Blackpool has got used to being used and abused over the years. From stag-do drunks to snobbish critics, the town’s reputation has taken a hammering as it struggled to adapt to a loss of tourism and trade.
So few locals will be happy that Blackpool South’s Tory MP Scott Benton has attracted fresh infamy after being found guilty of breaching Commons rules for giving the impression he was “corrupt and ‘for sale’”.
Having offered to lobby ministers in return for the prospect of cash from the gambling industry, Benton has been suspended for 35 days from Parliament. If a recall ballot hits the right threshold, he could be booted out of the Commons in early 2024.
Just when Rishi Sunak may have thought he could approach the New Year with a clean start, the last thing he needs is more by-election blues. With polls putting Labour on course to win, the seat presents another golden chance for Keir Starmer to prove his party is refreshing the parts of the country it hasn’t touched for years.
By-elections in Selby and Mid Beds proved Labour can capture the Conservatives’ rock solid rural seats. Wins in Wakefield and Rutherglen respectively showed the party can take back former heartlands in both the English “Red Wall” and the Scottish Central Belt.
Blackpool South will set Starmer another demographic and electoral test that he needs to pass to get to Downing Street: winning marginal “swing seats” in coastal towns.
For the Conservatives, Benton’s disgrace encapsulates their national problem. But the resurrection of their 1990s-era reputation for “sleaze” and the bitter local in-fighting (the former Tory council group leader expressed no confidence in his MP before the latest scandal) are nowhere near as damaging as the broken policy promises made to the town.
It was in Blackpool that Boris Johnson pleaded with his party to stick with him last summer. Yet on that visit, a photo stunt where he flunked a bricklaying test at a local college (he admitted it was “pretty terrible”) was an apt metaphor for his failure to “level up” the area with wealthier parts of the UK.
As Health Secretary, Sajid Javid also used the town to launch a brand new plan to tackle chronic “health disparities” that meant Blackpool residents faced a life expectancy of 10 years lower than people in Hampshire. Yet when Liz Truss came to power, the plan was unceremoniously dumped.
Among the town’s best advocates are Pete and Sophie Sandiford, whose appearances on Channel 4’s Gogglebox are full of sass and scepticism about all politicians’ promises. Their weekly mini-focus groups on the Tories’ antics at Westminster suggest Sunak’s days really are numbered.
But even if Blackpool South swings to Labour, either in a by-election or a general election, Starmer will face the same tough policy challenge that the Tories have failed.
With one of its local wards classed as the most deprived in the entire country, the town certainly suffers from a lethal cocktail of poverty, joblessness and dereliction not far from the bright lights of its famous seafront.
A lack of affordable social housing is central to many of its problems, with former guest houses turned into private rented flats and exploited by landlords who happily take the state’s housing benefit while leaving their tenants in squalor. Council cuts of an estimated £1.4bn during the Tory years didn’t help the housing crisis either.
New Labour went down the dead-end of thinking a “super casino” would revive Blackpool’s flagging fortunes, only to pull the plan amid concerns that it would both waste public cash and entrench the seedier side of the area.
Despite its troubles, there is a good news story to tell about Blackpool. It is still the UK’s number one, ultra-affordable seaside resort, with 18 million visitors a year enjoying its wonderful six miles of sandy beaches, spectacular funfair, tower, theatres and piers.
Like many working class kids from northern mill towns (and indeed from Glasgow), I adored my one-week summer holiday there, marvelling at its endless sands and funland atmosphere. For hard-working families, it was a value for money treat – and still is.
Blackpool Tower’s ballroom is rightly the highlight of the Strictly Come Dancing season and the forthcoming Eden Centre in nearby Morecambe will pull in more tourists. A new tram link from Blackpool North station to the seafront, plus a 2026 central regeneration will help too.
The town even wants to reinvent itself as “Silicon Sands”, thanks to a new North Atlantic Loop link to a superfast fibre-optic cable installed under the sea to connect it to the United States. That’s despite ex-Cabinet Office minister Heather Wheeler being caught describing Blackpool as “somewhere godawful” when she launched the Government’s digital strategy last year.
The completion of the refurbished conference centre at the Winter Gardens is a reminder too that party conferences used to grace Blackpool regularly.
It seems like yesterday that Tony Blair beamed away as President Bill Clinton introduced himself at Labour’s conference with the line “Clinton, Bill, Arkansas CLP [‘Constituency Labour Party]”. As Chancellor, Ken Clarke used to stay at the White House bed and breakfast to save the pennies. Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, they all had to prove Blackpool mattered.
Yet apart from a brief Spring forum in 2022, neither Labour nor the Tories have committed their annual conference to Blackpool. Their preference for Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham speaks volumes about their focus on big cities, but if either were to pick the Golden Mile they’d prove they really do believe small towns have a future.
And if the town finally got the money for the housing, public health and skills it needs, it could shrug off the end of the pier jokes and the memory of an embarrassing local MP.
Binning Blackpool’s sleazy MP is the easy bit - tackling its poverty is harder
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15.12.2023
Blackpool has got used to being used and abused over the years. From stag-do drunks to snobbish critics, the town’s reputation has taken a hammering as it struggled to adapt to a loss of tourism and trade.
So few locals will be happy that Blackpool South’s Tory MP Scott Benton has attracted fresh infamy after being found guilty of breaching Commons rules for giving the impression he was “corrupt and ‘for sale’”.
Having offered to lobby ministers in return for the prospect of cash from the gambling industry, Benton has been suspended for 35 days from Parliament. If a recall ballot hits the right threshold, he could be booted out of the Commons in early 2024.
Just when Rishi Sunak may have thought he could approach the New Year with a clean start, the last thing he needs is more by-election blues. With polls putting Labour on course to win, the seat presents another golden chance for Keir Starmer to prove his party is refreshing the parts of the country it hasn’t touched for years.
By-elections in Selby and Mid Beds proved Labour can capture the Conservatives’ rock solid rural seats. Wins in Wakefield and Rutherglen respectively showed the party can take back former heartlands in both the English “Red Wall” and the Scottish Central Belt.
Blackpool South will set Starmer another demographic and electoral test that he needs to pass to get to Downing Street: winning marginal “swing seats” in coastal towns.
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