Philip Hollobone on KGH, Westminster scandals and his rivals as Conservatives battle to hold Kettering seat

After all the Conservative candidate’s majority in Kettering is almost 17,000 – having increased his vote share every time the nation went to the polls since he was first elected in 2005.

Yet with under a week to go until the next election on July 4, the 59-year-old finds himself as the second favourite with the bookies behind Labour’s Rosie Wrighting.

Mr Hollobone said he’s not a betting man and that, having knocked on thousands of doors in the constituency, the bookies ‘must be speaking to the wrong people’.

He said: “The bookies thought that remain would win the Brexit referendum. The bookies thought that Labour would win in 1992.

"The bookies and the pollsters are often wrong.”

The Conservative candidate said that the Prime Minister’s timing of the election was a surprise and that he would have left it until later in the year, but that he believes Rishi Sunak is the right man for the job.

Mr Hollobone caused controversy in the first week of campaigning after claiming that Labour would shelve the much-anticipated rebuild of Kettering General Hospital – a claim his rivals have denied, with shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves branding it a load of rubbish.

He told the Northants Telegraph that getting KGH into the national ‘new hospitals programme’, which despite its name includes rebuilds and not brand new hospitals, was what he was most proud of in his 19 years as an MP after its funding increased and it ‘moved further up the queue’.

And he repeated his belief that the project would be at risk under a Labour government and said getting the hospital rebuilt would be his key priority if re-elected.

He said: “I’ve been around long enough to hear senior politicians from all parties make claims about things and it’s crystal clear to me that a review at the very least means a delay to a commitment to the spending and possibly a cancellation.

"If you look at the answers senior Labour figures have given to questions…if you analyse their comments carefully, they’re not denying that the plans will be put on the shelf for review. And that inevitably will mean a delay.”

He said he believes Kettering is ‘definitively’ a better place than when he was first elected with much-improved local education and better connectivity with more trains.

Nationally all of the polls suggest Labour is heading for a landslide majority – which Mr Hollobone said would ‘be bad for democracy’ – with their candidates campaigning for change.

But Mr Hollobone said: “What people need to realise is that it could be a change for the worse.

"Do we want trans ideology promoted to local schoolchildren in local schools? Do people want to pay more in taxes than they are now? Do people not want to have a say over local planning decisions? Do people want more asylum seekers coming across the Channel?

"Yes, this is all change, but it’s change for the worse.”

For the first time since 2015 voters in Kettering have a right wing alternative in Nigel Farage’s party Reform UK, which could split their vote.

In 2017 UKIP agreed a pact not to stand against Mr Hollobone, who was once rumoured to be defecting to them.

But the Conservative candidate said there have been no pact discussions with Reform, that he had not been approached to defect to them like former Tory MP Lee Anderson and would never consider doing so.

He said: “There were rumours in the past that I was going to defect to UKIP and they were proved to be unfounded.”

He said residents he has spoken to who are voting Reform are not just ex-Conservatives but also disillusioned Labour voters, and that he doesn’t believe lots of Conservatives will vote Green despite their 2021 council election success.

Mr Hollobone added that he ‘genuinely feared’ for the future of Weekley Hall Wood if Labour won the election because of its pledge to develop ‘grey belt’ land. He said he believes the controversial Kettering Energy Park will go ahead if the next Government was formed by Sir Keir Starmer’s party, although he’s ‘very confident’ it would currently be rejected by North Northamptonshire Council.

He also reiterated his controversial beliefs that wearing a burka in public should be banned and that the death penalty should be reintroduced for murderers.

Nationally the Conservatives have been mired in a series of scandals in recent years which have undoubtedly contributed to their poor polling.

Mr Hollobone said he was ‘horrified’ to hear about partygate events and said the current scandal coined ‘gamblegate’ is ‘appalling’.

But he said he has been ‘squeaky clean’ with the lowest expenses of any MP in the country and one of the best speaking records.

He said: “The only name on the ballot paper from the Conservatives in this constituency in this election is Philip Hollobone.

"I’ve offered 20 years of dedicated public service to local people. All of the scandals that have taken place at Westminster, all the goings on, I’ve just got my head down and persisted in pursuing local issues and, crucially, KGH.”

Standing in the Kettering constituency at the General Election on July 4 are: Rosie Wrighting (Labour), Philip Hollobone (Conservative), Crispian Besley (Reform), Emily Fedorowycz (Green), Sarah Ryan (Liberal Democrats), Jim Hakewill (Indepedent), Jehad Aburamadan (Alliance for Democracy and Freedom) and Matthew Murphy (Social Democratic Party).