WAKEFIELD, West Yorkshire — “I think it was frustration. Frustration due to the lack of opportunities”.
Ben Morgan, a manufacturing specialist, is trying to explain what might have led his hometown of Wakefield to elect a Conservative MP in 2019 for the first time in more than 80 years.
“It was voting for change, something different,” adds Morgan, sitting at a table outside a downtown craft beer joint. He rolls his eyes at his own words.
It’s not hard to see why the sentiment rings hollow to voters in this part of West Yorkshire.
By-elections are due to be held here on June 23, sparked by the conviction last month of newly elected Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old in 2008. He received an 18-month jail sentence. .
Under the circumstances, the 3,300-strong Conservative majority over Labor here seems very small, and the party is already directing its firepower elsewhere. Another by-election will be held on the same day in Tiverton, in south-west England, a traditionally Conservative seat the party hopes to hold despite a growing Liberal Democrat insurgency.
The parallel races underscore the conflicting demands on Boris Johnson as he seeks to protect the gains made in northern working-class seats in the last general election, while defending wealthier, and supposedly secure, Conservative seats deeply chafing at his cavalier approach to leadership. .
The grim circumstances of Khan’s departure have led to a sort of consensus that Wakefield is a unique case: Labor will win him back almost by default, and there are no broader lessons to be drawn from the unfortunate episode.
However, the lackluster campaign unfolding on the streets of Wakefield offers clues as to how both major parties see their path to success in the upcoming general election. It’s not always pretty to look at.
On the defensive
Both Labor and the Conservatives have taken similar rearguard actions on what should be a fiercely contested battleground.
Their respective candidates seem like safe options, if disappointing. Conservative challenger Nadeem Ahmed is a local campaigner with established City Council credentials, affectionately described as “a good man, that’s all” by a fellow councilor, while Labor candidate Simon Lightwood was an aide to a Labor MP before taking office. a job with the NHS.
Lightwood’s main pledge has been to block the closure of a local medical centre, polishing his NHS credentials. (Opponents claim the clinic is not earmarked for closure, only for renegotiation of its funding.) Ahmed has vowed to bring back the city’s indoor market, a nostalgia-tinged idea that draws groans from a young couple in their 30s at a cafe near the Cathedral. “My dad has been insisting on this since the 80s,” says one of them.
More significantly, voters seem disappointed by the parties’ competing visions for the nation, if such visions can be said to exist.
Dan Harper, who runs a website design firm in Wakefield, says he is inclined to vote Labor despite an uninspiring visit from party promoters.
“They didn’t come and tell me anything about politics,” he complains. “They were hell-bent on saying ‘get Boris out.’ ”
For their part, many Conservatives believe their best hope is to remind Wakefield, who voted by a 63 per cent majority to leave the EU, that it was Johnson who finally delivered Brexit in 2020.
Surprisingly, in Westminster, the party decided to spend last week in a very public war of words with Brussels, after revealing controversial plans to undo parts of the Brexit deal Johnson signed in 2019.
“I certainly think we may be fighting the last war,” says a desperate local Conservative Party member. “We’re obsessed with Brexit, we just keep talking about it.”
Andrea Jenkyns, an outspoken Conservative MP who was at the forefront of Conservative advances in West Yorkshire following a famous victory over Labor leader Ed Balls in 2015, has demanded that Union Jacks be splashed on all leaflets distributed in Wakefield, and wants Mention Brexit on every door. conversation, according to several regional activists.
It looks like voters can expect a lot more of this in the run-up to the next general election.
David Canzini, Johnson’s blunt deputy chief of staff, recently told staff in Downing Street: “Anyone who doesn’t think the next election is about Brexit should leave the room.”
Harper confirms that the message is getting out, at least in her social circle. “There are things going around on Facebook saying that if you vote for Labour, they will take us back to the EU.”
elephant in the room
But the unproven question is whether Brexit is still the vote winner for Johnson that it once was.
Harper’s colleague, Ross Featherstone, complains that the parties have curiously little to say about the central issue that exercises people in Wakefield and across the country.
Inflation could hit 11 percent this year, the Bank of England warned last week, while the centrally set energy price cap is expected to rise 32 percent in October, after similarly crippling increases in April. Gasoline pump prices are at record highs.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced £15bn of cost-of-living measures, and the government insists it is doing everything it can to help the most vulnerable. The question is whether it feels that way to those on the sharp end.
Featherstone spends much of his time on Leeds United’s football fan forums, where he says “the general consensus is, from all sides of the political spectrum, that the government could be doing more to help”.
Driving to soccer games or to the coast are no longer affordable days, he says. “People say they can’t go to work because it’s too expensive.”
The local Tory activist quoted above is emphatic on the same point. “We seem to think that if we bring (prominent Brexit supporter) Jacob Rees-Mogg in for half an hour, people will say ‘Oh Brexit’ and then vote Conservative. It does not work like that. People are really worried about paying the bills. They don’t give a shit about Brexit.”
Level up?
Wakefield, a historic town that boasts a medieval cathedral, grand Victorian houses and the still-new Hepworth Gallery, doesn’t fit comfortably into the “Red Wall” category of Labour-controlled industrial towns that first turned Conservative in 2019.
But like many of those seats, there remains a local feel of a neglected area that isn’t living up to its full potential.
In the city center, erratic planning decisions mean rival malls compete for very few customers, while the biggest brands have moved into a retail park and left empty units boarded up. Lack of access to affordable transportation is a longstanding nightmare. Government promises to “level up” deprived northern cities have made uneven progress.
Oliver Dowden, the chairman of the Conservative Party, came under fire for a series of politically charged tweets pointing to national rail strikes set to hit the UK next week, given that in West Yorkshire, an ongoing local bus strike is taking a toll. much greater impact on people’s lives. .
It was a small misstep, but one that speaks to a long-standing disconnect between the Conservative Party’s campaign headquarters (CCHQ) in London and the northern benches where the party made record gains in the last election.
Current and former party officials say the 2019 win in Wakefield was the result of many years of work by local campaigners, but CCHQ had previously failed to take their prospects seriously due to flawed electoral strategy.
A former employee says that the central party organization does not offer effective support to local parties. They complained that CCHQ is “broken down between elections and rebuilt”, leading to “a hemorrhage of institutional memory and experience”. Experienced party officials have chosen to resign rather than move to a new announced outpost in Leeds.
Questions are now mounting as to whether the Tories’ historic 2019 win in the northern seats is effectively taking hold. The tensions came to the fore on Friday, when Johnson canceled his attendance at a high-profile meeting of the North Conservatives in Yorkshire to pay a visit to Ukraine where he would not be disturbed by cameras. The reaction of those present was furious.
With a general election expected within the next two years, time is running out for Johnson to offer Northern voters the tangible benefits they expected after first endorsing the Conservatives in 2019.
And for Labour, too, the window to set a competitive vision for Britain is shrinking fast.
Reference-www.politico.eu