It was overcast in Thetford on the day the Norfolk town’s MP, Liz Truss, was announced as the new Conservative party leader, but the lights remained off in Magda Teixeira’s baby and maternity clothes shop. “We keep the lights off as much as possible. We’re actually closing down because bills have gone up to £300 a month – we used to pay £50-£70 a month, maybe £100 in winter,” said Teixeira, 34. “On top of that, sales have gone down massively. We spend days without a customer coming in. People are scared of spending and they’re going more for secondhand.” She said hers is one of 22 businesses she knows of in the town, the biggest in Truss’s South West Norfolk constituency, to announce closures in recent months as energy bills began climbing. “Seeing as the town centre in her own constituency is closing down, I don’t have much faith in her as a prime minister. But I hope she proves me wrong,” said Teixeira, who runs the shop with her mother alongside a second job as a housekeeper in a local hospital. “Now she’s prime minister, she has to remember we do pay our taxes, we do our part as citizens, we work hard. We do deserve to be treated with respect. Things are really bad at the moment.”
Truss has represented South West Norfolk for 12 years, but there was little fanfare in the town upon her appointment on Monday. “I don’t know how people around here will feel; not many people have ever met her,” said Ian Hilton, 60, the owner of J Jones butchers on the high street (named after the butcher’s van in Dad’s Army, which was filmed in the area and is a major tourist asset). “She’s been in here twice. She’s a nice enough lady, so I’ve only got good things to say, but we’ll have to wait and see what she’s like,” he said. “She’s not going to be around as much now as she’ll be moving to Downing Street – maybe she’ll give me the meat order.” Sue Bellis, 72, a Conservative voter, said she was pleased with the news and glad for an end to the “limbo we’ve been in for a while now”. She said: “I definitely feel proud with her being our local MP. As long as she sticks to what she says, I think she’ll be really good.” Local Tory councillor Robert Kybird said a constituency hustings at the start of the campaign was “very well supported”, and that her election was “good news for Norfolk and good news for the country”. He said: “When I’ve been out canvassing with her, she’s always seemed well informed. I think if Boris had been on the ticket, he would have still got a lot of votes, but we are where we are.”
He said he expects Truss to “take a long-term view” on the energy crisis and “fix problems for the future as well”. But for Terry Land, a local Labour councillor and volunteer at a community shop for people in financial difficulty, a more urgent solution is needed. “Truss uses the word ‘handouts’ a lot. People do not want handouts. What they want is to just live their lives with a bit of dignity and peace,” he said. “We get people in the shop who have one job, two jobs, in some rare cases three jobs, and they’re terrified of what’s coming down. I don’t see any way in which the promised tax cuts are going to do anything but make that situation worse.” He said he also worries the area will miss out on “levelling up” funding now the local MP is prime minister, as it would look like “such an obvious bribe to the town”. Land said: “But this is a town that needs investments, it needs better services.” He added that he was not surprised to see little celebration in Thetford following the news. “If she were more of a personality, if she were more of a presence in the town, then there might be more reaction, but I think most people just feel weary resignation,” he said.