‘It’s the Mayo supporter in me’: the Ballycastle Labour woman battling for Tory Kwasi Kwarteng’s old seat

A Co Mayo woman who works as an adviser to UK Labour leader Keir Starmer is in a knife-edge battle to take the formerly rock solid Tory Westminster seat previously held by Kwasi Kwarteng, the former UK chancellor whose 2022 budget under Liz Truss almost toppled the British economy.

If she wins the vote on Thursday, Claire Tighe (39) from Ballycastle would be the first Labour MP elected for the Surrey constituency of Spelthorne since 1945.

“We can do this,” Ms Tighe said at the weekend, as her family flew in from Ireland for the final push. “Things that seem out of reach aren’t always. It’s the Mayo supporter in me: it is like the last few minutes on the pitch in an All-Ireland match. This is what we live for.”

Ironically, she could be aided in what once seemed an unlikely bid for Westminster by a Sligo native running in Spelthorne for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party. Rory O’Brien, whose family relocated to Britain when he was a baby, has split the right-wing vote, leaving a narrow path open for Ms Tighe to potentially nip in ahead of the Tory candidate.

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Whatever the overall general election result on Thursday, which is expected to produce a Labour landslide, it will be a cliff hanger in Spelthorne, a few kilometres southwest of London’s Heathrow airport.

Spelthorne is too close to call for most pollsters. YouGov has it down as a “toss-up” with the Labour candidate barely half a percentage point ahead of her Tory rival, former army officer Lincoln Jopp. Ipsos has it as a dead heat, while Survation has Ms Tighe marginally in the lead. Ms Tighe must overturn a Tory majority of 18,500 votes in this true-blue constituency.

The bookies are a little kinder to her, with Sky Bet making her one-to-two (1/2) favourite to win and Bet365 giving her odds of two-to-five (2/5).

Ms Tighe works in Starmer’s office as his official liaison with Labour’s directly-elected mayors and she is also a councillor in Ealing in west London. Her father, Martin Tighe, lived in Ealing for more than 20 years when he worked at Heathrow airport, before relocating to Ballycastle in the 1990s.

Ms Tighe was born in Ealing but moved back to Co Mayo with her family as a child. She completed university in the Republic before returning to London to work in her 20s. She previously worked in Westminster for Labour’s Northern Ireland sister party, the SDLP, before moving on to Labour.

At a hustings event last Friday night at St Peter’s Church in Staines, a riverside urban community in the constituency, Ms Tighe received relatively strong support from the packed audience of local voters. Most were older and seemed affluent, although Spelthorne also has deprived pockets.

Mr Jopp, who served in the Scots Guards in the North and Afghanistan, strode in front of the pews to urge voters to ignore “yah boo” politics and consider: “Is he someone I can trust with my vote?”

“No!” whispered a giggling a woman.

Ms Tighe received warm applause when she said that she would be the first woman MP in Spelthorne’s history. “If we want change, we’re going to have to go out and vote for it,” she said.

Afterwards her father pledged every ounce of his energy in the final few days of campaigning. When asked if he would be proud of Ms Tighe, win or lose, he replied he was “overwhelmed with her”.

“She has so much courage. I don’t know where it came from. Nothing is unachievable for her,” he said.

Spelthorne’s result is due in the early hours of Friday morning.

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