THE Conservative Party has identified a seat in Wirral as one of its key battlegrounds in the forthcoming General Election.

The top targets for the General Election are based on how easy or hard it would be for a seat to change hands.

This is done by calculating the change in the share of the vote in each seat, or swing, that would be needed for a party to make a gain.

The smaller the swing, the higher the seat is ranked on the list.

Of the Conservatives’ top 50 targets, 11 are in Yorkshire/Humber, seven in north-west England and five each in the West Midlands and Wales – all areas that appear high on Labour’s list.

An exception is north-east England, which holds only two of Labour’s top 50 but nine of the Tories’ top 50, all of which are being defended by Labour.

Along with Warrington South, the Conservatives’ top 10 are all Labour defences and include two other seats in the North West: Wirral West in Merseyside and Heywood & Middleton North in Greater Manchester.

Wirral West, which includes Hoylake, West Kirby, Woodchurch and the north edge of Heswall, has been described as a bellwether since its establishment in 1983, but bucked the trend at the 2015 general election when Labour's Margaret Greenwood narrowly defeated Esther McVey, despite the Conservatives winning a parliamentary majority. Like the nearby City of Chester, it was one of the few Conservative-held marginals outside of London to be gained by Labour, who benefited from the constituency's collapse in Liberal Democrat support.

Sixth on the Conservative target list in 2017, Greenwood was comfortably re-elected to Wirral West with the highest winning vote share since the seat was first up for election in 1983. She was promoted to Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet as the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary in 2018, shadowing McVey who had returned to Parliament as the MP for Tatton. Greenwood was re-elected with a reduced vote share in 2019, and departed from the shadow cabinet upon Keir Starmer's election as Labour leader.

Greenwood announced she would be standing down at the next general election with the Tories knowing they need a swing in percentage of points of just 0.41 to take the seat in which the outgoing MP holds a majority of 3,003.

Former councillor and Wirral cabinet member, Matthew Patrick, will contest the seat for Labour this time around.