by Andy Ford
With all attention on the Tory collapses in Wellingborough and Kingswood, this by-election in Cheshire East could have slipped under the radar. But it contains some worrying indicators for the Labour Party. Not that the leadership will want to know, of course.
The Tories secured a stunning victory in the face of all the national opinion polls – securing a 20% swing from Labour to Conservative, and winning what had been the safest Labour seat in Cheshire East. What on earth happened?
Firstly, Crewe Central has a very high proportion of residents born in Eastern Europe. At 15%, that puts the ward in the top 25 in England and Wales for EU-origin voters. Although Crewe is known as a railway town, and the railway is still an important employer, the outskirts are dominated by huge distribution warehouses.
In fact this part of Crewe is also in the top 50 wards for voters with “routine occupations’. So, it is a working class ward, but the working class in its modern form, with many workers in insecure and non-union environments, and leavened with immigrant workers, many of whom do not vote. In fact, Starmer’s propensity for flag-waving would probably put them off, if anything.
Secondly, the Labour candidate was from the prosperous nearby town of Nantwich. Regardless of her personal qualities (she is apparently as official of the NASUWT), this could easily be portrayed a ‘posh outsider’.
By contrast, the Conservative winner is a local businessman who has lived in Crewe for decades. He made his name by litter-picks and ‘reporting pot holes’, the apolitical pavement politics usually associated with the Liberal Democrats – and the Labour Party have complained that his literature looked less like a Tory leaflet and more like a local independent. But that is a common tactic of the Tories at the moment. A lot of their leaflets now use green instead of blue, and certainly in the later days of Boris his picture was nowhere to be seen.
The performance of the Cheshire East council, which is run by a coalition of Labour plus sundry independents, could also be a factor. The Labour parliamentary candidate blamed the council’s ineptitude in allowing a housing estate to be built without forcing the builders to deal with possibly contaminated land before construction, although that was part of the planning permission. He also accepted that Cheshire East that passing on Tory cuts, despite real deprivation in central Crewe, was a factor:
“Crewe, and particularly Crewe Central, has a lot of really serious issues. There are people there with really serious needs that are not being met, housing in terrible conditions, there’s fly-tipping, there’s crime and anti-social behaviour.” His lament was concluded by saying that the council are carrying the can for Tory cuts to their budget. The voters may well have asked themselves what is Labour doing about it? They know they have problems. They need action not hand-wringing.
Crewe Central shows the vulnerability of the rootless Labour Party being created by Keir Starmer and David Evans. Parachuting candidates into safe seats leaves them vulnerable to pavement politicians of whatever hue. Waving the Union Jack will appeal to the editors of The Sun and The Mail – and maybe to focus groups of swing voters – but much less so to a diverse electorate, especially if combined with ineptitude and cuts.
The Party clearly needs active local wards to win on local issues and prevent councillors messing up on neighbourhood problems, and to develop working class champions in the wards and localities. But to achieve that they would have to give democracy, input and freedom of speech back to their members. But this is not likely on David Evans’ watch. Labour are riding high in the polls at present – but the cracks are very evident to see.
Hi Ray,
I didn’t mention ‘Putting Crewe First’ because, maybe wrongly, I took their vote as being insignificant to the result. In the event it was the Tory who portrayed himself as the community campaigner – and won. As you say is a proliferation of these groups, which reflects an increasingly out-of-touch Labour Party.
Good article Andy. But I am surprised you don’t mention the role of the “Putting Crewe First – People Before Politics” candidate. Their vote of 128 was practically the same as in last year’s Borough elections, but on a much lower turn out. It probably harmed Labour, although the Tory candidate clearly gained his own increase. Candidates from this party were taking 600 votes in other Crewe seats last year. We have a number of these “keep politics out of politics” candidates in the NW and they can represent very different hues of political opinion. They have been very prominent in the Tory areas of Cheshire East (Alderly Edge, Bollington, etc. winning seats as, for example, “Bollington First). In nearby Winsford last year they (Winsford Salt of the Earth Party – named after the town’s key role in the Salt industry) seized control of the Town Council from Labour and won 2 Borough Council seats – led by a deselected “left” Labour councillor who teamed up with all and sundry. The Grouping has largely fallen apart since, showing they had little in common as a group, other than their criticisms of the existing Labour councils. Similar things have happened, I believe, in the Wigan / Leigh area over some years. It is a phenomenon born from disillusionment with politics, almost replacing the surges in LibDem votes that used to appear, based on parish pump politics.