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So could the good ship Balls be sunk by a class torpedo?

By Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail
Updated: 02:16 EST, 5 May 2010

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Yorkshire is right unchuffed about Ed Balls. A visit to the Schools Secretary’s seat near Leeds is an education.

‘Not my sort of man,’ said retired plant operator Colin Ward, 74, standing on his doorstep in Wrenthorpe, holding a cup of tea so strong it looks like cough syrup.

Mr Ward used to be solid Labour. Mention the name ‘Balls’ to him now and he blows out his cheeks like a jazz trumpeter.

Head to head: Ed Balls could lose his Morley and Outwood seat to newcomer Antony Calvert, who was brought up on a housing estate in Wrenthorpe

‘Only thing Labour has done is create more millionaires. I’m voting Tory now.’

From behind him comes a ferocious yapping. Meet Mrs Ward. ‘They’re all crooks! I won’t be voting for any of them!’ With that she disappears in search of a rolling pin.

Outside the Cucina cafe in Morley, home town of the late Ernie Wise, a man bowls up to say how much he loathes Mr Balls.

The only person with even half a good word for the MP is Joan McVittie, 69 going on 55. With a flash of her eyes she says she ‘quite likes him’ but she is not wild about Labour.

Her daughter, owner of a beauty salon, is badgering her to vote Tory and she is thinking about it.

The battle for Morley and Outwood, a new seat but nominally safe for Labour, turns national political theories on their heads.

Ed Balls addresses the crowd during a public debate with the other prospective MPs for the constituency of Morley and Outwood, including Anotny Calvert, second from right

The LibDems are nowhere. Cleggmania may as well never have happened.

The Tories, meanwhile, are benefiting from a view of Mr Balls being too posh. Ha! This is the very charge aimed by Labour – not least Mr Balls – against David Cameron. Would it not be sweet justice the good ship Balls was sunk by a class torpedo?

The Tories’ candidate, Antony Calvert, is broad Yorkshire, brought up on a housing estate in Wrenthorpe.

Mr Calvert, 31, son of an electrical trader, has worked in the past on the bottling line at the Coca-Cola factory in Wakefield, and as a warehouseman at Morrisons distribution centre.

These days he is in planning. Yesterday he was out at 6am with his small knot of volunteers, one of whom is an American.

Alex Melendez, 19, from Florida, sparks curiosity. ‘He’s come far on’t bus,’ says one local.

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Many of Mr Balls’s workers are trade unionists. Half of Mr Calvert’s team have disappeared because they had to go back to school.

Mr Calvert, dressed in scruffy jeans and a shirt, parps round the constituency in a smoking Peugeot, greeting passers-by with an “’ows you doin”?’

The contrast to the suited, chauffered, Establishment man Balls, who has spent much of the campaign doing national events, is marked. Calvert posters are everywhere.

Balls posters were yesterday nowhere to be seen. Nor is the man himself. I roam the constituency.

Where is he? Gone to ground.

Meanwhile Mr Calvert literally runs from door to door. He is no Cameroon. He speaks his mind.

His mother Marilyn was recently made redundant by a DIY store and found a new job within days.

‘If my mother can do that at 59 – and don’t you mention her age – why can’t other people?’ he asks.

‘It really hacks me off the way the benefits culture can be abused. We have turned into a workshy country.’

It enrages him that there are 35 people at the regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward, who earn more than the Prime Minister.

Immigration is the number one concern on the doorsteps.

Electors talk about immigrants in a way that would give The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee an attack of the vapours.

The other issues: Bus passes, winter fuel payments, potholes.

And Mr Balls. He appeared at a hustings the other night and was practically booed off the stage after picking a fight with the audience over immigration.

Dominic Hunt, 18, a student, is voting in his first election.

‘Labour just tax you a lot,’ he says. ‘I like Antony. He’s nice and polite.’

Not when you get him on to Ed Balls, he isn’t. Worth a fiver on Mr Calvert to win, I’d say.