Nigel Farage says that Britain is ready for a ‘revolt’, and he’s not the only candidate in this election committed to an uprising. The biggest threat to Keir Starmer is coming not from the Tories or the Lib Dems… but from left-wing insurgents.
In Bristol Central, Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow culture secretary, could lose to the Greens. In Ashton-under-Lyne, Angela Rayner’s seat, George Galloway’s Workers party is trying to cause trouble. In the last election, Rayner had the lowest vote share of any Labour candidate there since 1931, but was still re-elected with a majority of more than 4,000. Galloway wants this apathetic town to finally unseat Labour’s deputy leader.
Spend a Saturday afternoon in the town’s market and you’ll see no ordinary resident cares about the election. ‘No thanks’, ‘I’m not one for voting’, ‘I think they’re all…’ are typical responses. Jimmy, a florist, immigrated to Ashton-under-Lyne from Nairobi when he was seven. ‘I’m 62 now, and I’m not arsed about voting. Maybe I’ll vote National Front. They might do something.’ Down a pub by the station, people aren’t thinking about 4 July either. An old man called Nigel is kung-fu fighting thin air by the bar. ‘I’m like Bruce Lee,’ he says. ‘Do you know Bruce Lee?’
Most say that Rayner has done nothing to stop the town’s decline. The town hall has been closed for nine years for refurbishments that still haven’t started. Many of the stalls at the market are shuttered. Sellers start leaving after lunch because there are so few customers.
The campaign HQ of Galloway’s candidate, Aroma Hassan, is a desk in the office of a town-centre estate agent. There she outlines Britain’s problems: ‘We’re working more than we’ve ever worked. We’re paying more taxes than we’ve ever paid. We’re seeing sections of our NHS privatised under our noses. We’re seeing basic things eroded.’
She seems to want the status quo to be dismantled. ‘It’s wonderful to have this almost revolutionary time,’ she says. There are twice the number of independents and candidates from small parties running in this election compared with the last, and many, such as Hassan, are taking on Labour. Hassan may struggle to beat Rayner, but candidates like her will reduce Labour majorities and cause problems locally after polling day, even if they’re not elected. Already Labour councillors have stood down from the party over Gaza.
Other ‘non-mainstream’ candidates use seditious language like Hassan. Fiona Lali, standing for the Revolutionary Communist party in Stratford and Bow, says: ‘We’re revolutionaries, not politicians. What I stand for is a complete transformation.’ Kamel Hawwash, an ex-Labour member standing as an independent in Selly Oak, Birmingham, believes the UK’s support for Israel, the cost-of-living crisis and NHS waiting lists are faults of a ‘broken system’.
Hassan, Lali and Hawwash are running in places with a large Muslim population. The war in Gaza is a large part of what’s motivating them. ‘People are more angry at the Labour party than, in some respects, even the Tories,’ Lali says. She chose to stand after she went viral debating the war with Suella Braverman on GB News. According to Galloway: ‘As long as Gaza is burning and children are having their heads blown off, limbless children are being carried out of collapsed buildings, Gaza is going to be a major issue in the election.’
Hassan frames the war as a populist cause, not just a moral one: ‘We’re spending, what, £55 billion [on defence] a year? Does the average person benefit from us buying £55 billion of arms? I just don’t think so.’
On Market Avenue, near the centre of Ashton-under-Lyne, a retired taxi driver called Mick waits for his wife outside a charity shop, vaping. ‘I’ve been speaking to some of the people that are still with the company I left,’ he tells me. ‘They said they just want to get away, but there’s nowhere to get away to.’ Ashton-under-Lyne is stuck, for now.
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