It is just after noon on market day in Wellingborough town centre and the owner of the Fine Diner mobile burger bar, William Holden, is waiting for his next customer. The last stallholder has already packed up and left and the square is almost empty. On its walls are photographs of how it used to be in 1904, packed with traders and buzzing, in an age when Wellingborough thrived and sold shoes and boots to the world. When he voted Conservative in 2019 – to “get Brexit done” – Holden had hoped things would get better, that the town’s good times would return. “But I see very little that has changed,” he says. “Where are all the new hospitals? I don’t see them. Bills are up, and prices are up. And the boats are still a real problem. “I have people coming here at the start of the week buying a cup of tea and they say ‘I can’t pay you until Friday’. They are that short of money. It is not what I had imagined.” Asked how he might vote in thenext week’s byelection on 15 February, caused by the suspension of Tory MP Peter Bone over claims he bullied a former staff member a decade ago and exposed his genitals, he’s at a loss. “I am struggling to come up with an idea of who it will be,” he says. That is until the candidate for Reform UK, the new incarnation of the Brexit party, Ben Habib, a businessman and former MEP, swings by to deliver a chat about sending boats full of asylum seekers back to France, making sure Brexit is done properly, lowering taxes and cutting energy bills. “I am not saying I am convinced, but it is something to think about,” says Holden as he examines Habib’s campaign leaflets. Labour, which held Wellingborough (a constituency that takes in Rushden and surrounding towns and villages) from 1997 to 2005, is now odds-on to overturn the majority of more than 18,000 won by Bone in 2019, in what would be one of the more predictable byelection “shocks” of recent years, such is the extent of the Tory party’s recent descent. The circumstances of Bone’s departure and subsequent selection of his partner Helen Harrison as the Tory candidate to replace him, have left local people angry and disillusioned. “It leaves a really bad impression and looks bad for our town. A lot of people will not vote Tory again,” says David Smart, an 81-year-old pensioner who says he will choose Labour because “they can’t be worse than this lot”.
But while a Labour win would spell even more trouble for Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives, so too would the prospect of a substantial advance for Reform UK. On the streets of Wellinborough most people have heard of Reform and many say they are toying with voting for it. Its HQ on Sheep Street is the most visible of any party. “In previous byelections I have helped with, most people did not really know who we were,” says Habib. “This time it is different. The recognition factor is about a hundred times higher.” It is possible, he says, that this new party, which is now hitting 10% in some national polls, could run the Tories close and even push them into third place.
If that were to happen it would probably trigger greater Tory panic than another Labour win, showing the extent to which Reform UK could split the rightwing vote at the next general election, particularly if Nigel Farage comes fully on board. “I am getting a lot of thumbs up, a lot of pats on the back, I didn’t see any of that in the other byelections,” says Habib, who is also the party’s co-deputy leader. “The biggest challenge is that we have not got the armies of people that the other two big parties have got, we have not got the information on voting in different households that the others have got, but I think the way sands are shifting, it is game on. Anything could happen. People who are angry come out to vote. People who are angry vote for change. They are not going to come out and vote Conservative!” The Tories have clearly all but given up in this election. Tory MPs are refusing to campaign in Wellinborough for fear of being ridiculed and insulted, and because they think it would be a complete waste of their time. The party headquarters previously used by Bone was locked on Friday, showing no sign of life. In the window were posters of Harrison and her pledges, including those to “stop the boats”, “improve our NHS” and “fix our roads”. Parked directly outside was an abandoned car with a flat tyre that has been there so long that grass is growing on the bonnet and out of the boot. On the windscreen was a red DVLA notice, dated Friday, warning the owner of a potential £1,000 fine for unpaid tax.
Liz Campbell, who lives opposite, says that since the furore over Bone’s suspension the office exterior has been daubed with pink paint. Wellingborough, she says, deserves better, someone who will champion local issues. She intends to vote for the independent candidate, Marion Turner-Hawes, who is battling to save trees which are under threat in the area. “Anyone but Peter Bone,” she says. In contrast to the Tories, Labour’s candidate, Gen Kitchen, a charity fundraiser who grew up in Northamptonshire, has canvassed with the help of about 100 Labour MPs over recent weeks, including Chesterfield’s Toby Perkins, who has been taking a lead political role. Perkins accepts that “Reform is taking a chunk of the vote” but believes that the Tories’ failings both nationally and locally put his party in with a serious chance. “A lot of people feel very let down by politics in general and nationally, but also locally around the area,” he says, referring not only to the Bone case, but also the effective bankruptcy of Tory-run Northamptonshire county council in 2018, as well other controversies. It is hard to find much Tory activity on the streets of Wellingborough on a Friday afternoon with just 13 days to go before the vote. But what literature the party is producing shows it recognises Reform is now a serious problem. A campaign newssheet being put through letter boxes warns that “Voting Reform could let Labour in”. A Reform UK worker said of the newssheet: “Before, in previous elections, they didn’t even acknowledge us. Now they are talking about us as a threat. That for us is a breakthrough.”