Staffordians are great — their Reform UK vote is a cry of despair
I fell in love with Knutton last week, a village with wonderful people, a terrific local pub and a community that has — if I can be frank — been utterly betrayed by a political system that forgot what it was for and who it was supposed to serve.
This was once at the heart of the Staffordshire coal community (the last pit in next-door Silverdale closed in 1998) but is now at the centre of a political earthquake. Newcastle-under-Lyme delivered one of the most dramatic swings in the local elections as Reform UK leapt from a single seat to 27 of the 44 contested, comfortably gaining a majority, while the Conservatives fell from 26 to 15 and Labour collapsed from 17 to just two.
I went to the Ex-Servicemens club, not so far from the old colliery, where I was met by Deborah, the licensee, who works 12-hour days and volunteers locally too, along with some of her customers. These include Mark, late of the Staffordshire regiment, who served two tours in Northern Ireland. These people have done the right thing, put their backs into the community, and have been rewarded with living standards that have flatlined for over 20 years. “Life’s got worse,” Deborah said. “Everything’s going up: taxes, prices, council tax, electricity, gas — everything.”
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Mark nodded. “It feels like you’re on a treadmill, running faster but going backwards.”
This was a set of local elections, but I did not meet a single person who failed to regard it as a verdict on the national government; indeed, the entire political class. The contempt for Labour and its Conservative predecessor has gone beyond “anger”. It is something closer to despair.
Regional inequality, for much of the 20th century modest by international standards, is now at levels unmatched in much of the western world, a tragedy presided over by governments that became hooked on tax receipts from the City, failing to see this was a sugar rush that could not last. Taxes and immigration kept rising to meet social needs, but this was not a solution — it was a cop-out, trapping us in a vicious circle of higher debt, higher interest and a society ever more squeezed.
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I walked over to The Masons Arms, once a pub notorious for being a bit “rough”. It was recently taken over by James and Kerry, a young couple who have invested their life savings in the place and are doing everything to coax locals through the door: quiz nights, card nights, you name it.
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The moment I walked in, I was offered a drink by a punter called Mike, who has lived in the area all his life and grafts long days as a sole trader in his caravan-servicing business (“we just about get by”), and his wife Karan, who works nights as a nurse in the NHS. “Are you new around here? Want to join us?”
The conversation flew by: an hour, then two, then three. As the clock ticked, I realised I had yet to find a hotel room. Mike and Karan instantly offered their couch but I did not want to intrude. Overhearing our conversation, the landlady mentioned that they had converted the rooms above the pub into en suites. I went to look at one of them a few pints later and loved the little details. A well-made bed. Chocolate cookies on a tray. A cuddly toy on the pillow. The rate was £50 per night, cheap at the price.
When I finally left at chucking-out time, I could see her through the window cleaning the tables, doubtless before settling up the till and God knows what else.
These are hard-working people. Labour was once on their side, a party created to serve the interests of the working class. Is it not then ironic, indeed tragic, that this government is now more focused on serving those on welfare, a system that grows in size and complexity with every passing month, trapping people in its web, turning those working all hours on low wages — in other words, most of the people I met out and about in Knutton — into mugs?
Tina, who cleans, drives taxis and cares for her mum at weekends, said: “I’ll not stop working, but when I see how much people on welfare get, I wonder what’s the point.” She was not angry; just resigned. It was heartbreaking.
But it was the issue of immigration that surfaced the most, albeit in apologetic tones. You know the routine. “I don’t want to sound racist, but …” “I’m not against immigrants, but …” The third time I heard this, I told them to stop. These people were not in the slightest bit racist. A brown-skinned stranger had been greeted everywhere he went, offered pints, cups of tea, even a bed for the night. These were the most welcoming people you could imagine, but they are angry — rightly — about the huge influx over recent decades that nobody voted for.
Local election results in maps and charts
I travelled to nearby Shelton and glimpsed a defining tragedy of modern Britain: balkanisation. There are neighbourhoods here almost exclusively populated by immigrants. This is not about colour; it is about segregation. How can this be healthy for a community, for a sense of place, for immigrants themselves?
I chatted to the imam at the Markaz At-Tawheed mosque, to Imran from Kashmir, Ahmed from Sudan. Good people. Perhaps brilliant people. But where was the mandate for this unprecedented inflow, which does not just affect the areas where immigrants coalesce but — via pressure on rents, GP appointments, hospitals and more — the whole region?
Back in Knutton I spoke to John, a pipe fitter dating a girlfriend (who happens to be black) he met online. He talked about the houses of multiple occupancy on a nearby street and a big asylum hotel in nearby Hanley, and wondered (again apologetically) why people who have broken the law to get here, who have never paid into the system, who are costing the taxpayer billions every year, have been offered accommodation while local people are still waiting in the queue. Think of that for a moment: the grandchildren of people who died in wars are being betrayed by the system they fought to save.
I’m sorry, but this is insanity. The people here can see it, so can most others in this nation, but it remains invisible to many in Westminster, the civil service and our institutions.
We are living not in a compassionate society but one where the most basic ideas of morality, decency and patriotism have been twisted into concepts unrecognisable to most citizens. If the vote for Brexit was a sign that the system is not working for millions of people, this is perhaps the final warning for a nation drifting closer to the edge.
But let me finish with a hopeful thought. I visited local schools, went to the impressive technical college, walked around the high street in Newcastle bathed in sunshine (if struggling — like everywhere else — due to the growth of online shopping). I had a lovely breakfast in a café called Piccoloco, owned by a father and son — Jonathan and Benjamin — who roast their own coffee.
I also (oddly enough) bumped into a muscly guy outside Specsavers whom James, the Sunday Times photographer, instantly recognised as Eddie Hall, the “world’s strongest man”.
“I love it here,” he said. “Always have.”
There is talent here. There is decency. There is community. But it is fraying. Not because people have given up, but because the political system has failed. Failed to control our borders; failed to offer incentives to work; failed to defy nimbyism to build the energy infrastructure that could have prevented our electricity prices soaring to almost the highest in the world; failed at so much. I don’t believe Reform has coherent answers, but I do know that voting for them is seen here as the political equivalent of sounding an alarm.
As I left Knutton, I thought about Deborah locking up after hours spent on her feet, Kerry wiping down tables, Mike fixing caravans. They are not asking for handouts or charity. They are asking for the bargain their grandparents thought they had struck: that hard work would be rewarded and their country would put them first. This has not happened. And it is nothing less than a tragedy.