Stuck between the forbidding North Sea and the large agricultural lowlands of Lincolnshire, Cleethorpes can feel a little cut off from the rest of the country. “We’re at the end of the railway line,” as one local resident puts it. And yet it’s a pretty good guide to how the rest of the country is thinking, politically; it has voted in the party of power at the last six general elections.
European elections, of course, are a different matter. Cleethorpes forms part of the European constituency of Yorkshire and the Humber that in 2014 voted for Ukip’s Jane Collins, and North-East Lincolnshire returned a 70% Leave vote in the European Union referendum.
Earlier this year, Collins defected to the Brexit party, citing a distaste for her former party’s lurch towards sexism. Now that Ukip is effectively running on a right-to-make-rape-jokes ticket, many voters are expected to follow her.
And judging by the people I met here on Friday afternoon, a high percentage of them will be disgruntled Conservative voters.
Nigel Gowen, who works part-time in a funeral parlour, has always voted Conservative, except when he voted Ukip in the European elections. Now, though, he told me on the way to the post office: “It’s the Brexit party all the way.”
He is, he said, a big fan of Nigel Farage. “I’m pleased with what he says when he’s in the European Union, because he’s not frightened of them. He tells them that they’re a bunch of idiots, and some of them are.”
Although he expected a couple of difficult years following a hard Brexit, he was confident that the national economy would survive it. Europe needed us more than we needed them, he said.
“BMW and Audi,” he declared, “are not going to put a big tariff on their cars.” True, but perhaps that’s because it’s the importer who adds the tariff.
A volunteer vote-counter at elections, Gowen takes the democratic process very seriously. He doesn’t like the way Europe tells the UK what to do, he said, and in any case he sees Britain as on the edge of Europe, just as Cleethorpes is on the edge of England, and therefore not really European.
“People don’t like us,” he explained. “You can see that in the European song contest.”
“Because we keep coming last?” I ventured. He nodded. “Votes tell you.”
Sue Weaver and Sandra Bird are both retired, but they help out at polling stations. At the recent local elections, they overheard a great deal of talk about voting intentions.
“People were saying ‘I know where my vote’s going for the European elections. It’s going to Brexit’,” said Bird. “They think Brexit are the best of a bad lot.”
But as a lifelong Conservative, she didn’t think she would go down that route herself. She felt for Theresa May: “She has tried to make the best of a very bad job. I admire her fortitude, the pressure she’s been under … she’s been bullied.”
In the regenerated Sea View Street area, Karen Jones was inclined to agree. “They’re like little schoolboys who think they’re still at Eton,” she said of May’s opponents within her own party. “They all need putting in a bag and shaking.”
I said I sympathised with her anger.
In fact there was a lot of sympathy expressed for May, even among those who said they felt they could no longer vote for her.
Karl Green, another lifelong Tory – his wife Lorraine says the couple have voted Conservative for 40 years – felt that May had “inherited a poisoned chalice”. She had “stuck to her guns”, he said, but had been undermined by MPs “with their own agendas”.
“A lot of backstabbing to feather their own beds,” said Lorraine.
Karl would rather see any deal over no deal. A retired accountant who has worked in the banking sector, he believes the financial services industry could relocate a lot of business abroad were there to be a hard Brexit. “Bearing in mind that’s where a hell of a lot of our income comes from, I don’t know what the impact would be.”
So that was why he and his wife were voting for … the Brexit party. Wait a second. Farage wants no deal. Did I miss something?
“You have to draw the line,” said Karl. “I’m not suggesting we’d switch to them in terms of running the country but, as far as Brexit goes, I think Farage has probably got what it takes. I think for general elections we’ll probably stick to Conservatives under a different leader.”
Like most others I spoke to, the Greens believed that Leave sentiment had, if anything, hardened during the long parliamentary impasse. And it was this failure to deliver Brexit to which the straying Conservative voters were attributing their disenchantment. But what was it about the EU in the first place that they were so keen to escape?
“We wanted to be able to govern ourselves,” Lorraine said. “We don’t want Europe butting in. We want to be able to say how many foreigners and migrants we can take. We didn’t want to be made to have them.
“So I think that’s why we’ve all voted to come out,” she continued. “Not that we’re biased or racist.”
No more than the Eurovision judges.
It looks like it’s going to be a tough European election for the Tories in north Lincolnshire. But at least they won’t be awarded nul points.
On the streets
Lorraine & Karl Green
Lifelong Tory voters
LG: “We’ve been Conservative voters for the last 40 years. But I feel Nigel Farage will probably get us a better deal in coming out of Europe. We’ve listened to some of the speeches he’s done in the European parliament and they’re very good. I admire Theresa May but I don’t think she’s strong enough to carry through what we want. We don’t have any preference for Conservative leader. We just don’t want Boris Johnson.”
KG: “I don’t think they’ve got the interests of the country at heart. And I can see this latest development where she’s supposed to be agreeing something with Corbyn, it’s going to end up with a watered-down deal.”
Nigel Gowen
Funeral parlour worker
“I voted Tory in the general election but in the European elections, it will be the Brexit party.”
Debbie Midgley
Undecided voter
“I vote Conservative usually. I voted Leave and I’m regretting it. If there was another referendum I’d definitely stay. There was very little information and I was quite naive.”
