Wellingborough: Can Reform UK Replace the Tories?

(Photograph: Derek Bennett, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

The political eyes of Britain will turn this week to Wellingborough: a Northamptonshire constituency and safe Tory seat, since the incumbent Peter Bone’s election in 2005. A by-election was triggered last year however after Bone’s suspension from the Commons, and in light of the parliamentary watchdog’s upheld allegations of bullying, physical assault and sexual misconduct which he denies.

With the 2024 general election tipped for October (but conceivably just months away), the Wellingborough result could prove something of a bellwether for the national electoral picture. In short, anyone in opposition hoping to perform well really needs to do so here – while Sunak would undoubtedly settle for a minor electoral mauling.

Let’s consider the runners: first up, there’s a buoyant Labour Party hoping to convert yet another ‘safe’ Conservative seat. Labour candidate Genevieve ‘Gen’ Kitchen is the heavy favourite, and for good reason. On the plus side of the ledger, there’s the ignominious nature of the Bone departure; the myopic installation of his partner as replacement – a move so ridiculous, even Sunak has refused to endorse her; and the palpable anger over Covid, Brexit failures, and the ousting of Boris Johnson.

All of which indicates that not only is the 18,500 Tory majority unlikely to hold up, it is expected to be overturned comfortably. Kitchen remains odds-on with the bookies, and ‘Never vote Tory again’ is the word on the street. If Labour are genuinely on course for a 1997-style majority, Starmer needs to win here convincingly – but the task is not being considered ‘a done deal’ by the Labour candidate herself.

“It does worry me” Kitchen admitted while canvassing, “We have a good promise rate from the door knocks, we get really good responses from Facebook, but I’ve got used to losing in the Labour party, and I’m not quite over it yet. I don’t want to be in a position where I lose by 200 votes and I think: ‘I should have done more door-knocking. And we’re not complacent. An 18,500 majority in anybody’s money is really difficult to overturn.”

There is an alternative plotline to the impending Labour victory however, and that centres around the recent surge in support for Reform UK. For a start, no matter how certain Labour appear destined to romp home, Keir Starmer still fails to genuinely connect with the electorate. His voice grates on the eardrums, and his persona boasts about as much charisma as an out-of-form Mr Bean. Then there’s the fact that Wellingborough was a heavy Leave-voting constituency (62.4%), and a seat essentially conservative in nature. Opportunistically kneeling for Black Lives Matter and pretending not to know what a woman is, are unlikely to persuade conservative Britain to endorse Starmer. If the electorate is every going to give Reform a shot, Wellingborough is precisely the kind of constituency that would.

While Richard Tice’s party has thus far failed to break through in by-election territory, this time it could be different. The age-old two-party safeguard of ‘splitting the vote’ doesn’t exist in Wellingborough – 90% of Tory activists are reportedly ‘on strike‘, refusing to campaign for the party. Then of course there’s the British tendency to give the incumbent government a bloody nose during a by-election, exacerbated by almost 14 years of Conservative complacency. The Tories would have been on course for a kicking with or without the Bone controversy, but taking that into consideration, it’s liable to be a bloodbath.

There’s also the absence of that habitual repository for ‘protest votes’ the Libdems,  who are completely out of the running. In equestrian terms, this is a three-horse race between Labour, Reform and the Conservatives, where the Tory nag has already been nobbled, drugged and shot by its handlers for good measure; any chance of flogging it around the electoral course has long since evaporated.

Reform are also riding high in the opinion polls, consistently breaching double figures, and have chosen to field Ben Habib as their candidate, one of the best-known and popular figures in the party (indeed, some have called for him to replace Richard Tice as leader).

Habib himself claims to have noticed a difference on the Wellingborough doorstep, and is obviously aiming to dramatically improve on the relatively poor results witnessed in Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth last year, where the party could only manage 3.7% and 5.4% of the vote respectively:

People then, I think, on the whole still hadn’t heard of Reform. But with all the coverage we’ve had over the past few months, there’s a much broader recognition of who we are, and that’s obviously a good thing as far as we’re concerned. That level of support and recognition simply didn’t exist in the last two by-elections. It’s going to be interesting to see if that transfers into votes on the day. I get a sense that people are angry about the state of the country. 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 by-elections.

A recent Conservative Post survey of over 2,000 people would seem to confirm Habib’s analysis: with Sunak at the helm, the party is simply ‘not conservative enough’. And while 16% confirmed they had already joined Reform UK, a majority stated they would be prepared to vote Reform if an election were held tomorrow.

While the bookies have Reform in distant second place, the odds of a Reform victory were recently slashed from 66/1 to just 8/1. Naturally, Labour are statistically more than likely to walk home, but it’s going to be interesting to see how Reform fares this time around. Are their recent polling successes enough to convince the electorate they are a viable alternative to the Tories, or, without Farage, will they still face rejection as merely amateur? Common sense must predict a Labour victory, although anyone who had a flutter on Habib at 66/1 might just be sitting pretty right now.

Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West, and writes a Substack here.

This piece first appeared in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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