Why The Only Way For Essex Is UKIP
Updated: 8:12pm UK, Friday 23 May 2014
By Jason Farrell, Political Correspondent
Standing by the roadside in their purple rosettes are two retired Essex men, Malcolm Elliott and Dave Morrish. They are brothers-in-law, both living in Thurrock.
One is a right-wing Thatcherite - the other a former left-wing activist who emigrated when Margaret Thatcher was in power.
They have never agreed on politics until now. Now they are waiting for their hero of the hour to arrive, Nigel Farage.
As the anticipation builds, Malcolm tells me: "I've been a socialist all my life but not anymore because nobody's listening."
"What do you think of Ed Miliband?" I ask.
"I don't frankly. I don't believe in any of them anymore."
His brother-in-law Dave agrees. "I voted Tory for 47 years. But I feel it doesn't matter if you vote Tory, Labour or the Lib Dems, what you're going to get is the EU and that's what I don't want. Renegotiation is a nonsense. Every European treaty states that it's not negotiable."
In the local elections UKIP has increased its number of seats in Thurrock from one to six, meaning the council is no longer controlled by Labour. Thanks to UKIP the Conservatives also lost control of Basildon, Brentwood, Castle Point and Southend: Essex man is becoming UKIP man.
As Mr Farage arrives the activists can hardly reach him for the cameras. The UKIP leader tells reporters his success in Essex does not mean he will stand for a seat here.
He also fields a number of questions about why his party failed to make the same impact down the road in London, where they only got 7% of the vote.
"We have a weak voluntary structure in London," he says. "We haven't built it. We haven't developed it. We haven't had the right local leaders. Once we get the right local Leaders we will start having results like this in London."
In previous elections this seat has seesawed from red to blue. The nearby parade of shops tells its own story of a community in decline. A pound shop, a Boots, a butcher's and a Greggs are among a row of otherwise boarded and shuttered facades. The butcher tells me that in the last five years for every shop that has closed, nothing has replaced them.
In Thurrock more than one in five children live in poverty. There has been a 200% increase in the use of food banks in recent months. If Ed Miliband's message about the "cost of living crisis" were to resonate anywhere, you would think it would be here. But instead they are more interested in what Mr Farage has to say about the EU and immigration.
In the local coffee shop I ask a group of pensioners why that is. "In this area we've swung between Labour and the Conservatives," says one man. "And what have either of them done for us? They've put their pay up 11% while our pensions have gone up 1%." There are six of them round the table and they all support UKIP.
The current MP is conservative Jackie Doyle-Price. With a shock of bleach-blonde hair and an upbringing on a Sheffield estate, she is far from fitting the Tories characterisation of Etonian established elite, and she is not someone to trot out the agreed party message.
"There's been a definite mood on the doorstep of people saying the political classes don't speak to us anymore and if you look at the Westminster debate it's become very managerial, very bland, and along come UKIP with some populist messages and people say to themselves, let's give the main political parties a good kicking, and they have."
The overall mood is that Thurrock feels neglected and ignored by Westminster and therefore easily swept along by a new political wind. It seems, for many in Essex, the only way is UKIP.
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