General Election 2024: The vulnerable Milton Keynes Tory seat being hotly contested

  • Sophie Wiggins explores the constituency of Milton Keynes central in one of a series of reports looking at the key General Election battlegrounds in the Anglia region

The battle for the Buckinghamshire city of Milton Keynes is hotting up, with one of its seats among the most winnable seats for Labour in the whole of the Anglia region.

Both Milton Keynes North and Milton Keynes Central are currently Conservative-held seats but Labour has them in its sights on 4 July.

Under boundary changes, the city will gain an extra MP at this election going from two to three, with the creation of the new Buckingham and Bletchley seat.

Labour would need only a 4.7% swing to take the Central seat - the party's third most winnable seat in the region, after Peterborough and Northampton North.

Milton Keynes is famous for technology and innovation and only last year hosted world leaders to an AI safety summit at Bletchley Park - the famous home of Second World War code-breakers.

Milton Keynes Central is the 4th most marginal Conservative seat in the Anglia region of 65. Credit: ITV News Anglia

The council has been hung since 2014 but is run by a minority Labour administration. 

At the 2023 local elections Labour and the Liberal Democrats made gains at the expense of the Conservatives.  Labour took the biggest share of the votes at 38% with a swing of about 5%.

The candidates in the three constituencies are as follows:

Milton Keynes Central

  • Frances Bonney - Green

  • James Cox - Lib Dems

  • Emily Darlington - Labour

  • David Reilly - Reform UK

  • Alfred Saint-Clare - Heritage

  • Johnny Luk - Conservatives

Milton Keynes North

  • Chris Curtis - Labour

  • Jane Duckworth - Reform UK

  • Ben Everitt - Conservatives

  • Alan Francis - Green

  • Clare Tevlin - Lib Dems

Buckingham and Bletchley

  • Callum Anderson - Labour

  • Ray Brady - Independent

  • Jordan Cattell - Reform UK

  • Dominic Dyer - Lib Dems

  • Amanda Onwuemene - Green

  • Iain Stewart - Conservatives

Subscribe free to our Election Briefing newsletter here for exclusive and original campaign coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox at 5pm every weekday.