John Major was in 10 Downing Street and Right Said Fred were top of the charts the last time a Conservative was elected in Newcastle.
Next month will mark a full 30 years since the Tories last claimed a victory in the city, an unhappy anniversary for those bidding to finally reverse the party’s fortunes on Tyneside come the local elections on May 5. There has not been a single Conservative voice in the Newcastle City Council chamber since Sandra Gilfillan and Nina Hannaford’s terms in Jesmond and Kenton respectively came to an end in 1996.
And for a party that polled more than 35,000 votes in Newcastle at the last general election, coming second in all three of the city’s constituencies, three decades of failure at the ballot box is seen as an aberration. John Watts, chairman of the Newcastle Conservatives, calls their constant losses since May 1992 a “30-year wrong” and blamed it on tactical voting, with traditionally blue voters switching allegiances to the Liberal Democrats at local elections in order to keep Labour from winning their seat.
