Sarah Elizabeth Cox looks out of the sea-view window of her flat in Clacton. In one direction, the sun sets over Jaywick Sands. In the other, it rises over the North Sea.
“I look out at the sea at all times of the day. A sea view is one of the amazing things about living in Clacton. But I’ve never ever seen a single boat with any migrants,” says charity worker Sarah Elizabeth, who is on maternity leave.
“In fact, I don’t think there have ever been any recorded landing anywhere near Clacton. The area doesn’t have much immigration at all – it’s 95.3% white for a start.” She pauses. “Which makes it strange that Nigel Farage is fighting his entire election on immigration.”
Sarah, 37, moved from London to Clacton in Essex over a year ago to be near family and raise her baby son, Jack. Now she feels the area is being tarred as “a den of racism” by the Reform UK leader’s decision to stand.
“The thing is, I can’t tell you a single thing Nigel Farage is going to do for Clacton,” she says. “And I don’t think Nigel Farage can tell you either. The other local candidates all engage with local issues.”
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Sarah Elizabeth Cox, pictured with baby Cox, feels her area is being tarred as 'a den of racism' (DAILY MIRROR)This time next week, Clacton may make history by returning Nigel Farage – and Reform UK’s first ever MP – to Parliament. After 14 years of wrecking communities and allowing the hard right to infiltrate the higher echelons of their party, the Tories have let the poison flood over the sea wall. This is where Braverman becomes Farage.
The area has long been seen as the “cradle of Brexit” – its vulnerabilities exploited again and again by outsiders with other agendas. To some outsiders, parts of Clacton have become a by-word for poverty and deprivation. In 2018, a street from the Essex town of Jaywick, which lies in the constituency, were used for an outrageous attack ad by the pro-Trump Republican campaign.
“Only YOU can stop this from becoming a reality,” said the message stamped over a picture of the town’s Austin Avenue. At the time, a local resident told me: “Trump can kiss my arse”. Now, posters of Trump’s best mate Nigel Farage are plastered all over the streets. The man who this week claimed former President Trump “learned a lot from me”, is poised to become its voice in Parliament.
This is the last Real Britain column before the election, and so it has to be Clacton. Nowhere else better epitomises the lie of Conservative levelling up, and the chilling effect of Tory austerity.
While the architect of those cuts, George Osborne, leads a £2.4bn investment firm, with numerous side portfolios, people in Jaywick have only seen their lives get poorer. Six years ago, the local community centre was used by the United Nations rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, to gather testimonies about austerity. Those of us who were there will never forget the people who spoke.
Trisha, who had tried to take her own life as it was the only way she could see out of debt. Erin, made destitute by a brain haemorrhage. Teenage girls talking about period poverty, then a little-known phenomenon.
Mr Farage's Reform Party has focused most of its ideas around immigration (PR HANDOUT)“I always said I’d bet nine bob to a penny that this was where Farage would stand,” says Jaywick resident George, whose family have long lived in the area.
“I tell you what, I was tempted. Tempted enough to go and listen to his launch. After 15 minutes I knew, I wasn’t going to vote for him. It was me, me, me, me, me. Nothing about what he was going to do for Clacton. He just plays to people’s prejudices.”
Reform UK’s manifesto holds no solutions for the constituency. Jaywick is so low-lying that sea level rises will affect it ahead of most UK communities. In the Essex floods of 1953, 35 people died when Brooklands was submerged.
The sea wall has been breached twice in the last decade, threatening a community with high levels of mobility issues and few evacuation routes. What can Farage’s anti-net zero obsession offer these constituents? With almost 30% of people aged over 65 and 51% economically inactive – the population relies on the NHS and social care sectors, which in turn rely on immigrants.
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Big spending cuts across public services will effectively be Austerity Plus. Meanwhile, leaving the ECHR won’t put food on anyone’s table. Yet by all accounts, Labour appears to have abandoned their candidate in Clacton, Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, to let the Tories take on Farage directly.
One bitterly disappointed Jaywick resident I spoke to said he still planned to drive his motorbike through the streets with Jovan posters attached “blaring out Chas and Dave, because that is Jaywick”.
Many locally see Labour’s dereliction as a dangerous strategy. When the Far Right started to flourish in 2010 in nearby seats like Barking and Dagenham, a root cause was abandonment by Labour – whether because the seat was “unwinnable” or, worse, “safe”.
Jaywick is a fiercely proud place with a distinct identity forged by its unique streets of 1930s chalet-style homes and anarchic spirit. The light here has a beauty to it. People will tell you how they leave their back doors open and anyone will give you a cup of sugar.
But, for all its holiday camp charm, it seems Clacton is where the Tories will finally reap what they have sown. Their 14 years of ever more confected populism is a sugar that has only left the public ever hungrier.
And Farage’s poison, once it enters the body politic, is a problem for every single one of us. To paraphrase a Republican poster – only you can stop this from becoming reality. Vote Labour in Clacton to the sound of Chas and Dave.
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