horsforth, Guiseley and Calverley – are expected to narrow Labour's majority there.

The Conservatives also harbour hopes of winning back Leeds North East, another seat they held for nearly 30 years before Labour swept into power in 1997. For much of that time it was the stomping ground of Sir Keith Joseph MP, the Tory party's infamous "Mad Monk" viewed by many as the driving force behind Margaret Thatcher's social and economic revolution.

The demographics of the constituency mean the battle there will be intriguing.

Taking in the gentle countryside around the Eccup reservoir, the young professionals of Chapel Allerton, the comfortable suburbs of Roundhay and Moortown and the ethnically diverse terraced houses of Chapeltown, there can be few seats in the region with such a wide range of voters to be wooed.

Some Tories put the apparent shift to the left in a constituency they had held since 1955 down to the division of many of its grand old suburban houses into smaller flats, bringing a new wave of students, young professionals and house-sharing immigrants to the area.

Leeds North East is also home to many of the city's public sector workers, some of whom are bound to harbour concerns over the Conservatives' plans for fast and sweeping spending cuts.

"I've never voted Tory – and I wouldn't this time either," says Hannah Coleridge, a nurse living at Chapel Allerton. "At the end of the day, it's about your job, your security, isn't it?"

However, the expenses scandal which embroiled sitting Labour MP Fabian Hamilton last year will have given his opponents some cause for optimism. His young Tory opponent, Matt Lobley, fought for the seat in 2005 and is hopeful of turning over a notional majority of around 6,700 by attracting those very same young professionals.

We would like to clarify that the boundary changes for Bradford East, explained in our profile of the constituency on April 28, will see the Wrose and Thackley districts going to Shipley. Bradford East will not gain any wards from Shipley.