If Rishi Sunak hopes his refusal to commit to the second phase of the HS2 line between Birmingham and Manchester will boost his popularity, voters in the Midlands town of Tamworth may have other ideas.
The track has already carved a chunk out of the countryside as it runs past Birmingham to meet the west coast mainline. “It’s devastated some of the areas around here,” says Tamworth resident and bookbinder Bev Munnerley. “And nobody is going to be able to afford to go on the damn thing – all for the sake of 20 minutes faster to get to London.”
Munnerley will get her chance to air her dissatisfaction with Sunak later this month when the town votes on a replacement for its disgraced Conservative MP Chris Pincher, who resigned after being suspended from parliament for groping two men at a private members’ club last summer.
Tamworth will be one of the biggest Conservative majority Labour has faced in any byelection in the current parliament – Pincher, who first won the seat in 2010, had a 19,634 majority in 2019.
At Tamworth Assembly Rooms on Friday, the Labour candidate and union organiser Sarah Edwards, set out her pitch to the town, saying she would focus on tackling the cost of living crisis and antisocial behaviour, fixing local NHS issues and protecting greenfield land. “No one underestimates the scale of the challenge in this byelection,” said shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves. “But there are no no-go areas for Labour.”
But some voters in the town remain unconvinced by the Labour offer, and are not deterred from the Tories despite a tumultuous few months under Pincher. “Even though Keir Starmer is the best leader of the Labour party they’ve had in a long time, he seems to give us these policies and do a U-turn on everything,” says business owner Derek Nickells, sitting outside his shop, Tamworth Toolbox. “And I think Rishi Sunak is doing a good job.”
Outside Tamworth town hall, Ronald Skett, 78, is protesting against the two main parties and what he sees as U-turns on their environmental policies. “I’m angry at the Conservatives for destroying, or urbanising, our local countryside. Sunak has gone headlong in tying to win votes today by announcing a load of stuff for car drivers,” he says, referring to the prime minister’s plans to limit the powers of councils to curb car use.
“And there’s also his granting of licences for oil production. It’s the desperate throes of a desperate man.”
But for many voters, the cost of living and rising bills are the issues at the forefront of their minds. “I’m on minimum wage, and anything I could save in the past now has to go on bills,” says Munnerley. “It’s everything at the moment – cost of living, council tax, potholes. It makes me angry.”
Munnerley is undecided on how she will vote in the 19 October byelection – but it won’t be Conservative.
“The Tories need to be taught a lesson, so I’ll vote to try and get them out,” she says. “But people tell you they’re going to do this, that and the other, and once they’re in, it doesn’t matter. I just want someone who’s on the side of ordinary working people.”
Jenny Wild, 29, a nurse walking through town with her eight-month-old daughter, says: “Better pay for nurses, and better working conditions, that’s at the top of my list. The way we have been treated is just awful. And childcare – I’m starting to think about going back to work, but childcare is just so expensive.
“I want to see any kind of change really. Things don’t seem well managed at the moment. So I definitely won’t be voting Conservative.”
Nickells may still vote Tory, but even he is unhappy with the dithering over HS2. “Now they’ve started it, they should really finish it. I don’t see how they can scrap it because they’ve already turfed a lot of people out of their houses and made a mess of the countryside.
“But if it was supposed to be about levelling out the north and south – they should have started it in the north and brought it down from there.”
