By Andy Ford, Warrington Trades Council
On paper, the Runcorn and Helsby by-election should be a walk in the park for Labour. The Party holds every seat except four on Halton Council, which covers Runcorn, and also the council seats in the Cheshire commuter towns of Helsby and Frodsham. The only wards held by any other party are large rural seats.
In 2024 Labour had a majority in the parliamentary constituency of over 14,000. And yet…such is the plummet in Labour’s popularity since the ‘loveless landslide’ of the 2024 General Election that the seat is now on a knife edge between Labour and Reform.
Runcorn was a New Town, with large estates constructed round the original Georgian ‘old town’. It has a lot of social housing, around one third of the total, and pockets of extreme deprivation, with high levels of free school meals and benefits claimants. Seven of the Runcorn wards are in the 3% most deprived wards in England.
Its original industries, chemicals and docks, remain – but with employment reduced by closures and automation. The parliamentary seat, in a way, is three communities – Runcorn, and two prosperous towns of Helsby and Frodsham, tacked on to make up the numbers, plus the two sparsely populated rural wards. The votes will play out very differently in each area.
Even within Runcorn, just as in the rest of Britain, inequality is striking. In Halton Lea, 70% of the population live in households described as ‘deprived’; in nearby Sandymoor the figure is half that, at 36%; in Halton Lea, 61% of children receive free school meals, but in Sandymoor the figure is just 2%; and the unemployment rate is three times higher in Halton Lea.
Britain Elects data shows Labour winning the seat with 33% of the vote to Reform’s 30%. Lord Ashcroft’s poll puts Reform on 40% to Labour’s 35% share, but Ashcroft does, of course, favour right wing politics. Another poll for Find Out Now, put Reform on 36% to Labour’s 33%, but based on just 147 people. The bookies have Reform as favourites, and Keir Starmer’s approval ratings are dire, nearly as bad as Corbyn’s, but without the massive campaign of lies, disinformation and treachery faced by Corbyn.
In one of Labour’s safest seats, it is neck-and-neck which means the result will be driven by which wards and demographics turn out or stay at home, and also by whatever political events favour or damage Reform and the Labour Party.
And the present Labour leadership’s “vote-winning policies” of “responsible public finances”, abolishing NHS England and “standing up to Putin” are barely going to register with the voters in Runcorn. On the other hand, parts of Runcorn, like Halton Lea, have some of the highest numbers of PIP claimants in the country, and Runcorn in general has one of the highest percentages of Universal Credit claimants who are in work. In other words, what a lot of people earn at work is not enough to live on. So, cuts in PIP and Universal Credit may not be the vote winners the leadership imagine
Keir Starmer visited Runcorn in October, when he visited a glass factory and promised a manufacturing upsurge based on green industries and carbon capture. But as we know, Rachel Reeves has dramatically scaled that back in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility’. Many voters will wonder if it will ever happen.
The last working-class upsurge in the town was the movement against the Bedroom Tax in 2013. At that time, I reported to the Warrington Trade Union Council that: “Saturday’s protest in Runcorn against the bedroom tax drew 150-200 people, mainly organised through social media.
“Activists from Halton Trades Council had initiated the protest but it had also been taken up enthusiastically by new, younger people via Facebook. Michelle, one of the main speakers, said she’d never spoken into a microphone before “Except when I was drunk singing, I Will Survive!” It didn’t matter; she spoke excellently as did Alan from St Helens who denounced the injustice of the bedroom tax in no uncertain terms.
“It was the first political event many people had ever been to, but the trade unions got a very friendly reception. It was like the early days of the poll tax, with working class people coming together, determined to be no longer bullied, walked over and taken for granted.”
There have been strikes in the Post Office, and on the buses; also, a series of unofficial walk-outs by construction workers at the Runcorn Thermal Power Station project. But the Labour Party has not supported these struggles.
Some recent by-election results for the Labour Party (see caption above) sound a warning for the Party and its ivory tower strategists. Here we see how shallow was the ‘electoral genius’ of Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s powerful advisor, who crafted the 2024 election victory by promising nothing – after he had helped destroy Corbyn that is. The core Labour vote is not going over to Reform, but it is fracturing all over the place. McSweeney’s route is proving to be a road over a cliff.
The Party has not helped itself by the way it selected its candidate, Karen Shore, who is at present Deputy Leader of Chester and Cheshire West Council. The window for Labour members to apply to be the candidate opened and closed over just one weekend, opening on Friday March 7th at 4.10 pm, and closing at midnight on Sunday the 9th, with the decision apparently made by unelected Labour Party officials. The process led at least one frozen out activist to complain of “opaque procedures” It really does look like a ‘tap on the shoulder’.
Since then, Karen Shore has dismayed many by launching a petition to close an asylum hotel in the constituency. What the Town Planning Association found to be the key issues for the area were:
- Housing renewal.
- Town centre regeneration (for both the Old and New Towns).
- Economic growth/job creation.
That is exactly what the voters of Runcorn and Helsby want from their political representatives, not Daily Mail-friendly soundbites. Ask yourself, would closing a hotel renovate or build one house, regenerate any shop in the high street or create a single job? No.
The Reform slogan is “After years of failure Reform is ready to bring real change to Runcorn and Helsby”, which has a grain of truth. Halton Council has been Labour since it was set up, Blair was in power thirteen years, Cameron, May, Truss and Sunak for fourteen – and the decline in living standards has just continued. And now Rachel Reeves is promising more of the same. Of course, the change Reform is actually offering is that everyone pays for their own healthcare and the rich have even lower taxes, but that will not feature in their campaign.
If Labour was offering socialist policies the Reform challenge would not even be in discussion. Whether Labour loses, or squeaks a win, Labour Party members, the councillors, and the unions, must draw the necessary lessons. There has to be a change in the direction of policy – or the Labour Party faces an electoral wipeout.
Feature picture from Facebook page of ‘Our Halton’
