Tories take Monkey Town in the North!

 This is the story of a small, south-east Lancashire town called Heywood.   A place that is also rather affectionately (or disparagingly) known as 'Monkey Town’.

Old Heywood postcard.

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LAST NIGHT the Tory Party beat the Labour Party's incumbent, Liz McInnes, for the Heywood & Middleton constituency in Greater Manchester  to become the constituency’s first ever Tory MP, on a disastrous night for Labour nationally. 

The Tory victor, Mr Clarkson, agreed that national issues like Brexit likely contributed to his victory.

He said:  'It was a combination of factors. No result is about just one thing,

'Brexit was  an issue on the doorstep, but also people didn’t like Jeremy Corbyn - they didn’t want him to be Prime Minister - and that put a lot of people off voting Labour. A lot of people stayed at home.'

The former MP Liz McInnes, who had been MP for the constituency since 2014, remained at the count until the very end, putting on a brave face following the results, which saw the Conservatives receive 20,453 votes.  Ms McInnes came second with 19,790 votes.

The seat has, up until now, always been held by Labour.

This year, 47,641 ballots were issued, and 153 votes were rejected.  The new MP, Mr Clarkson was elected with a majority vote of just 663 votes, in one of the lowest turnouts in recent years.

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