While the party has a chance to make historic gains in some areas, including Southend, the contests in many others appear to be very close.
Essex County has been azure since 2010, much like the waves that crash on Southend’s Jubilee Beach’s yellow dunes. Labour candidate Bayo Alaba, who is standing on the beach and gazing towards the pier, is hoping that seats like Southend East and Rochford are starting to turn around.
This once-Labour bastion is now one of the most vulnerable to a Tory takeover. Alaba, a businessman and ex-parachute regiment soldier who celebrated D-day by jumping for the Royal British Legion, represents a new kind of Labour candidate.
“The Labour Party has always wanted this, but it has never come to fruition,” remarks Alaba. We are standing by our decision. Here, we can assist individuals and their communities through conversation. Southend is teeming with hardworking, self-reliant people who are fed up with their city’s current situation.
The Tory archetype of the “essex man”—a patriotic, self-made individual who initially gained support for Margaret Thatcher—is deeply ingrained in party ideology. Even though Labour held a number of seats under Tony Blair, none of them have turned red since the party’s defeat.
However, Labour strategists are already zeroing in on the county. Essex is Keir Starmer’s sole option for surpassing Tony Blair’s 1997 majority.
Thurrock has been visited by the Labour leader twice in the past month, while Harlow, Southend, and Colchester have all seen an influx of shadow cabinet ministers. Candidates are still hearing from undecided voters on numerous doorsteps, despite polls showing that as many as nine seats might be gained.
The Conservative Jackie Doyle-Price is about to lose her seat in Purfleet, which Starmer used to launch his “Six First Steps” campaign. During the last two weeks, Jen Craft—the Labour candidate for Thurrock—has been campaigning alongside Starmer, Yvette Cooper, and Liz Kendall. After receiving a pep talk from Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, her espresso machine was called Angela.
Craft declares, amidst precarious stacks of pamphlets in her office in Grays, the village from where she hails, “If we win this, we win the country.”. Our clients seek assurance that they are in good hands when they work with us. Extra features are not what they are seeking. They just want assurance that they will be secure, but I’m honest about our capabilities.
The number of Labour activists has increased dramatically, and the party achieved huge gains in the most recent local elections in south Essex. Conservatives are defecting to the Labour Party in large numbers due to rising living expenses, exorbitant mortgage rates, and some of the worst general practitioner waiting lists in the country.
Craft worked as a public servant before taking time off to care for her daughter, who has Down syndrome, and has lived in Grays all her life. She claims to empathize with families who are suddenly struggling to pay for basic necessities and with those who are trying to acquire assistance for loved ones via seemingly insurmountable bureaucratic processes.
Their mortgages have “completely skyrocketed,” Craft adds, even if they may have purchased their first home. “Their financial actions have not been dangerous. The old certainty that they had is just vanishing.
Thurrock has drawn first-time London homebuyers to its immaculately landscaped new-builds and maintained working-class neighborhoods near Tilbury, where some residents continue to cultivate small plots of land beneath the looming shadow of an enormous Amazon fulfillment center.
Jen Craft and Pauline Harris at her doorstep
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Pauline Harris, accompanied by Jen Craft, is changing her vote from Tory to Labour. Sean Smith/The Guardian captured this image.
The unemployment rate is about double the national average, even though there is a warehouse and the ports are close by. Due to a £500 million deficit, Thurrock Council effectively declared bankruptcy in December 2022.
People are coming out in droves to declare their intention to defect from the Conservatives and join the Labour Party. Although Thurrock was one of the most heavily voted-for areas to quit the EU, some locals voiced their displeasure with Boris Johnson.
At eighty years old, Pauline Harris announces her intention to switch to the Labour Party while standing on her tidy Tilbury doorstep. “We have always voted Conservative as a family.” However, we simply do not perceive any local representation. We haven’t had anything here for years, and we can’t do much about the pandemic and the conflicts.
The 43-year-old Terry Aldwinckle has spoken out about his anger at the widespread antisocial behavior, which he describes as include open drug dealing and fly-tipping. He claims he will cast his ballot for the Labour Party, but he is firm in his belief that the current political system requires reform. After what has transpired, we would prefer that no one enter and then disappear. Never returned and never accomplished a thing.
Just up the road on the A13 lies Basildon, which is a portion of the seat that the Tory chair, Richard Holden, was controversially transferred from his former North Durham seat to. One of the Essex Labour Party veterans who would serve in Starmer’s cabinet, Angela Smith—the shadow leader of the Lords and a former member of parliament for Basildon—who was originally elected in 1997—lives there as well.
Even though Lady Smith could make more money this time, it doesn’t feel like 1997. As she strolls down the main street of Basildon, she declares, “We have a huge job to convince people that politics can be a force for good.” They do, however, insist that something must be done.
To suggest that seats in Southend could be available to us is quite remarkable, given that we have never really held those seats. These locations will be very near to one another. Individuals may choose not to cast ballots if they are led to believe that the results will not affect them. It almost seems like it’s part of the Conservative plan to rig the election.
In the background, activists are quietly hoping for even larger victories. Speculation surrounds South Basildon and even Mark Francois’s seat in Rayleigh and Wickford, the Brexit general. Though the local Labour party isn’t exactly aiming high, rumour has it that home secretary James Cleverly is taking a beating in Braintree.
There are still a great deal of unknowns that might significantly affect the size of Labour’s majority, which is causing anxiety among candidates who are hoping to make historic gains in areas like Southend, which Labour has never held before.
In May’s election, Labour lost control of Harlow council by just 35 votes. In Clacton, Reform is focusing on Nigel Farage, but the party has a chance to steal votes from voters who are still on the fence. Many of the seats have extremely little capacity.
Along with David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, Alaba is receiving reinforcements from headquarters as they canvass homes in Southend. He hopes to attract both long-term inhabitants and the posh, younger families who are relocating to the coast from London by boosting the town’s status.
The homes that climb up the slope from the sea behind the Kursaal, a deserted amusement park apart from a Tesco, are home to a difficult community. No one is willing to announce they are voting Conservative, but most people tell Alaba they are unsure or don’t want to vote.
Anger and indifference are on the rise due to the pollution of Southend’s waterways and the deterioration of communal assets like the Grade II-listed Kursaal.
In the past, people have felt obligated to back the party that was most visible to them. In fact, Alaba admits that they weren’t always that way. They aren’t being lectured by us. First and foremost, we must listen so that others may feel heard. We can provide a secure harbor for people’s boats if we can mend fences and end the political gridlock.
