For 14 years, it has been despicable. Enough enough: in the red wall, conservative support collapses | Policy

IIt seems strange to describe a well-off village with manicured privet hedges, freshly mowed lawns and three cars in every driveway as a no-go zone. Yet for almost three decades the pretty parish of Silkstone, on the edge of the Pennines, was unwelcoming territory for Labour.

The village, centered around a 12th-century church four miles from Barnsley, was a Conservative blue bastion surrounded by Labor red. But last May, Silkstone elected its first Labor councilor in a generation. A second followed a year later.

The electoral tremors of this little blue enclave may not have been felt in Westminster. But they help explain why Keir Starmer looks set to win a historic parliamentary majority in two weeks. Not only is Labor winning back its traditional Red Wall supporters, it is also innovating in areas it has not occupied in decades.

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When I said there were no no-go areas, that's what I meant, says Dr Marie Tidball, Labor candidate for the Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency in South Yorkshire, walking to recently in what she describes as the safest conservative neighborhood in the area. .

The breakthrough at Silkstone is not just because Starmer has put his party at the center of British politics. It was also, says Tidball, a continuation of an on-the-ground campaign that began more than two years ago, when she was selected to try to take the seat back from the Conservatives: I've been out under wind, rain, sun and snow. We really haven't been absent at election time, and people appreciate that.

In 2019, this collection of former mining villages and market towns turned their backs on Labor because of Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn. Voters elected Miriam Cates as South Yorkshire's first Conservative MP since 1992.

But the enthusiasm that helped Boris Johnson secure his 80-vote majority has reversed, with the Conservatives now appearing to retreat from serious campaigning in many of the red wall seats they won in 2019.

Johnson campaigned alongside Cates in the constituency before the 2019 poll, but faced with electoral oblivion, Rishi Sunak has spent the last fortnight visiting areas with majorities of more than 14,000 votes, leaving areas like Penistone and Stocksbridge, with its majority of 7,210 votes seemingly adrift.

Outside DIY store Do It Yer Sen, in Penistone, Caron Wadsworth said she had voted Conservative for the first time in 2019 but would not do so again. This time, she said, she was still undecided: I still vote, but I haven't made my decision yet.

Wadsworth, 59, was laid off this month from a catalog company where she had worked for nearly four decades. She said she had little faith in any party to solve the UK's chronic problems.

Her husband, Ian Wadsworth, 62, embodies two of the new government's most pressing problems: he is among a record number of people out of work due to long-term illness, in his case serious knee and back injuries. arms caused by over 40 years. in the construction sector and backlogs in the NHS.

Wadsworth said he was desperate to work but had been waiting eight years for a knee operation on the NHS. He now pays $7,000 to go private because the waiting lists are so long. Of his three private pensions, he has already cashed in two.

His experience left him so disillusioned that he vowed not to vote at all, after supporting the Labor Party all his life. I will not vote. They are all the same, he said. I have paid my taxes all these years. They didn't do anything for me. Nobody did that.

Fueling this resentment is Nigel Farage, who last week said Reform UK was significantly ahead of the Conservatives in red wall seats. He toured the villages outside Penistone in an open-top battle bus before traveling to Barnsley, where a man was arrested for pelting him with objects from a building site.

Cates, a rising star on the conservative right, is aware of Farage's threat. In an article for the Daily Express This month, Cates brushed aside rumors that she might switch to the Reform Party, saying she would take a chance as a Conservative candidate despite having many similarities with the right-wing party.

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An evangelical Christian, Cates made her name at Westminster on the front lines of the culture wars by advocating cuts to higher education, for example, to prevent young people from being indoctrinated by liberal ideas.

But these issues appear far from the top priority in his constituency, where voters complain of a broken NHS, the cost of living crisis, housing, transport and a general feeling of anti -policy. One Labor activist admitted there was deep cynicism towards all parties present.

Tidball, the favorite, seeks to counter the mistrust by burnishing her local credentials: she was born in Penistone and raised in Stocksbridge. His mother was a nursery manager, while his father, a Labor county councilor, worked in secondary schools and helped establish Barnsley College.

During a canvassing campaign Thursday, Tidball told a voter she felt emotional when she remembered being taught by her father. On people returning to the Labor Party: people are really happy that someone who grew up here, who has other life skills, is the first person in over 100 years to grow up here to become an MP, has she declared.

In Silkstone, true blue territory, it was largely encouraged by many retirees polishing their cars or mowing their lawns. I just voted for you, shouted Frank Huby, 72, from his freshly tended garden as he spotted Tidball passing by. The former miner said he and his wife abstained from voting in 2019 because they felt Corbyn had destroyed the party.

Down the road, a retired police officer, who wished to remain anonymous, said he would vote Labor because of a loss of confidence in the Conservatives. Asked if he saw any benefit in taking Johnson's signature policy to the next level, he said: Zero. It's probably worse, if anything. HS2 was supposed to take it to the next level, but all we got was a fast train [from Birmingham] in London.

Glyn Littlewood, 63, a retired university professor, happily took a Labor poster and hung it in his window in a bid to annoy his dwindling Tory neighbors. To vote Conservative, you either have to be incredibly stupid or incredibly rich, he says. For 14 years, it has been despicable. Enough enough.