About 60 people gathered on Thursday night to witness the lighting of a beacon on top of a hill next to a huge limestone quarry in England’s East Midlands to mark the Normandy LandingsAmid the drab parkas and jumpers, one person was wearing a striking red coat: Natalie Fleet, the Labour parliamentary candidate, wearing the party’s campaign colours.
She arrived late and was wearing high heels, but she blended easily into the crowd, chatting with 17-year-old high school student Georgia Haslam about her desire to get more young women involved in politics.
“It was comforting to hear someone like her say, ‘I understand you,’ ” Ms. Haslam said afterwards. “If you’re not from the city, if you’re not wealthy, it’s unclear whether these politicians really care about you.”
Fleet is expected to reclaim Bolsover for Labour, which lost to the Conservatives in 2019 for the first time in nearly 70 years. Her attendance at the D-Day commemorations was in stark contrast to Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who caused an uproar by skipping D-Day commemorations in France and returning to London instead. Criticisms flooded in.
Labour isn’t even the Conservatives’ only headache, three weeks before the UK election July 4th ElectionIn this tough region dotted with abandoned coal mines and closed steel mills, Rebel Party Reforms Britain The British government is mounting a surprisingly strong challenge. It could take enough votes away from the Conservatives to vault into second place behind Labour.
Until recently, such an outcome would have been unthinkable. The Conservatives, who have governed for about two-thirds of their nearly 200-year history, are one of the world’s oldest and most successful political parties. Yet less than five years after winning a landslide victory on a promise to “get Brexit done,” the Conservatives find themselves facing a crushing defeat.
The reversal of fortunes has been most pronounced in the “Red Wall” regions, a group of coal and factory towns in central and northern England that have long voted Labour but have been replaced by the Democratic Party. Sharp Turn to the Conservative Party In 2019, the Conservatives will replace the Tories. Today, many voters, disillusioned after their short stint with the Conservatives, are returning to Labour. Some are even choosing to support the Reform Party, an anti-immigrant populist party with its roots in the Brexit debate.
Political analysts have likened the towns to parts of the American Midwest, where people once voted solidly Democratic but have shifted toward Republicans in recent decades. Yet while many of those converts now appear to have solidified their party preferences, British voters have become more volatile, less loyal and more open to insurgents.
“We’re going to overtake the Conservatives,” predicts Robert Reaney, a vintage motorcycle dealer and the Reform Party candidate for Bolsover. “The real question is: will people come back to Labour?”
Rennie, 56, claimed voters were inspired by neither Sunak nor Labour leader Keir Starmer. That left an opening for populist activist Nigel Farage, who leads the Reform Party, whose surprise announcement that he would run for parliament has put his party within a few percentage points of the Conservatives in some polls.
Parts of the Reform Party’s platform, especially its promise to cut taxes, are not unusual for a center-right party. “We’ve never had taxes so high since the Sheriff of Nottingham came in,” Mr. Rennie said over fish and chips in Chesterfield, about 25 miles north of the sheriff’s jurisdiction.
But other proposed reforms, such as adopting a French-style health care system or holding a public inquiry into the alleged harms of coronavirus vaccines, are well within the range of any of Britain’s mainstream political parties.
Reforms promised to cut immigration levels toNet ZeroBrexit is the party’s biggest calling card in working-class areas such as Bolsover, which voted to leave the European Union in 2016 but have grown increasingly frustrated as legal immigration has surged, asylum seekers continue to cross the English Channel and Brexit has not delivered the windfall its supporters promised.
The party’s website warns of a “demographic explosion” of immigration, saying it threatens “British culture, identity and values”. But Mr Rennie denied suggestions the Reform Party was racist.
“We are completely colorblind, but we don’t discriminate against culture,” he said. “We don’t mind if you’re black, white, yellow, green, bright pink or from Mars. We don’t care where you’re from — just come here and respect our culture, which is not a good thing.”
Mr. Rainey, a self-taught man of few words who punctuated his conversation with references to Otto von Bismarck, was not a leader of the populist uprising. But he turned his dealership into a hotbed of reformist supporters who came to talk politics and gaze at his lovingly restored 1938 Coventry Hawk motorcycle.
“This is just the beginning of the revolution,” said Ashley Marples, 58, a motorcycle collector and self-proclaimed Ferrari fan. “In three or four years, they’ll gain momentum and become real contenders.”
Market research firm YouGov predicted in its first full poll that Labour would win 47% of the vote in Bolsover, with the Conservatives on 23% and the Reform Party on 18%. But that was before Mr Farage entered the race and Mr Sunak pulled out of D-Day early.
Tim Bell, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said it was “perfectly reasonable” to bet on the Reform Party to finish second.
“Sunak’s premature withdrawal from Normandy looks bad everywhere and to almost everyone,” he added. “It certainly will not please voters between the Conservative and Reform parties, most of whom are deeply patriotic, easily nostalgic and very supportive of the UK’s armed forces.”
That’s bad news for Conservative incumbent Mark Fletcher, who ousted Labour’s longest-serving MP, Denis Skinner, in 2019. But he faces an uphill battle to keep his seat. Mr. Fletcher noted that he had been awarded 15 million pounds, or about $19 million, to renovate Bolsover, a town of about 12,000 people that sits in the shadow of an imposing 17th-century castle.
But he has been locked in a bitter stand-off with the Labour-controlled council over the use of funds. He says the council is guilty of “cronyism”, while council leader Stephen Fritschley says there are not enough suitable projects in the town. The two men do not have a good relationship.
Candidates from both major parties were less open to reporters. Mr. Fletcher declined to be interviewed, saying he was busy campaigning. Party officials did not make Ms. Fleet available for formal interviews, suggesting they were holding on to their lead.
Still, Fritschley, who has campaigned for Labour, said 2024 will feel different from 2019, when voters were frustrated with Brexit, suspicious of Labour’s left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and impatient with their MP, Skinner, 87, who has held the post since 1970.
Mr Starmer has pulled the Conservatives towards the centre, while Ms Fleet, 40, is a working-class woman from the English Midlands. She was a single mother who gave birth to a child at 16. In 2019, she ran for the neighbouring Ashfield seat but lost as the Conservatives slumped. Ms Fleet said the mood among voters was better this time around and her youngest child, 10, was campaigning with her.
Fritschley said he was also encountering less resistance. “People made their views known in 2019,” he said. “They are now more inclined to focus on which government will support working people in the region. I expect a Labor government to offer some hope for the future.”
Yet even as the Conservatives flounder, some of the economic and social forces that powered their last rise are still simmering.
Residents of Shirebrook, a former mining town and one of the poorest areas of Bolsover, have yet to adapt to the changes brought about by immigration. More than a decade ago, a sporting goods company hired hundreds of people. Workers from Eastern Europe Staffing a large warehouse is an experience I still remember vividly.
“We agree with Conservative policies,” Alison Owen said, citing immigration as an example. But Ms. Owen, 52, a restaurant manager, said as she played bingo at a social club for former miners: “We are Labour through and through.” Some of her friends who voted Conservative, she said, “are switching to the Conservatives.”
Michele Longden, whose family owns a construction equipment rental company, said Labor’s expected victory was less a reflection of excitement about the party than a weariness with the status quo.
“Most people are just wildly disappointed, that’s all,” she said. “I think turnout will be low and that will give Labor a win, but that’s by default.”
