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Is Clacton the bridgehead to national populism in the UK? Just weeks ago, the notion seemed far-fetched. Nigel Farage was more interested in backing Donald Trump, while his own private party plaything, Reform UK, would likely hurt the Conservatives but deliver nothing more.
Whatever prompted Farage to stand, every MRP poll now puts him first and the seismic potential of this Essex seaside town becoming the seedbed of something destructive grows by the day.
But despite the threat the left just stands and watches, unwilling to intervene.
The Five Questions Nigel Farage is Never Asked About Brexit, Trump and Russia
As the media provides the Reform Leader with a prominent platform once more during this general election campaign, Peter Jukes considers all the concerning lines of enquiry that journalists never confront him with
What’s Going on, What Does it Tell us and What can be Done?
The ‘what if’ scenarios of Farage winning the seat and using it as a platform to either overtake a post-election shell-shocked Conservative Party or engineer some kind of reverse Conservative takeover are now well worn and mostly dismissed.
But nothing about Farage should be underestimated, not least in the post Brexit carnage and volatility that he created. If Labour fails to deliver enough in office, then all bets are off about Farage reshaping the country for the second time in a decade. After all, he’s already on record as saying that this election in Clacton is about who becomes Prime Minister in 2029.
Given the scale of this potential threat, why is Labour ordering its young energetic candidate for the seat, Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, not to offer a full-throated attack on Farage, but campaign 180 miles away in the West Midland?
The cynical view is that Labour’s leadership see Farage causing more problems for the Conservatives than for them. In the short-term that’s true, he is the bull in the Conservative china shop.
But in 2015, UKIP drew as much support from the left as right and the recent Reform UK poll boost shows they’re pulling votes from Labour and the Conservatives. But it’s the long-term democratic and political threat Labour should be most wary of.
Dismay as Starmer Backs Westminster’s ‘Winner Takes All’ Voting System as Labour Eyes Big Majority
During his Labour leadership election, Starmer hinted at backing proportional representation. But he now appears to support continuing with Westminster’s First Past The Post voting system
The less cynical view of why Labours’ candidate has been ordered by the party HQ to campaign elsewhere is the cold logic of first past the post (FPTP), that you only target your resource on the seats you think you can win. Across the country it means seat after seat is ignored and abandoned. Electoral abandonment leads to economic abandonment – why bother campaigning, listening to and supporting communities and towns like Clacton that are always or never going to back your candidate?
At the 2019 general election a massive 85% of the votes cast in Clacton didn’t count in terms of getting the winning candidate over the line. So Farage is given a free pass.
The Democratic Bridge is on Fire and Clacton Shows Why
As a one-party town Clacton can be taken for granted and people have had enough of it everywhere.
In all this Labour lives an electoral lie. It says it’s a “national party” that fights every seat. But in reality it slices and dices the battleground to maximum effect for some, while leaving others pray to national populism. In so doing it handcuffs and gags a young candidate who wants to stand up to the hard right and leaves uncontested a town for Farage to use for his own vanity.
Before his candidacy in a Times interview Farage said, “do I want to be an MP? Do I want to spend every Friday for the next five years in Clacton?”. His interviewer writes: “His expression suggests not”.
