Aphra Brandreth: I'm ready to follow in my father's footsteps and take on dishonest Labour

EXCLUSIVE: Would-be MP Aphra Brandreth is fired up to fight Labour in rural Cheshire's new constituency of Chester South and Eddisbury.

• The Express joined Celebrity Gogglebox favourite Gyles Brandreth’s daughter canvassing in the sleepy village of Duddon just outside Tarporley near Chester on Monday.
  
  
• A dangerous busy main road in the village frightens local mothers “to death” but local Tory candidate Ms Brandreth has vowed to make it safe for their children to walk to school.
  
  
• The former MP’s daughter also says she will “champion the farming community” and fight for better digital connectivity in the area.

With just ten days of campaigning left, former MP Gyles Brandreth’s daughter Aphra Brandreth was keen to show locals she was “100% ready to stand up and advocate” for Cheshire voters out on the rural campaign trail.

She said: “It is important for someone like me to come in and hold Labour to account. And that is why I decided to run here.”

Ms Brandreth also said it was important for strong women to come into Parliament and advocate for their local area.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour was not being frank with voters about its goals for running the country, she warned.

She said: “Nobody knows what Labour stands for. It is concerning they are not willing to say what they are going to do in Government. They are not being honest with voters about their plans and that is worrying.”

READ MORE: Meet the young Tory rising star ready to oust Angela Rayner and take on Labour [EXCLUSIVE]

Asked about how she felt stepping into her father’s shoes pursuing a Parliamentary career, she said: “I know the realities of what it means to be an MP. It requires the whole family to be on board.”

And campaigning with Ms Brandreth in rural Cheshire’s hinterlands was indeed a family affair.

Her son Kiyo Brandreth-Stroud, 20, joined us speaking to voters. He said: “It was a bit nerve-wracking knocking on doors to begin with but I’ve enjoyed helping my mum out.”

Ms Brandreth was selected to stand in the new seat replacing Eddisbury’s current MP, Tory Edward Timpson.

Boundary changes brought in for this year’s election saw four old constituencies combined to divide the former City of Chester constituency into Chester North and South with rural areas widening it out.

Areas to the south of the River Dee were added to the former Eddisbury constituency to form Chester South and Eddisbury while areas to the north of the Dee, including the city centre, were combined with the town of Neston to form Chester North and Neston.

As a result, whoever becomes the MP for Chester South and Eddisbury will need the ability to understand and fight for the needs of both rural and urban areas.

Ms Brandreth has a special connection with the area in that her own father, Gyles, served as the MP for the city of Chester for five years between 1992 and 1997. And her husband was brought up near the village of Cuddington, Eddisbury.

She therefore believes she is ideally placed to take on the role, especially given her background working for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra).

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Ms Brandreth said: “People are feeling fed up here and they need someone like me to stand up for them in Parliament and hold the Government to account on their behalf.”

Having spent ten years working for Defra between 2003 and 2013, Ms Brandreth has a deep understanding of issues that matter to people living in the countryside.

And with Labour’s manifesto containing just 87 words on farming out of the entire 23,000-word document – and not even mentioning rural communities once – it is something Ms Brandreth believes is important for her to stand up for in the next Parliament.

She said: “Labour has shown a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to rural issues and farming.

“It is important that we communicate the benefits of farming and dispel myths as Jeremy Clarkson has been so good at doing.”

“Supporting farmers is really important,” she said. “We know they have had a tough time with fertiliser prices, energy prices, awful wet weather.

“I am here to champion them and work with them. We need to listen to our farmers because they are the experts.”

READ MORE: Labour blasted for having just 87 words on farming in entire 131-page manifesto [EXCLUSIVE]

She also spoke passionately about improving digital connectivity to people in the area, something this newspaper has campaigned on.

The prospective MP said: “We have seen great improvements in connectivity in this village.

“The Government has done a lot with Project Gigabit but there is a lot more that needs to be done.

“You would not be able to function here if you did not have broadband. It is not right that if you live you cannot do all the things you need to function in the modern world.

“In 2019 just 7% of homes were hooked up to superfast internet and now we have about 75% coverage.

“A lot of people just accept it is like this but we should demand for it to be better because that is still one in four homes that are not fully connected.

“Of course, there is the Shared Rural Network. But I think we are going to have to go further than that in order to get proper coverage with enough capacity.”

Some small businesses and residents had been forced to turn to Elon Musk’s Starlink to get adequate coverage on their mobile devices, Ms Brandreth explained.

She said: “The use of satellite in rural areas is probably going to become part of the solution - but we need to be thinking about that.”

Joining Ms Brandreth out campaigning was councillor Tom Cooper. He said: “Local issues are what matter to people so we are here to build a rapport between voters and Aphra as she really understands those local issues.”

Another issue that came up, which concerns many in rural constituencies, was busy main roads and the impact they have on children’s safety.

Concerned parents in the secluded Cheshire village of Duddon said they were “frightened to death” for their children’s lives due to a dangerous A road right by their school.

Speaking to Ms Brandreth, hairdresser Carolyn Arthur, who has a two-year-old daughter, a dog a and five-year-old son, shared her concerns about traffic hurtling down the A51 at breakneck speeds while children play nearby.

She said: “We care most about the safety of our children. We do not want our children to get killed on the way to school.

“My son is primary school age and he rides a scooter around here. It frightens me to death.”

Her worries were echoed by her friend Lynsey Whitehead who said: “Duddon is a bit forgotten. Sometimes we drive to school instead of walking, even though it is around the corner because we are too scared of that road and it saves on stress.”

Ms Brandreth said she would champion the young mums as their MP and get the appropriate safety measures in place to make them feel at ease.

She said: “It is about making these things happen.”

There was also a sense that Ms Brandreth’s campaign was cutting through with voters who had not made up their minds about how to place their ballot.

Speaking to us on the doorstep retiree Ken Huxley, 74, who has lived in Duddon for 20 years, said he had not seen anyone campaigning for Labour in the village.

Knife crime was top of the undecided voter's list of issues even though he conceded Cheshire as a whole had very low stabbing and violent crime rates.

Ms Brandreth said: “We are lucky in Cheshire to have the best-performing police force in the country.”

Mr Huxley took Ms Brandreth’s defeat gladly and promised to give voting for her some “serious thought”.

Research from Oxford and Machester Universities has shown the proportion of British voters who switch their preferred party between general elections has shifted from about 13% in 1960 to roughly 60% today.

Ms Brandreth will be hoping her pitch to the people of Cheshire means any potential switchers will lend their vote to her on July 4.