Conservative volunteer for Andrea Jenkyns chased with sledgehammer while delivering leaflets

The man, who was leafleting for the Tory candidate on a new-build housing estate in the constituency this afternoon, when a resident who appeared to be in his 50s came out of his house and started abusing him.

Ms Jenkyns said: “He was screaming and swearing, he grabbed a hold of my volunteer, he hurt his hand, then he ran back to the house and came back with a sledgehammer.”

Ms Jenkyns said her and her team were “just in shock” and had reported the incident to the police.

She said so far, she had found most people on the campaign trail to be polite and friendly.

“We’re even getting Labour voters coming over to us,” she said. “I even had someone on the picket line at the miners’ strikes. But also there are these diehard ones.”

She said two 13-year-olds whose parents had got them involved in campaigning had been helping her effort.

“A guy ran out screaming at one of them,” she said. “And he looks young, he looks 12, as a mum myself it’s shocking.”

Ms Jenkyns added: “When I found out what happened earlier, I was in tears.”

Footage taken by a fellow campaigner had been handed to the police.

But Ms Jenkyns said there had been an “orchestrated campaign” across the constituency targeting her campaign boards with graffiti.

She said: “It’s the same writing throughout the constituency, they’ve punched my face through [on the boards], this is just not acceptable. And it was not like this in 2015 when I was fighting Ed Balls.

“It started in 2017 and it seems to be since Corbyn was at the helm and Momentum, with Ed Balls it was grown up politics.”

Ms Jenkyns is fighting to keep hold of Morley and Outwood, which she has held since 2015. Other candidates are Chris Bell (Green Party), Craig Dobson (Liberal Democrats), Deanne Ferguson (Labour), Dan Woodlock (Yorkshire Party).