The story of the 2019 general election was a huge swing away from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour to the Conservatives under Boris Johnson. Nowhere better epitomises that story than Bassetlaw, an ex-mining area that had not had a Conservative MP for nearly 100 years when voters elected Brendan Clarke-Smith in 2019.
It was a result that saw a swing away from Labour of 18.4%, the biggest of the election. Five years on, it’s hard to detect an atmosphere of political revolution.
“It doesn’t matter who gets in, they’ll all mess it up”, says one young man giving his forthright views in Worksop town centre. One young couple tell me they are “avoiding” the election, whilst a market trader simply says: “I don’t care.”
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Yet many do have their gripes, particularly those old enough to remember towns like Worksop in their heyday. “I remember when Worksop used to be absolutely buzzing”, says 66-year-old Kim Gallacher, who still lives in the town and says that she and her husband still try and support local businesses.
Yet the number of empty shops dotted around Worksop, particularly in its Priory Shopping Centre, show that there are not enough people making the same effort. There are dozens of empty units in the shopping centre and many residents are questioning when its promised transformation will come.
Under the Government’s Levelling Up Fund, the centre is set to become a new “entertainment and leisure” venue with features including a bowling alley, indoor adventure play area and climbing wall. Work is due to start this summer and for many, a transformation of the town can’t come soon enough.
One 38-year-old, who works in the town centre all week, said: “There’s too many closed shops, a lack of police. It’s the issues you see affecting towns like this across the country.”
Ivor Sheppard, 78, from Carlton-in-Lindrick, will be voting Conservative. On the issues that mattered to him, he added: “There are a big load of issues that need to be fixed and it’s going to be a challenge for whoever gets in. They’re going to need a magic wand.”
It isn’t just issues in the present day influencing Bassetlaw’s voters either, with 70-year-old Robert Gallacher still mentioning Partygate as an issue that will have dented trust in politics as a whole. He said: “If you’re at the top, you should set an example for the rest of the country.”
Looking to the future though, candidates attending Nottinghamshire Live’s online hustings for Bassetlaw on Thursday (June 27) agreed that the plague of empty shops needed to be tackled. Helen Tamblyn-Saville, the Liberal Democrat candidate, who is herself a high street shop owner in Retford, said: “We have some empty shops in Retford and certainly Worksop has even more. We need more independent businesses to boost our local economy and we need to have pride in our high streets.”
The Liberal Democrat candidate says her party would look at business rate reform to make it easier for small businesses to expand and would also invest in more community policing to tackle anti-social behaviour in town centres.
Jo White, Labour’s candidate, says she will work to ensure a banking hub is delivered in Retford and also mentioned a reform of business rates so that local businesses can compete with online companies. The Labour candidate also pledged an increase in community policing and an exploration of options to get empty shops and pubs open, including by putting them into community use.
On the state of Bassetlaw’s town centres in general, Labour’s candidate added: “Out-of-town shopping like Meadowhall was the death knell for our town centres and online shopping, put on steroids by Covid, has become the automatic shopping route of choice. All town centres have suffered and action must be taken.”
Also agreeing that the town centres of Bassetlaw needed some attention was the Conservative candidate, Brendan Clarke-Smith, who said: “There’s a lot of derelict buildings and I think one of the main things we need to do now is to actually increase the footfall. We need to make sure people are comfortable going back into the town centres.”
Yet the Conservative candidate also added: “If you want to see town centres thrive, you’ve got to use them yourself.” The Green Party’s candidate said her party believed in setting up regional banks to drive investment into the smaller and medium-sized businesses that can make town centres thrive.
Yet on a more positive note, the Green Party’s Rachel Reeves also added: “One of the things I love about Bassetlaw is the sense of community. In Retford and in Worksop and in the villages, people seem to have real pride in the place they live in and we’ve got a lot to celebrate, Worksop included.”
There were a cacophony of factors behind Bassetlaw’s historic decision to turn away from Labour in 2019 and Keir Starmer says he has listened to voters in the area and changed his party. For many in the area though, they’re more interested in how parties can change their struggling town centres.