General Election 2024: can Labour win every battleground seat in Sheffield?

Penistone and Stocksbridge

Sheffield has six MPs in the parliament, and while the Labour Party has always done well in and around the city, in 2019 Penistone and Stocksbridge turned blue when Miriam Cates won it comfortably (with a majority of more than 7,000 votes).

This followed a surprising victory of Cllr Lewis Chinchen for the Tory Party in Stocksbridge and Upper Don ward in the 2021 local elections giving the Conservatives a seat at Sheffield City Council.

Penistone is an interesting place. It is sending six council members to Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council as it is split into East and West Penistone.

While West Penistone ward is a Liberal Democrat stronghold, East Penistone used to be a massive Conservative ward… up until last year when Alex Burnett won a seat for Labour for the first time after more than 25 years.

At this year’s local elections, Labour gained another seat in the ward so Penistone has only one Tory councillor as opposed to three just a year ago… the momentum is certainly with the Labour Party now.

However, it goes without saying that the campaign for a general election differs quite a lot from a campaign for local elections.

Miriam Cates has become a nationally well-known figure for the Conservative Party and this constituency has not been won just yet – a successful, strong campaign could change a lot of people’s minds.

The Labour Party is sending Marie Tidball (someone who grew up in the area and went on to get a law degree from Oxford and a doctorate in criminology, according to her website) to try and get the seat back.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service is planning to report from the ward and hopefully, we can learn more about the candidates and their plans for the area.

Sheffield Hallam

In 2019, incumbent MP Olivia Blake won the election with a majority of 712 ahead of the Liberal Democrats.

Now, it is without doubt the biggest fight in Sheffield, as the Labour Party will – of course – send Ms Hall while the Liberal Democrats are sending Cllr Mohammed Shaffaq, the leader of the LibDem group at Sheffield City Council, and a council member for Ecclesall ward.

Sheffield Hallam has been quite a lot in the last few years. The seat was held by former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats) between 2005 and 2017 after the Tories lost it for the first time since 1918.

In 2017, Labour’s Jared O’Mara – who had cerebral palsy and who became the first autistic MP in the country’s history – won the seat. Mr O’Mara’s fate is widely known.

He was first accused of corruption and sexual harassment in 2019 and is now spending jail time (four years) following a trial in which he was found guilty of six counts of fraud by false representation.

After all that noise, and in a constituency where the Liberal Democrats are quite strong (Dore and Totley, Ecclesall, Fulwood, Stanning) when it comes to local elections, Labour’s Olivia Blake was elected in the 2019 general election.

Also, Labour has won massively in Crookes and Crosspool at this year’s local elections so they, again, have the momentum to carry on building on that in the next few weeks.

We will be reporting from the Sheffield Hallam constituency during the campaign.