After decades of Conservative MPs, Hitchin voted red – but residents are already frustrated with Sir Keir Starmer\
It took quite some soul-searching for Nick Bowyer to cast his first ever vote for Labour. The 62-year-old from Hertfordshire’s pretty market town of Hitchin was a lifelong Conservative supporter. But like many recent Tory deserters, by July 4 he had come to feel that “a change of leadership was needed”.
This widespread notion, which tore through the previously faithful ranks of the party’s voter base, helped deliver Labour’s landslide victory in this year’s General Election.
The honeymoon period Sir Keir Starmer might have hoped for, however, has proved to be remarkably short. Following a series of controversial moves – scrapping the winter fuel payment for all but the poorest pensioners chief among them – goodwill towards the new Government seems to be already ebbing away.
This month, an Ipsos poll found support for Labour had slipped four points to 36 per cent, while almost half (46 per cent) of people viewed Prime Minister Starmer unfavourably – his joint worst rating since he became party leader.
By contrast, even a year after Labour’s 1997 landslide, its support remained in line with its pre-election popularity, with pollsters MORI still putting it at 53 per cent by April 1998.
To explore what lies behind the rather more abrupt decline in the party’s approval ratings this time, The Telegraph joined Public First, a research and opinion consultancy, on a trip to Hitchin to hear from dozens of local residents.
This newly-created seat swung to Labour this year, after decades of returning a Conservative MP as part of the former Hitchin and Harpenden constituency. (A Tory candidate had won here in every general election dating back to its formation in 1997.)
Voters like Bowyer, an aviation industry adviser, were behind the recent swing. But a notable number are now voicing misgivings.
“I decided, perhaps against my better judgement, to vote Labour,” says Bowyer. “My initial thoughts [about the new government] have not been very positive…I do regret [my vote].”
Sitting on a bench in the picturesque Market Place, he explains the two main turn-offs for him. The first is the so far unrealised threat of changes to inheritance tax and capital gains tax. Labour hasn’t ruled out increasing either.
“They implied they weren’t going to raise taxes and it looks like they’re backtracking on that,” says Bowyer.
The second reason for his buyer’s remorse is the sleaze row that has so quickly cast a pall over the Government, with Starmer facing criticism for initially failing to disclose thousands of pounds of gifts from party donor Lord Waheed Alli. “Labour spent a lot of time in opposition attacking the Tories for sleaze and partygate, but it looks as if they haven’t cut their cloth accordingly,” says Bowyer. “[They’re] just following the same route the Tories were.”
This matters for a government that was meant to offer a change from the perceived moral turpitude of recent Conservative administrations, and Bowyer is not the only Hitchin voter to mention it. Arguably, it particularly matters at a time when public trust in governments of any political stripe is at a record low.
Making her way through the square in the unseasonal warm autumn sunshine, Magda Kazimierczuk, 40, voices a similar sense of regret about her vote for Labour. “I thought it might change something, but I don’t see this happening,” she says.
She had hoped to see the elderly better looked after, and is disappointed with the winter fuel payment cut. “We might have a really cold winter and people might need to choose between eating and heating,” she worries.
The early release of about 1,750 prisoners to ease overcrowding this month has not gone down especially well either. Kazimierczuk, a first-time Labour voter who works in a school canteen, brands the move – which was first announced by the Conservative government earlier this year – a “really bad idea”. She adds: “I’m worried all these people [released] will come to places like Hitchin.”
And although originally from Poland herself, she would like to see Starmer take a tougher line on immigration.
In the large, neatly manicured garden of the Angel Vaults Inn – formerly the Hitchin Conservative Club, now a Wetherspoon pub – Sandra Burge, 63, is enjoying a glass of wine with her daughter. Having mostly voted Tory in the past, the retired accounts payable manager chose Labour in July. How does she think they’re doing?
“Not too good,” she says flatly. “They’ve stopped the winter fuel payment, and I’m worried they’re stopping the 25 per cent [single person discount on] council tax. That will affect me” (Again, Labour has not ruled out scrapping this.)
Although Burge had wondered about their tax policies before casting her ballot, the fuel payment cut was a shock. The pay deal the Government cut with train drivers hasn’t sat well with her either. “I think they’re paid enough, to be brutally honest,” she says.
The market town of Hitchin, Hertfordshire John Lawrence for The Telegraph
Mags Matheison, 75, a retired secretary walking past Hitchin’s medieval St Mary’s Church, is also “kind of regretting” lending Labour her vote for the first time in her life. “I’m not impressed with what they’ve done so far,” she says. “They seem to be hitting the pensioners and people who have tried to look after themselves. But the Tories were the same.”
The Tories, indeed, were the reason she voted Labour rather than sticking with the Liberal Democrats, whom she had previously supported. “I wanted to get rid of the Conservatives,” she says. Now she has her doubts. Widowed in February, she worries about whether an inheritance tax hike will hit her family when she dies.
“I want to pass on my house and savings to my children and grandchildren,” she says. “I don’t want to give it to the Government.”
While any governing party must reckon with such hopes and fears among voters, and decide whom to disappoint, Labour faces a special challenge in keeping on side two very different sections of the electorate: those on the centre-right and right, who largely put them in power due to their bitter disillusionment with the Tories; and those to the left of Starmer, who would like to see the party take a more radical approach. Both types are to be found on the cobbled streets of Hitchin. And while anger over the winter fuel payment cut often unites the two groups, on much else they remain divided.
“Pre-election, Starmer was saying he was going to go back to his socialist roots, but I don’t think it’s happening,” complains a 64-year-old retired public sector worker having lunch with a friend outside a cafe in the square.
Laura, 42, is eating a meal outside a deli on the quieter Churchgate alley, which leads to the site where the town’s big outdoor market is regularly held. “They’re not radical enough,” says the housewife. “The country is a mess and the problem was austerity. We don’t need austerity round two. Austerity caused the problems in the first place.”
She singles out for criticism Labour’s failure to remove the two-child benefit cap introduced by the Tories in 2017, a decision that has caused disquiet within the party. “My husband calls it performative cruelty,” she says.
In common with other locals, she has little time for Labour’s claim that a £22 billion “black hole” in the public finances has necessitated some belt-tightening. “They’re not the Labour party any more, they’re just competent Tories, and actually I’d quite like a change from more Tories,” she says.
Residents in Hitchin voted for Labour, but many are now uncertain about the choice John Lawrence for The Telegraph
As for Starmer himself, there are mixed feelings. While plenty of voters quite reasonably protest it is still too soon to judge either him or his government, some are perfectly willing to do just that – and not favourably.
“I would have thought he would be a bit more visible,” muses Labour voter Chris Hepple, 57, a retired IT worker nursing a non-alcoholic beer in the pub garden.
“I don’t think he’ll last,” predicts Burge. “Maybe a couple of years.”
Bowyer meanwhile fears that like much of the current generation of politicians, Starmer lacks “statesmanship” or true leadership credentials. “Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine, Michael Howard – they seemed to have an aura and personality about them,” he sighs.
He is, he says, unlikely to support Labour again in the future. Kazimierczuk expects she’ll return to the Conservatives next time. Laura will likely go Green. The onus, of course, is on Labour to draw them back.
“As Labour heads towards its first Budget, the clock is already ticking to start delivering with swing voters,” says Ed Shackle, head of qualitative research at Public First. “What they’ve seen so far – cuts to winter fuel allowance and releasing prisoners early – has gone down badly and led some to already question their vote.”
Starmer, then, has his work cut out in keeping his spectrum of 2024 supporters, famously broad but shallow, on polling day. If Hitchin is anything to go by, less than three months in, some already want out.
