Barbara can still remember when Blyth was the jewel in Northumberland’s crown. ‘We had the best market in the North East,’ she tells me, ‘but now they’ve killed it.’
She gestures outside her tiny shop on Bowes Street. ‘This used to all be lovely cobbles, but they ripped them up and “modernised”. They also raised the kerb, so the pensioners can’t get up and down, they’ve put in parking restrictions, and these new benches are so uncomfortable that people can’t even sit on them.’
Despite this municipal vandalism, she claims her own business is doing a brisk trade. ‘We sell on stuff from people’s homes. Mostly deaths, divorces and repossessions. As well as this shop we’ve got two warehouses full.’ She sighs. ‘This used to be such a nice area. Then the Tories got in.’
For almost seven decades the constituency of Blyth Valley was a Left-wing fortress. Home to half a dozen collieries and the largest coal exporting port in Europe, it was represented for 30 years by Ronnie Campbell, a former miner arrested twice on the picket lines during the 1985 strike.
Until the early hours of December 13, 2019, when the returning officer announced Conservative candidate Ian Levy had snatched the seat, and the first brick was punched from the middle of Labour’s vaunted Red Wall.
I’ve come here for the final full week of the 2024 election campaign to see if those same voters are preparing to lead another political sea-change. But Barbara seems disillusioned with the entire political class. ‘I won’t be voting,’ she tells me. ‘They’re all the same.’
When you arrive in Blyth you’re immediately confronted with symbols of progress and decline. The monolithic wind turbine that looms over the terraces of St Cuthbert’s Court like one of the sinister tripods from War Of The Worlds. The nail-bars, bookmakers and vaping-shops that now shoulder responsibility for sustaining the local economy in place of the pits, shipyards and rail hubs.
But initially there is little sign the people of this area are preparing to rise up and deliver the Conservatives their worst defeat in living memory. Sitting on a bench outside St Mary’s Church, I ask Pat how she’ll be voting. She looks at me slightly bemused. ‘Voting? Oh, the election. No, I won’t be. To be honest, I don’t even know how to vote.’
As I turn on to Market Street, I see further signs of hope for Rishi Sunak. The perceived failure of the Levelling Up agenda is supposedly costing him dear. Yet here is a giant billboard announcing a new three-screen cinema and a live music events space ‘coming soon’.
Then it suddenly strikes me that I’ve seen lots of billboards like this on the campaign trail. The improvements promised to Red Wall Britain are always arriving tomorrow. Never today.
But I reflect that maybe I’m being too cynical. Perhaps a new ‘creative activity space’ will help offset concerns about the cost of living, NHS waiting lists and the small boats crisis. That is until I walk into Doppio’s Coffee House on Waterloo Road. And bump into Dan, Ruth, Norma and Liz, who are being served their morning cuppa by Alan, the manager.
They all tell me they voted Tory in the past. But Liz is the only one who’s sticking with Rishi. She says it’s because ‘he’s looking after my pension’.
Dan likes Nigel Farage – ‘he thinks about the country’. Norma likes Farage, too, but concedes: ‘I’m not sure about what he said about Ukraine and Putin.’
Ruth is also unsure but definitely won’t be voting Tory. ‘Rishi just doesn’t understand normal people,’ she says.
Alan says he’s impressed with Keir Starmer. ‘We’ve had 14 years of the Tories,’ he says, ‘and what is there? Sewage in the rivers. The Partygate thing. The crime that’s over-running London. It’s time for a fresh start.’
Cramlington village, a supposedly solid Tory area. In the neatly tended square the sun is glinting off the memorial that holds several columns of names for the Northumberland Fusiliers who fell in the First World War
Is there any prospect of them voting Conservative again on Thursday I ask. ‘No!!!!!!’ they cry in unison. Liz shakes her head and smiles.
The old Blyth Valley was split in two in the last boundary review, with the town itself now sitting in the Blyth and Ashington constituency, and the bulk of the wards transferred into the new seat of Cramlington and Killingworth. So I head out to Cramlington village, a supposedly solid Tory area.
In the neatly tended square the sun is glinting off the memorial that holds several columns of names for the Northumberland Fusiliers who fell in the First World War. Just opposite is The Four Ladies pub, which stands as its own commemoration to the former mines that once dotted the area. The ‘Four Ladies’ are actually the names that were given to the pit-wheels which stood at the top of the coal shafts – Amelia, Anne, Betsy and Daisy.
Sean the landlord is keeping his counsel about how he intends to vote. ‘We don’t really like to talk politics in pubs up here,’ he tells me. But as a North East native he’s candid about the changes he’s seen in this part of the world.
‘I used to run a pub in Middlesbrough,’ he reveals, ‘and we had a lot of contractors coming in from Ireland who were working on the new mine they’re building out near Whitby. Just think about that. A coal mine in the North East. And they’re having to bring in outside contractors to work it because we haven’t got the skills locally.’
I was in the North East on election day in 2019. And you could feel it. A rumble beneath your feet. The impending Red Wall revolt.
I’ve travelled the length of the country during the past five weeks of this campaign. And I can feel it again. Only this time, it’s not confined to the Red Wall. And it’s not a rumble, but a full on earth-tremor.
Standing at the bar of The Four Ladies is Roland. A printer by trade. He’s only too happy to break Sean’s politics prohibition.
‘I backed Boris last time,’ he says, ‘but then we had Partygate. I lost my parents to Covid, and I couldn’t be with them at the end. So that was it for me.’
What will he do on Thursday? ‘Reform. We need something different now.’
On the bar is a collection tin for the Cramlington Foodbank. Last year it gave out 667 emergency food parcels to local people. I drop in a few coins as I leave.
This week Britain will vote for change. After my visit to Blyth, it’s not hard to see why.