Betrayal on Britain’s south coast (2024)

DOVER — For a town of just 31,000 people, Dover looms large in the British psyche.

Perched on the southeast tip of England, 30 miles from France, Dover’s famous white chalk cliffs have long been a symbol of this proud island nation’s first line of defense.

But in the eyes of many living here, those defenses crumbled long ago.

“I experience the impact of high illegal immigration,” said Stephen James, the Conservative Party’s election candidate for Dover and Deal. “When I take my daughter to school — it’s on the seafront — I’ve often seen illegal immigrants sat there, wanting to be picked up by security forces.

“Our community doesn’t feel like our community anymore.”

Unfortunately for James’ own political aspirations, the people of Dover have no one to blame but the Conservatives.

The 120,000 people who have crossed the Channel illegally in small boats since 2020 have arrived on the watch of a Tory government. Meanwhile, not a single planeload of undocumented migrants has made it to Rwanda so far under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s controversial deportation plan.

Indeed, illegal migration has only added to the sense of disappointment and betrayal already felt in working-class constituencies like Dover and the neighboring town of Deal.

Whether it’s the failure to control the country’s borders, the lack of economic growth post-Brexit, or the parlous state of the nation’s public services, many people feel let down by successive Conservative governments and their unkept promises.

All of which means this reliably bellwether constituency is set to turn Labour-red on July 4, if the current polls are anywhere near correct.

Down and out

More than 70 percent of Britain’s overseas trade comes through the Port of Dover, making it a key node of British prosperity.

But the town itself — one of the most deprived in the entire southeast county of Kent — sees precious little of that wealth. Instead, locals speak of an inexorable decline.

“Dover and some of the surrounding areas are just not being treated with the respect they deserve as the gateway to Britain,” said Labour’s Dover and Deal candidate Mike Tapp.

The town’s main streets are largely deserted, abandoned for seagulls to roam. Decrepit and disused shopfronts dot the high street. The relentless sounds of truck-based commerce provide a soundtrack to what remains.

Lifelong Dover local Coco Wash said the town is “in the doldrums.”

“It’s quite sad today, really,” she said. “When you went into town before you always knew people, chatted to people. It just doesn’t seem like that anymore.”

She complains about children waiting a year for dentist appointments and her own long wait for two knee operations.

The lifelong Conservative voter largely blames legal and illegal immigration — “you see them coming [from Calais] all the time” — along with the failures of successive Tory prime ministers.

It’s not for nothing that Labour leader Keir Starmer chose Dover to launch his party’s own plan to stop the boats —a mildly beefed-up border force —alongside former Dover MP (and Tory-Labour defector) Natalie Elphicke.

Indeed, every politician who visits speaks gravely about the migration crisis.

“We must have a secure island,” Labour’s Tapp told POLITICO. “People are concerned we have open borders — and we do.”

James, the Conservative candidate, added: “The state’s first and foremost responsibility is to protect its citizens. Whether the threat is real or whether it is perceived is almost irrelevant.”

James insists that Sunak’s Rwanda plan is the answer, but admits the incumbent government is still being blamed for what’s gone wrong.

“It is tough on the door[step],” he said. “People say — ‘you’ve had 14 years, why isn’t it sorted?’”

Tory candidates are encouraged to lean heavily on various external shocks when explaining recent failures — chief among them Covid-19, the Ukraine war, “lefty lawyers” blocking the Rwanda scheme, and the strikes by junior doctors snarling up the NHS.

But throughout this campaign it’s become obvious that too many voters either don’t believe the Tories, or simply don’t care.

David Watts, a Tory voter in 2019, spoke to POLITICO from Dover’s Wetherspoons — by far the busiest establishment in the main part of town. The pub bustles with pensioners and post-work tradesmen knocking back £2 pints of hand-pumped cask ale.

Watts had little interest in the external factors that have made conditions so difficult for the working class —many of whom were won over by former leader Boris Johnson’s brand of Conservatism at the last election.

“I’ll be voting Labour, the Conservatives the last 14 years have been an absolute mess,” he said.

“Don’t be surprised if [Nigel Farage’s party] Reform do really well. I promise you now.”

Down the coast

Some 100 miles along the coast from Dover lies another key bellwether constituency in Labour’s sights.

Portsmouth North has swung reliably to the winner of every general election since World War II, which means senior Tory Penny Mordaunt is in serious danger of losing her seat this year.

Portsmouth has a deep and historic link to Britain’s armed forces, particularly the Royal Navy. The naval base here is huge, and the city and its harbor host almost two-thirds of the Royal Navy’s ships. Portsmouth is also home to a sizeable veterans community.

It’s not surprising, then, that many in Mordaunt’s constituency were outraged by Sunak’s now-infamous decision to leave the June 6 D-Day commemorations in Normandy early to do a TV interview.

Speaking in the Portsmouth North neighborhood of Cosham — a familiar mix of betting shops, questionable Chinese takeaways and boarded-up bank branches — Jan Whittaker called Sunak’s scheduling choice a “disgusting” act of betrayal of the nation’s veterans.

Her husband, Peter, said of Sunak: “He should have stayed there. We watched the interview and thought — ‘why did you do that?’ It was pointless, really, the interview.”

Both Jan and Peter voted for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019. Neither are likely to do so now.

Lifelong Tory voter Scott, a retired military vet who would not give his surname, said he too has “had enough of the Tories” and would not vote for them this time.

Calling Sunak a “bullsh*tter,” Scott said his decision to leave Normandy early had been “disrespectful” to veterans like him.

For many in the veterans community, Sunak’s departure is only one strand in a larger feeling of betrayal by the government.

Recent government figures show the rate of homelessness among ex-armed forces personnel is on the rise in Portsmouth. Concerns have been voiced nationally about the poor quality of accommodation for some veterans.

Labour’s Portsmouth North candidate Amanda Martin, whose son is in the navy, said many veterans simply no longer have “trust in politics or in politicians.”

“You get — ‘what’s the point?’ That sort of thing,” she said.

Martin noted that Portsmouth has been “affected badly” by the cost-of-living crisis, as seen in the surge in food bank use throughout the town.

Back to Brexit

Nigel Farage, of course, has benefited from the anger felt in Brexit-voting constituencies like these. His new political party, Reform UK, is now snapping at the Tories’ heels.

Recent polling by YouGov for the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) showed Reform doubling its support among working-class voters between September 2023 and May 2024 (from 7 percent to 14 percent), even before Farage returned as party leader.

The PPI’s Claire Ainsley, author of “The New Working Class” and previously Starmer’s policy chief at Labour HQ, saidmany working-class voters feel “abandoned by the Conservatives.”

“There are lots of voters who feel they have been betrayed by the Conservatives’ failure to deliver the supposed benefits of Brexit,” she said.

“It’s not a matter of what Sunak or the Conservatives say, it’s now about their track record. And their track record is so bad on the key issue they’ve made politics about — Brexit, leveling up public services and immigration.”

Memorably, Johnson promised after his 2019 election victory that once Brexit was ” done” the country would benefit from its new regulatory and economic freedoms.

Instead, living standards have fallen steadily over the past five years, the tax burden is at its highest level in 70 years, and immigration has only risen.

It’s the party’s failure on these core conservative issues that cuts deepest with Tory voters. Sunak’s blunder on D-Day earlier this month, offending those who care deeply about defense, has only made things worse.

With all this in mind, not even the most ardent Tory in Dover or Portsmouth can be surprised by the polling — or the magnitude of betrayal felt in these key coastal towns.