Small tremor could swing Stockton South in UK elections

In a more optimistic era in British politics, a prime minister who started his Westminster career as a Stockton MP uttered the words "most of our people have never had it so good".

Stockton South's James Wharton, fighting to retain the Conservatives' eighth most marginal constituency, has too much sense to publicly repeat Harold Macmillan's 1957 quote.

Instead, if Mr Wharton, who beat Labour by just 332 votes in 2010, holds on to the seat at the general election on May 7, it will be because enough voters believe his message: "It's getting better but there's more work to do."

In 2010 Mr Wharton, then 26, became the UK's youngest Conservative MP and one of only two in northeast England. But in his constituency he is best known for assiduously leaping on local issues and bombarding doormats with leaflets declaring "James stops 550 houses plan!", "James will save North Tees Hospital", and "Here all year round not just at election time".

"He comes across as very approachable," says businessman Wilson Drummond. He will vote for Mr Wharton. "I feel the country is starting to get back on its feet," he says.

But it is easy to find disenchantment with politicians too. "They get paid too much; they don't live in the real world," says Jackie Carruthers, a public sector worker. "I usually vote Conservative but I'm not sure this time."

Stockton South has a record of shifting political allegiances. Since the seat's creation in 1983, it has been a Social Democratic Party seat - a shortlived Labour party breakaway - then Conservative, then Labour and then Conservative again.

The area spans affluent Yarm, with its cobbled Georgian High Street, the large Ingleby Barwick private housing estate, and the forlorn terraces edging Stockton's centre. Margaret Thatcher's "walk in the wilderness" photo shoot took place in Stockton South.

New data show Stockton has England's biggest gap - 16.4 years and growing - in male life expectancy between its most affluent and poorest wards.

People in the rundown terraces are unlikely even to open their doors to canvassers, fearing the knock is from debt collectors, says Labour's Louise Baldock. A first-time candidate selected from an all-women shortlist, she was brought up in Stockton and has moved back to fight for election after some years away.

Ms Baldock, 49, a former Liverpool City councillor, has a target to knock on every door by May 7; she has done 30,000 so far, with 13,000 to go. "We are working very, very hard," she says. "A lot of people here are undecided, from all parties. It's definitely true the public is disillusioned."

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The big unknown is how many people will switch to Ukip. Brendan Shelley, a civil servant, thinks he will, having voted Conservative last time. Although Stockton South is hardly cosmopolitan, immigration concerns him. "I'm looking at the wider picture." His wife Jenny, once a Labour voter, favours Ukip too.

Ukip's man, Ted Strike, stood in 2010 as a Christian candidate. "If I win it will be an earthquake," he says. But in a Tory/Labour marginal such as this, even a small tremor could swing the contest.

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