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03
Jun
On the road: Could Boroughbridge's electorate vote against expectations?
All this week, we'll be reporting on voters' views on the general election, right across the district. This article, taking the political temperature of Boroughbridge, is the first in the series.
As with most rural regions, North Yorkshire has traditionally been conservative – Royalist in the Civil War, Tory in modern times – and Boroughbridge has long been typical of the area.
As part of the Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency, and the Ripon constituency before 1950, it has had a Conservative MP for all but 18 of the last 138 years.
But any assumption that the town will vote according to the historical script when the country goes to the polls on July 4 may be misplaced. Adding to the uncertainty is the important detail that Boroughbridge is now part of the brand-new Wetherby and Easingwold constituency.
The Stray Ferret spent a rainy afternoon last week asking passersby on Boroughbridge High Street about their voting priorities and views regarding the current government. Many of the responses we heard were far from conservative, either with a small or large C.
Linda White rated the government's performance nought out of 10
Linda White was not untypical. Rating the government’s performance 0 out of 10, she said the new government’s priorities should be tackling the cost-of-living crisis and investing in public services. She said:
The cost-of-living crisis is a problem for everyone, and I don’t think the government has done much to address it.
Every publicly-funded service is a disaster: the NHS, prisons, housebuilding, social care – I could go on! They’ve had 14 years to deal with this, but all they’ve done is give shareholders and millionaires more money.
They should tax non-doms and put up taxes on the rich to get more money into the pot. They should introduce windfall taxes on the large corporations too – the big electricity and gas companies are making millions while people can’t afford to turn on the heating. We’re becoming a Third World country.
The state of public services was mentioned by several people. Primary school teacher Rebecca Kent gave the government 6 out of 10, but was nevertheless worried about funding for education and the NHS, and Jacqui Sedman (0 out of 10) was also concerned about Brexit, education and tuition fees. She said:
NHS waiting lists are so long. I’ve been fobbed off so many times. I’ve even been accused of fabricating my child’s illness because the doctor didn’t want to look into it.
We need to think about renationalising public services. Everything’s going down the pan.
Jacqui Sedman
While both Linda and Jacqui may vote Labour – one of them is undecided – that option is not one that Mark Fearon is entertaining. Describing himself as a socialist, he said he didn’t know who to vote for anymore. He said:
All the socialists have been ousted from the Labour Party, so there’s not much difference between them and the Tories, except for tie choices. I was fooled by Tony Blair and New Labour, but I’m not fooled by Keir Starmer.
So it’s left me a bit bamboozled. The Reform Party? There’s no reform there.
Bamboozled: Mark Fearon
Asked what he would give the government for its performance, he suggested “The guillotine?”.
Another shopper, who preferred to remain anonymous, said his priority would be looking after pensioners. Asked about the government’s recent announcement that it would protect pensions with a ‘triple lock plus’ pledge, he said:
It’s clearly an election ploy, because they didn’t announce it at the last budget, when they had the chance.
Locally, the most commonly-mentioned issue was the proliferation of new housing in the town. Residents said as many as 4,000 new homes were either being built or are planned in and around Boroughbridge, which currently has a population of under 4,000. Many felt was not being matched by appropriate investment in infrastructure.
Labour voter Catherine Doherty lives on a newbuild housing estate in Boroughbridge, and yet is worried about the rate new ones are being built. She said:
There’s only one doctor’s practice in Boroughbridge, and it’s overwhelmed. I’ve been here three years, and the amount of people who have moved here in that time is incredible.
Primary school teacher Rebecca Kent rated the government's performance 6 out of 10
Another resident, who gave his name simply as Lloyd, said:
There are too many houses and not enough infrastructure. You can’t get a doctor’s appointment, and the chemist’s is full when they’re dishing out prescriptions.
Small market towns are not the same anymore because there are more and more people. Small towns are going to become big towns, and then people won’t want to go to them anymore.
One person who doesn’t think the town has lost its charm just yet is Vikas Patel. He moved here from South London seven months ago to take over upmarket grocery business Fink and is “loving it”. He said:
Boroughbridge is a nice town with friendly people. None of the shops here have shutters – it's safe!
As for policy priorities, he confined his remarks to the world of business. He said:
I’d like the next government to help bring interest rates down. That would help a lot of small businesses.
If the increase in the town’s population has brought in new money, Dawn Hartland hasn’t noticed it. The former police officer took over florist Bloomerang 18 months ago and is finding life hard at the cutting edge of the flower business. She said:
There are three new housing estates here, and they should have boosted business locally, but they haven’t.
As a highly qualified florist (her training, she says, puts her in the top 2% in the country), she has been unpleasantly surprised by how little she has to show for her hard work. A previous Tory voter who likes the Conservatives’ idea of reintroducing National Service, she now says she’s “disillusioned” with the government. She said:
The government raised the minimum wage from £10.42 to £11.44 and my rent has gone up, but I can’t put up the cost of my flowers, because no-one would buy them.
It was very wrong of them to give people a pay increase of more than a pound an hour without any consideration for where that money was going to come from.
I often work till 10 or 11 at night, but my take-home pay works out at £5.40 an hour. I’ve had to take a pay-cut to pay my staff, which I think is not very fair.
If Rishi Sunak wants to get his arse down from Richmond and tell me how to run this business successfully, I’m all ears.
Just along the street, fellow trader Susan Hufton, who owns Issima ladieswear and gift shop, could hardly have a more different opinion of the Prime Minister. Mrs Hufton, who voted for Brexit “because of immigration”, said:
I always vote Conservative and so do all my family. Boris messed up big time, but I feel I could trust Rishi. I’d give him 10 out of 10.
Shop owner Susan Hufton is a fan of Rishi Sunak
She added:
I want the next government to keep taxes down for small businesses. They also need to keep parking free in town, as that affects business too.
Somewhere in the middle, between ‘Rishi fan’ Mrs Hufton and those rating the government zero out of 10, were large numbers of people whose responses were more measured.
Tory-voting retiree Roger Chapman said that Rishi Sunak was a “good communicator”, who “has taken on an extremely difficult task and done it well”.
Nevertheless, he rated the government’s performance 5 out of 10, saying:
There is obviously such disruption when people are not rallying around the leader. The internal party communication system is at fault somewhere along the line, and that is slightly worrying.
I fear Labour will get in, but I think it might be by less than they anticipate.
Conservative voter Roger Chapman rated the government's performance 5 out of 10
Another voter, on her way to post a parcel, gave the government the same score “purely because there isn’t the same amount of scandal as there was with Boris”.
She said:
I know who I’ll be voting for, and it’s changed since the last election. I’m not happy with the way the government has been handling things. I think there needs to be a change.
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