Northumberland local election vote sets test for Tory optimism

Conservative ambitions to be seen as the party of all sections of society face a stiff test on May 4, when voters in England’s northernmost county give their verdict in the UK’s “other elections”.

If the Tories can take control of Northumberland in the council elections — a dry run for June’s battle for Westminster — it will be a change of “national significance”, says Peter Jackson, a farmer who is the Conservative group leader on the county council.

“It would be the first council in the north-east with Conservative control for 30 or 40 years.”

The coal mines have closed and Margaret Thatcher, the miners’ hated adversary, is long dead but class identity and historic allegiances are still live issues for many Northumbrians.

Labour has controlled the 67-seat Northumberland council for most of the years since the early 1980s — the Liberal Democrats had minority control from 2008-13. The council, a unitary county, currently has a minority Labour administration, with 32 Labour councillors, 20 Tories, 10 Lib Dems and five independents.

At the council level in many parts of the North East, the Conservatives are barely a presence. Nonetheless, Mr Jackson reckons change is coming. Labour, he says, “can’t get out of the Dark Ages”.

Demographics are shifting and with them voting patterns, he says. “People are more self-reliant, less reliant on the state. The whole attitude of the community has changed.”

The Tories claim that canvassing and survey data show they are picking up votes from Labour compared with the last council contest in 2013.

On the streets, there are signs Labour is in trouble. David Bramley, an electrical engineer who lives in Cramlington, an area in the south-east of Northumberland, says he simply cannot vote Tory because of “what they did to the north-east with Thatcher”.

But despite being a life-long Labour man, he says he is “struggling” with Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader. “He has no leadership.” Mr Bramley thinks he may vote Liberal Democrat in the local elections.

The Tories are not going to look after the people of the north-east. The miners’ strike [of the mid-1980s] killed off the Tories in Northumberland

Along the road another resident tells Christine Dunbar, the local Tory candidate for the council elections, that she will vote for her. It turns out the two have known each other since school but, perhaps because of local sensitivities, the voter does not want to give her name. “My parents will be spinning in their graves,” she says.

Northumberland is an amalgam of largely rural, often Tory or Lib Dem-leaning areas that sweep in an arc from Berwick right round to the Tyne Valley, and of the much more populous, Labour traditionalist south-east Northumberland, a semi-urban swath of territory with a history of mining and industry.

Overall, official data show Northumberland’s unemployment rate in 2016 was at 5.5 per cent — higher than the UK’s 4.8 per cent average but lower than in the north-east region as a whole. But this is a county of contrasts: in the constituency of Hexham, benefit claimants for reasons of unemployment stand at 1.1 per cent — below the nationwide 2 per cent average — but in Wansbeck, in the south-east, it is 3.7 per cent.

The incumbent MPs epitomise this variation. Northumberland has two of north-east England’s three Tory MPs, representing the Berwick and Hexham constituencies. Its two other MPs are not only Labour but also former miners and allies of Mr Corbyn. One, Ian Lavery, is Labour’s general election campaign manager.

Grant Davey, Labour leader on Northumberland council, maintains this is still a Labour heartland where people have a socialist leaning. “The Tories are not going to look after the people of the north-east,” he says. “The miners’ strike [of the mid-1980s] killed off the Tories in Northumberland.”

The UK Independence party is here but is starting from a base of zero councillors. The Lib Dems are eyeing Labour wards, though. “We’d hope to pick up our fair share of disgruntled Labour people,” says Jeff Reid, leader of the Lib Dem group on the council.

Among the key local issues are a Labour decision to sell off the county hall in leafy Morpeth and create a £32m headquarters in less well-off Ashington. Labour calls this a decentralising efficiency move — its opponents brand it a waste of money.

Some voters worry about cuts to services on one hand and, on the other, the amount of external borrowing being taken on by the council-owned Arch development company in pursuit of generating resources to plug the gaps.

But for many voters, it is hard to vote on local issues and ignore the national picture. “I’m only seeing one clear leader at the moment,” says Eve Dixon, a retired manager, and she does not mean Mr Corbyn. But then she hesitates. “The Conservatives have always been portrayed to be the party for the rich.”

Just over the border is a reminder of what happens when old political habits die. Once guaranteed Labour territory, the Scottish National party booted out all but one Labour MP in 2015. Says Tory activist and would-be Morpeth councillor Richard Wearmouth: “Somewhere there’s a tipping point — and all the dominoes fall.”