Croydon could be key to deciding Boris’s election fortunes

Croydon Central’s last Tory MP wrote the book on how to win a marginal constituency. At the 2017 election, Gavin Barwell subsequently lost his seat. Now Barwell’s ex-Downing Street colleague is determined to win it back. So what went wrong last time? And will things really be different for the Tories two years on?

Mario Creatura says the mistakes at the last snap election were made in SW1, not CR0 and he is optimistic there won’t be a repeat. While the election night result came as a surprise to many, Creatura says the warning signs emerged in the fortnight before Britain went to the polls:

‘There was a clear turning point about two weeks before polling day. All the data we had been gathering up to a certain point had been showing a very strong, solid Conservative set of voters. We were knocking on doors and people were quite happy and positive.