Can Labour win rural votes at the next election?

It may hold only two genuinely rural seats, but Keir Starmer’s party is taking the fight into Tory territory says Sean O’Grady

Steve Reed is putting Labour’s tanks onto Tory lawns – and fields (PA)

Can Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party produce a kind of Heineken effect by refreshing parts of the electorate his predecessors could not reach: country folk? Shadow environment secretary Steve Reed is doing his best to brew something up; he told a Country Land and Business Association conference in London – a novel platform for a party spokesperson – that Labour under Starmer would “treat our rural communities with respect”. The implied criticism is that they have not done so since the 2000s. “We became too detached from the aspirations and concerns of our rural communities,” he said. “No more.”

As with so many sections of the electorate, Tory travails have opened up opportunities for opposition parties…

Does Labour need the countryside to win?