Not many people thought we could actually win in Clacton. At the 2019 election, when Boris Johnson led the Conservatives, it was their fifth safest seat. Clacton voters had sent the UK’s first ever Ukip MP to Westminster at a 2014 by-election. Clacton’s predecessor constituency, Harwich, had returned a Labour MP for only two brief terms in over 100 years. By any measure, when I stood for the party in 2025 it was not fertile Labour territory. On the doorstep we kept hearing “not round here mate”, and the familiar “I used to vote Labour but…” And yet there we were, knocking on doors, listening to residents and putting forward a counter-argument to the emerging forces of a nationalist right.
Unlike Nigel Farage, who was helicoptered in the moment Rishi Sunak called the general election, I’d been selected some months earlier. That gave me time to get to know the constituency better. I made it my mission to reach as many people in the community as I could. I met people who were worried about elderly social care, pensioners isolated by unreliable bus services, veterans priced out of London and publicans who, even then, barely turned a profit on a pint. A middle-aged mum in Great Bentley told me how frustrated she was trying to find her son a school place. “It [the country] just doesn’t work,” she said, “so there’s no point voting.”
Those conversations shaped what I came to think a good MP should look like. After a few months of “going local”, I’d concluded that doing the job properly meant genuinely belonging to the community I sought to represent, and challenging the pervading sense of fatalism over politics. Being the MP wasn’t just about visiting the area or performing for it. My role, I concluded, would be to advocate for their interests and be steadfast in my commitment to “the people” in line with my values, if I was fortunate enough to be elected. Having observed the last two years of a Labour government, I have been struck by how easily a bloated, technocratic style of politics can forget these fundamentals – however much it may want to make a difference. We end up with a politics of vague buzzwords – “change”, “mission driven”, “national renewal” – all detached from any coherent political programme.
This allows room for someone like Farage to succeed. When we opposed each other in Clacton, I saw first-hand how he championed himself as a man of “the people”. His 2024 campaign, much like in the upcoming by-election, was to lead the charge against an “establishment” who had failed people in Clacton and elsewhere. Yet he conveniently overlooked the fact he had dismissed the existing local candidate in 2024 and imposed himself. Moreover, his parliamentary record has shown his opposition to worker protections, and he is committed to scrapping the Equality Act, which would harm many vulnerable members of his constituency. Yet his empty rhetoric has been honed over 20 years, and with an effective communications team, he has been able to persuade the people of Clacton to support him.
By contrast, in the recent Makerfield by-election, Andy Burnham was judged on his own record and merits. This farcical new Clacton by-election seems to shrink the office of MP into something smaller than itself. For Farage, Clacton has never really been a place with its own needs, its own future, its own aspirations, as demonstrated by his haste to be associated with the Trump Maga project. He has not called this by-election in response to local demand or urging from his party. It is simply a vehicle to distract from an uncomfortable and inconvenient story about the political donations that have begun to damage him. That’s the end result of grievance politics. It attaches itself to a place and exploits a community’s frustrations without ever offering a solution.
Clacton is a town challenged by coastal decline, visited by Westminster once every four years with a leaflet, and now, it seems, with a stunt. The towns that make up the constituency need a credible offer for a better future. Without that, the field is left open to chancers. The real story here should be the inadequate public transport, and the fact that a generation of young Clactonians are struggling to find work or training opportunities, and that despite efforts from the current government, your pound doesn’t stretch as far as it used to. Reform has no serious theory of change. How can a town like Clacton get its buses running, its social care funded or its high street rejuvenised? Until someone offers this, the constituency will keep being treated as the stage for wider ambitions. That’s not a failure of Clacton. It’s a failure of everyone who has asked for its vote.
[Further reading: Nigel Farage is “the establishment”]
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Subscribe here to commentFarage is no different from Trump or Badenogh. They make a great play about not being the establishment whilst being prominent in the establishment. The voters of Clacton are at the bottom of the pile of voters to whom the Tory Party owed its prominent position in the modern era. Reform has replaced the Tories but not replaced the neglect that they give. Most of East Anglia is a Tory fiefdom because the Tory vote is totally unearned yet totally relied upon. Zack Polanski should stand in Clacton and remind the people that there isa world of integrity out there, where MPs hold surgeries, find schools for children, obtain development contracts for businesses, push for better bus services, etc. How hard can it be to do the job you are elected, and paid, to do.