Here’s how bad it is for Sunak: I went to the most Tory seat in Britain – and the word on people’s lips was Reform

‘Depressingly, there is no shortage of locals hurt by the broken economic system, but utterly repelled by politics.’ Canvey Island in the Thames Estuary, Essex. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

If politics is a soap opera, the people of Canvey Island switched off a few years ago. This is England at its most Conservative, literally: the island is in the constituency of Castle Point, which delivered the highest vote share (76.7%) in Britain for the party at the 2019 election.

The Tories’ looming appointment with electoral calamity is evident from the responses I receive when visiting this Essex coastal town, which range from indifference to contempt. There are plenty of older folk (a quarter of the residents in the constituency are aged over 65) but also a sprinkling of families, as well as shirtless young lads bombing down the high street on bikes, passing union flag bunting on the railings. Ask about the election, and some respond as if it’s the first they’ve heard of it, others like it’s a mild trauma they’d rather forget.