Ukip sets sights on Labour's northeast heartland

Sean Berry, a Hartlepool taxi driver, and his family are the kind of voters the Labour party has been able to count on in its northeast heartland for the best part of a century.

Mr Berry is also what Nigel Farage, Ukip's leader, had in mind when he said on Friday: "Between now and 2020 we can become a serious force in Britain - and I'll tell you, we'll do it at the expense of the Labour party."

"We were all staunch Labour party for donkey's years," says Mr Berry, pausing to order an off-duty pint in the Globe on Hartlepool's Headland.

But his perception of Labour has changed - it is "more Tory than Tories". He is worried about the impact of immigrants on the jobs market and accuses Labour of failing to protect the local hospital. So in the general election, he and his family - "20 to 30 of us" - are switching to Ukip.

Many voters echo comments of Labour supporters in Scotland switching to the Scottish National party. Mr Farage said the percentage of 2010 Labour voters who say they are going to vote Ukip had nearly trebled during the past three weeks.

In the northeast the party has made Hartlepool, once held for Labour by Peter Mandelson, its prime target. But it has a bigger ambition - to challenge Labour in a region where many voters need little encouragement to reflect on industrial decline and ask what has Labour done for them.

Phillip Broughton, 31, Ukip's candidate in Hartlepool, says: "People feel the Labour party has let them down and not shouted enough." Labour has a "sense of entitlement", adds Mr Broughton, a Tesco customer service team leader paid £13,000 a year and part-time wrestling promoter.

Paul Nuttall, Ukip's deputy leader, told a rally this week in Ashington, once described as the world's biggest pit village: "We will be the boot that goes up the backside of the Labour party to kick it into action. The Labour party has been hijacked over the last 20 years by a right-on, north London, metropolitan set."

Ukip's objective, Mr Farage told a rally in Hartlepool, is to "smash apart Labour's one-party state in the north". Winning the town, where Labour had 42.5 per cent of the vote in 2010, would be a symbolic scalp. But the bigger plan is to build a base for growth over the next five years by coming second in a string of mainly coastal seats from Redcar to Blyth. This looks achievable not least because support for the Liberal Democrats, the main opposition until now, is fragile.

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Mr Wright, a Hartlepudlian whose election leaflet slogan is "Wright from the town, Wright for the town", says: "I have never taken the voters of Hartlepool for granted." It is the government, he says, that has neglected his area.

In 2010 25 of the 29 constituencies in the northeast returned a Labour MP. Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, says Labour does not face a "Scotland scenario" in the region but the SNP's surge is a "wake-up call for Labour that it needs to take its heartlands less for granted".

Ukip may indeed become the main opposition to Labour in some parts of the northeast heartland, he says, but its demographic of "grumpy old men" means the party must broaden its appeal to survive.

"The idea that the future is Ukip is one we have to take with a massive pinch of salt," says Mr Bale.

However, Mr Broughton's canvassers do include young men, among them John Leathley, 23, Ukip's candidate for Sedgefield, and Luke Hardie, 22, a trainee electrician attracted by its tax-free minimum wage policy.

But some people are sticking with Labour. "I'm going to vote Labour. I've always voted Labour," says Brian Nichol, 72, a joiner out walking his dog. "Farage is a drunk. And I don't like his policies really. He wants to come out of Europe. I think that's a bad idea. It will cost jobs."

Voting Labour because your parents and grandparents did has remained until now a shibboleth in many former industrial communities.

Ralph Gibson, a long-time Labour voter, talked of his "momentous" and "sleepless" decision to vote Ukip this time. "I feel I'm betraying Labour," says the gym instructor. He finds Nigel Farage pompous. "A bit Torified; that's probably a northern thing," he adds.

Bob Smith, a 45-year-old council worker, has also been tested in his resolve to switch from Labour to Ukip. His mother, hearing his news, said: "Your father would turn in his grave."

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