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4 days ago
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“There’s bits and pieces of this and that but I don’t see any coherent drive for growth,” said an underwhelmed Labour stalwart, David Taylor-Gooby, about Rachel Reeves’s budget.
“They need more backbone. They need to have a sense of moral purpose. They need to sort the economy out.”
Taylor-Gooby, 80 and a former Labour councillor, is originally from Watford but has lived in Peterlee, County Durham, for more than 40 years.
Peterlee is a town patently disillusioned with Labour. It is in a constituency, Easington, which was once one of Labour’s safest seats, a place it could never lose. Incredibly, if there were a general election today Reform would have a 99% chance of unseating the current MP, Grahame Morris, according to the pollsters Electoral Calculus.
No one the Guardian spoke to on a bitterly cold grey Wednesday thought the budget had done anything to change Labour’s fortunes.
Taylor-Gooby said the local Labour party branch was “totally demoralised” as were branches across the country, struggling to get people to stand for positions.
Labour members want to see more vision, he said. “They are being too cautious. When you’ve got a big majority like they have you do things. You don’t wait until you are about to be thrown out.”
For retired housing manager Marie Smith, the budget looks like tax rises. “It goes against what they promised at the very beginning, doesn’t it? They said no tax rises. Although I do get that the country is in a very bad position.”
Smith is happy the two-child benefit cap is being lifted but is not convinced about the bigger picture – and is clearly no fan of Keir Starmer. “I’ve voted Labour all my life, but it’s not the Labour party any more, not the Labour party I’ve grown up with anyway.
“Their morals and their values are just different. They’re not for the working people any more, definitely not. Not that I’d ever vote Reform because I can’t stand the morals of Reform either. So I’m stuck.”
But plenty of other former Labour supporters would vote Reform and did so in May, when Nigel Farage’s party won a staggering 65 seats in the Durham county council elections. Labour won four.
Peterlee, a 1948 new town and a hoped-for “miners’ utopia” named after a great union and Labour leader, Peter Lee, is now a Reform town.
Kevin Sizer and Elizabeth Brindle, a couple out shopping in the town’s dilapidated Castle Dene shopping centre, listened carefully as the Guardian listed the main points from the budget.
“Doesn’t affect me. Doesn’t affect me. Doesn’t affect me,” said Sizer.
Neither were impressed. “They need to sort out council tax bands,” said Sizer. “What I object to [is] that properties in Peterlee are often either in the highest or the second highest tax band in Durham. We’re the poorest areas and yet we’re paying the most in council tax.”
Sizer is right about the town and wider area being poor. Easington is at the wrong end of lists assessing deprivation and health, and data shows that a third of children under 16 in Peterlee itself are considered to be living in relative poverty.
For part-time community nurse Anne Hall, 40, the cost of living crisis is one of the most important issues. “It is just getting ridiculous,” she said.
She had just been to Lidl, spent more than £90, and still didn’t have everything for the weekly shop for her family of four.
Her younger sister Abigail Maughan, 23, is a saver but is concerned about having to use a big chunk of her Isa allowance on stocks and shares. “Isn’t that going to come with more risk?”
A number of shoppers the Guardian spoke to were unhappy about the measure that got the biggest cheers from Labour benches on Wednesday – lifting the two-child benefit cap. “If you can’t afford to have children you shouldn’t be having them,” was a repeated refrain.
Other spoke of their anger and continuing disillusionment with mainstream political parties, more generally.
“The state of the country is poor,” said James Lyon, 69 but still working part time. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it. You look at some areas and it’s just terrible.
“Peterlee is suffering, you just need to look round here. There is no money being put in.”
