Dudley South General Election profile: Familiar opponents in battle for votes

It is one of four constituencies in Dudley, and covers the central part of the borough to the south of the town centre that was previously part of the Dudley West constituency.

It includes Brierley Hill, Brockmoor, Pensnett, Kingswinford, Netherton, Woodside and Wordsley.

Labour's Ian Pearson won the seat in 1997 with a majority of 13,027, and held it at the next two General Elections with decreasing majorities before standing down in 2010..

That year saw Chris Kelly win Dudley South for the Conservatives. In the last General Election Mike Wood slightly extended the Tory majority to 4,270.

Unemployment in Dudley South is higher than the national average. official figures from December last year put the number of people out of work in the constituency at 2,800 - around 7.5 per cent.

According to the Office for National Statistics the area has a higher than average number of people without any qualifications. A total of 17.9 per cent of people in the constituency have no qualifications compared to eight per cent nationally.

In the EU referendum Dudley voted overwhelmingly to leave the bloc, with 67.6 per cent backing Brexit.

• Mike Wood is defending his seat on June 8 on the back of a year he is unlikely to forget in a hurry. He was the Black Country's only MP to back Brexit in the EU referendum, a decision he puts down to his experiences of the bloc during a seven year stint working for the Conservatives in Strasbourg and Brussels. Mr Wood has also served as a member of Parliament's European Scrutiny Committee. Earlier this year he suffered a near-death experience after he was diagnosed with sepsis. He rose from his sick bed to return to the Commons for the final vote on triggering Article 50 is now well on the way to making a full recovery.

• He faces a familiar opponent in Labour's Natasha Millward, an area organiser for Unison, who came second in the constituency in 2015 with almost a third of the vote.

• UKIP came third in Dudley South in 2015 with 7,236 votes. This year they have selected Kingswinford based distribution manager Mitchell Bolton.

• Jonathan Bramall, the son of five-time Stourbridge parliamentary candidate Chris Bramall, will represent the Lib Dems.

• Jenny Maxwell is the Green Party candidate.

Best Odds: Conservative 1/100, Labour 25/1, UKIP 150/1, Lib Dem 400/1, Green 500/1.

Prediction: Conservative hold with a slightly increased majority.

The bookies have Dudley South down as a one-horse race, with Conservative Mike Wood long odds on to retain his seat.

But the short price does not reflect either the seat’s history or Labour’s resurgence in the polls since the disastrous reception to the Tory manifesto.

Labour’s Natasha Millward will be confident that she can get closer to her effort in 2015, when she fell short by just over 4,000 votes.

However, there are two factors that point to the Conservatives retaining Dudley South.

The first is that Mr Wood has been a committed Brexiteer in a borough where there was overwhelming support for Britain’s departure from the EU.

He was the only MP in the Black Country to back Brexit, giving him more credibility than many Tories who are now duty bound to support something they did not want or vote for.

Secondly, support for Labour across the constituency may be on the wane if the result of the recent West Midlands Mayor election is a reliable guide.

The Tories won 52.6 per cent of the vote in Dudley compared with Labour’s 29.3 per cent share.

As is the case with every other seat in the country that saw substantial support for UKIP in 2015, the Conservatives will be quietly confident of taking the lion’s share of the purple vote this time around.

While this may not be as comfortable as the bookies predict for the Tories, it would be a major shock if Mr Wood was to lose Dudley South at this election.