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Damien Egan wasn’t expecting to migrate South West for a few months yet. He was still Mayor of Lewisham when he saw the news: Kingswood Conservative MP Chris Skidmore had quit Parliament over the Government’s plans to ramp up oil and gas licences in the North Sea.
That has triggered an early, February by-election in the Kingswood constituency, the South Gloucestershire seat set to be abolished at the next election – in other words, later this year.
Egan, who grew up in Bristol but moved to Lewisham after graduating, had been directly-elected Mayor of the South London borough for nearly six years. Skidmore’s resignation came as a “complete surprise,” he told me. “I had to resign immediately.”
Skidmore, for his part, made headlines not merely for his dramatic departure – but the fact it seemed to be one of the few resignations of this parliament that was on a point of principle.
It offered a contrast to the lobbying, lying and sleaze scandals of Owen Patterson, Chris Pincher, Boris Johnson, Peter Bone and others on the Government benches. (Egan confirms to me that he will not take a second job if elected – moonlighting has brought down several desperate parliamentarians recently).
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The 41-year old had already been selected as a candidate for Bristol North East, which overlaps with the departing Kingswood seat.
Does Egan respect his departing opponent’s stance? “Yes, and there’s been a lot of people who have commended him” – including Labour MPs. But the “cost of the taxpayer” does come up on the doorstep, Labour’s candidate said. “There are people who think: ‘you could have voted against things in Parliament. You didn’t necessarily have to call a by-election right now.’”
But the campaign has now become a full-time job for Egan, and perhaps too for Sam Bromiley, the Conservative candidate who is also group leader on the formerly-Tory run South Gloucestershire Council.
Unsurprisingly, Labour is keen to ram home the rising cost of living – and the perceived breakdown of public services. Access to dentistry is a big deal in Bristol – far more so than London, Egan says.
“Everybody here is impacted by doctors and dentists appointments…There’s no dentist in Bristol, who is accepting new NHS patients. In the whole of Bristol,” he says.
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The dentist he used growing up in Kingswood now charges £20 pounds a month to stay on the books as an NHS patient, Egan claims. “You’ll get a check up with that as well. But it’s expensive. People are recognising that they’re not just paying more tax but then they’re still having to pay for the extras. And the extras here become: going to the dentist.”
On the first night of the campaign, it was snowing. He spoke to a woman and her 16-year-old son. They’ve still got an NHS dentist, but they can’t get an appointment. “She’s just medicating her son on pain relief tablets. It feels like Victorian times,” Egan adds.
GP appointments are similarly hard to come by, with the 8am phone line rush still cutting off people’s access to primary care. “I don’t think it’s a lot to ask for. Just go to the doctor, to go to the dentist. People just want the basic things sorted out.”
That feeling of slipping backwards as a country is pertinent. Egan says many of the women where he grew up are doing “exactly the same work that my mum would do” – shop work, caring, being dinner ladies and so on. “But they’ve got a lot less money.”
The feeling of decay, too: the high streets left to wither. “Kingswood High Street is the place that people go to…It [used to be] a proper town centre.”
There’s a “beautiful” historic clock tower on that drag. Last year it had its 100th anniversary. “The thing is, it’s got weeds hanging out of it. We’ve lost a feeling of pride, and people are connecting that with the Conservatives having been in power for 14 years. You can’t deny it,” he adds.
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