It’s Holy Thursday and Reform UK’s faithful await the arrival of their Messiah in a Royal British Legion hall in Halton, on the outskirts of the Cheshire town of Runcorn. Nigel Farage is already here, but for now he’s out the back supping a pint in the lunchtime sun. His adoring crowd can wait a little longer.
The Reform leader is in town to canvass with Sarah Pochin, the former magistrate who is his party’s candidate in the Runcorn & Helsby byelection. It was called after the resignation of Labour MP Mike Amesbury, who was convicted of assaulting a constituent outside a pub.
Runcorn, on Merseyside, 45 minutes from Liverpool, is the scene of the first big nose-to-nose battle between Farage’s turquoise Reform troops and the red army of prime minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. The vote is next Thursday, the same day as a slew of local election and mayoral polls.
Politically, the stakes are high. Victory in the Runcorn vote for the favourite Reform would bolster Farage’s claim that he can demolish Labour’s traditional Red Wall of working-class seats in England’s north and midlands. If Labour clings on, Starmer will argue Reform has peaked and only his party has answers to the economic and social dilemmas that wreak anxiety in neglected enclaves of the north.
Reform’s possible path to victory has been paved on the backs of marginalised, disgruntled working-class supporters. Yet the vehicles parked by its members behind Halton’s RBL hall tell a more nuanced demographic story. High-end marques such as Mercedes and BMW cram every inch. Meanwhile, burly security guards keep outsiders at bay. Farage’s event, they say, is closed to media.
Peering over his shades, he spots The Irish Times marooned at a security barrier and slopes over for a chat. Pint in hand, Farage leans on the fence like a farmer admiring ewes, as he ponders his party’s chances for what is, he says, Labour’s 16th safest seat in Britain.
Amesbury won a majority of 15,000 at last July’s election, although Labour overturned bigger margins in a string of byelection defeats of the then-governing Tories when that party was drowning in the depth of its unpopularity last year.
“This area is old Labour,” Farage says. “Traditional. It’s the sort of place where people set their alarm clocks, drive over the bridge and go to work.”
[ Kemi Badenoch plays down Tory frontbencher’s comments about tie-up with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK ]
Those who can find work, that is. The 2021 census showed that 41 per cent of the local population was classed as “economically inactive” while the borough of Halton is among the most deprived in Britain.
Pochin, meanwhile, regularly cites immigration as a top local concern, even though the latest census data showed Runcorn’s population was 97 per cent white and English native speakers.
Farage, meanwhile, identifies a more personal factor that he thinks could sway voters: Starmer.
“It is only nine or ten months on [from Labour’s general election victory last July] and a really big issue in places such as this is that Starmer himself is so incredibly unpopular,” the Reform leader says. “I’m trying to work it out. It’s not because he’s a nasty person – because he isn’t. It might be a lack of authenticity.”
The prime minister, grappling with low approval ratings, hasn’t shown his face, yet, in Runcorn & Helsby since the byelection was called. Deputy prime minister, the redoubtable Angela Rayner, who has greater appeal with working-class voters, has campaigned heavily for Labour’s byelection candidate Karen Shore, the local teacher and councillor who is scrapping to retain the seat won by Amesbury.
Does Farage believe his party will triumph against Labour, which has held the seat since 1983? Bookies have Reform down as 1/4 favourite, although insiders in both parties think it is far closer than that. A source in Shore’s campaign says, whoever wins, their majority could be less than 1,000.
“It’s just the two of us – us and Reform,” the Labour source says. “The rest aren’t even in the race.”
Farage says: “It’s a toss-up, really close. Labour are a bit bigger than us, so if we win it will be huge.”
Yet with his party consistently riding so high in polls, defeat would also be a big blow for him and would bring with it accusations that Reform UK cannot live up to its own electoral hype.
In depressed Runcorn town centre, the landlady of the Barley Mow pub says she has “no interest” in the upcoming byelection. She says she is too busy trying to keep her business going. “They’ve put up the minimum wage and National Insurance. I have to pay for that and I’ve no extra customers coming in. It’s a struggle. I’ve been a pub landlady for 35 years but this will be my last.”
Runcorn has suffered from a decline in its local chemicals industry. Canvassing of local voters consistently unearth the view that the only jobs going in the area seem to be low-paid retail roles.
Yet even Runcorn’s retail landscape appears to be struggling. During a BBC Merseyside radio hustings event this week, one caller bemoaned that Shopping City, the main local out-of-town centre, was as deserted as the landscape in the dystopian film, 28 Days Later.
On the day we visit, shoppers are indeed thinly spread around the centre’s meandering old marble halls. The most activity seems to be in Pochin’s campaign office, sandwiched between two charity shops. James, the Reform security officer guarding the office door, says some people shout “fascists” at his colleagues as they walk past the turquoise shopfront.
Nearby in Shopping City, Kelly O’Brien, the manager of the Coffee House, says she used to be a Labour voter, but says she now backs Reform. Why?
“I feel like I’ve been lied to by Labour. They have over-promised and under-delivered,” she says. “But the immigration situation is also huge for me. I can’t bear it. I want it to stop. It’s about time we started looking after the British. The things that matter to Reform are the things that matter to me.”
Daresbury Park, a local hotel that has been used to house asylum seekers, has for years been a controversial issue locally. The tensions are illustrated by the security guard hiding behind a wall to photograph our registration plate when we visit the site.
In the middle of the campaign, the Home Office announced that the hotel will cease being an asylum centre. All male adult residents have already been moved out.
Labour’s Shore gave the decision a high-profile welcome last week, a clear signal that her party understands the nature of its fight with Reform. Sources in Farage’s party, meanwhile, are suspicious of the timing of the announcement.
The constituency appears less deprived further south, especially around the handsome Tudor market town of Frodsham. Yet even here, Farage’s star power has been a feature of the campaign. He recently appeared behind the bar of Frodsham’s Bears Paw pub pulling pints.
But it is up north in the disgruntled wards around the biggest population centre, Runcorn, that the byelection will be won and lost
“There is going to be a low turnout,” says a source in Shore’s Labour campaign, which has focused heavily on local issues such as GP appointments and police. “A lot will hinge on how well we do I getting our people to the polls.”
A low turnout, however, could also be an added advantage for Reform, with its base more motivated.
“We’re ready,” Farage says as he heads off to the Royal British Legion Hall to meet Reform members with Pochin. Come the early hours of May 2nd when the votes are counted, we’ll know for what.
