Postcard from the edge of the TORY ABYSS
It’s the truest, bluest Conservative heartland – yet at the local elections, almost all Saffron Walden’s Tory councillors were kicked out. Even more ominous, says ROBERT HARDMAN, is that the howl of protest can be heard across Britain. So when WILL the party listen?
disenchanted than ever,’ says barber David Woodhouse, at his shop, Chaps. ‘There is a sense of the country falling apart and that starts with the roads.’
Potholes are a recurring moan, even though they are not the responsibility of the district council (the county council mends roads). But the district council has no responsibility for Brexit talks either and yet the local Tories are being punished for that. ‘ The Tories have totally screwed it up,’ says furniture deliveryman, Mark Robarts. ‘We voted Leave and we are all disgusted.’
Understandably, the defeated Tory ex-leader of the council has blamed the party’s dismal performance here on Brexit. The area was split 50/50 in the 2016 referendum, but supporters of both sides are united in their contempt for what has happened since.
Residents For Uttlesford campaigners say feelings go deeper. ‘Brexit was just a part of it,’ says Dan Starr, co- founder of the ‘R4U’ movement.
‘This is a lovely part of the world but it can take half an hour to drive through town in rush-hour. It can be very hard to get a seat on the train to London. These things matter and there was a sense the Tories could do nothing about it.’
Mr Starr insists the ‘R4U’ is not aligned to any political party. The fact that it did not stand against incumbent Lib Dems, however, has led to charges of an anti-Tory bias.
‘That’s not true. We just needed to get the Tories out, as they were the ones in charge,’ he says.
Naturally, many Tories feel wounded.
‘I have worked solidly for this area for 12 years and I feel like we’ve been thrown under a bus by the party at Westminster,’ says defeated councillor Julie Redfern. ‘I only want the best for my neighbours, so I hope the new lot don’t mess it up, but they will soon see how difficult it is.’
Having run many businesses in his career, John Lodge is adamant his Residents For Uttlesford party can get a better deal for locals.
‘If Stansted Airport wants to expand to be the size of Gatwick, it should be paying more for new local infrastructure,’ he says, pointing to rail links by way of example. Gatwick has 174 trains per day, he says, compared with about 70 for Stansted.
‘The Tories were just letting them off the hook.’
Wandering through Saffron Walden, I find the handsome office of the local Tory party. It’s a forlorn sight. Called ‘The Old Armoury’, it was where Oliver Cromwell kept his weapons during a Civil War sojourn here. Yet the shop window is empty. It seems a metaphor for the party.
‘We had photos of all our local councillors in there, it’s sad that we’ve lost so many, leaving just four. We’ll need to think of something fresh and optimistic to put there,’ explains local Tory MP Kemi Badenoch. SHE
attributes the collapse of the local party to a ‘perfect storm’ of local issues — chiefly airport expansion and a new housing plan — on top of Brexit.
‘I feel we are in a new age when people are demanding simplicity and we just can’t give it,’ she says. She cites the huge change in public demands on the police, while expecting them to work to the same budget.
Having a ‘residents’ party, she says, implies that the other parties are somehow non-residents. ‘ But they live here and care just as much as everyone else.’
Around the corner, I have a sudden sense of deja-vu.
We are deep in what BBC TV viewers used to call Lovejoy Country, named after the long-running series about an antiques dealer filmed in these parts. Saffron Walden’s Town Hall served as an onscreen auction house, while the local Barclays was Lovejoy’s bank and so on.
For more than a decade — during the Tory heyday of the Eighties and Nineties — millions enjoyed the escapist antics of Ian McShane’s cheeky chappy as he toured this patch, buying and selling interesting out-dated items.
Could the local Conservative Party be about to become another one of them?