by Evelina Black
Runcorn is like many other ungentrified industrial towns in the North: grey and graffitied, its recurring trademark a scrawled circular face smoking a joint.
Restaurants are scarce, takeaways are everywhere. The Wetherspoons is always busy, and the pubs all have cheap pints, free pool and great beer gardens. Betting shops are popular, as is the bingo. All the schools are state comprehensives. There are a few council estates. There are sprawling, detached houses, especially further into Runcorn.
Life moves at a slower pace compared to its neighbouring cities of Liverpool and Manchester. Many families have been here for generations. People are friendly: stopping in the street for a few words, making small talk in shop queues. Everyone seems to know everyone.
It could be any industrial northern town. The only giveaway is the accent: not Yorkshire or Mancunian, but a twinge of Scouse.
Reform UK won the recent Runcorn and Helsby by-election by just six votes, overturning Labour’s 14,696 majority from the general election held only a year earlier. In fact, Sarah Pochin is the first non-Labour MP here in over 50 years.
On paper, it was an historic win. In practice, turnout was only 46.2 percent, down 12.5 percent from the previous year. Rather than evidence of a dramatic surge in polarisation, the result reflected something I heard repeatedly on the ground: a deep disillusionment with politics.
When I asked residents what they thought of the by-election result, I was met with friendliness, passionate answers, disinterested shrugs, and suspicion.
Yet one sentiment dominated: Runcorn has been let down. I’m told about the lack of opportunities and facilities for residents, the lack of jobs, the long waiting times for social housing, and the relentless cost of living crisis.
Two elderly women admit they disagree with some of Reform’s ideas, but say they can no longer, in good conscience, vote Labour.
“They betrayed the people that voted for them. Everything they did with the winter fuel allowance and PIP,” they explain.
A man calls Keir Starmer a “Balloon’ead” who’s not helping anything, before adding, “They’re all balloon’eads.”
Another calls Reform, “Just Tories in disguise”, while another man simply sighs: “There’s no point voting. It won’t change anything.”
Immigration comes up a lot. People insist racism plays no part in their concerns, pointing instead to social housing shortages and the job struggles their children and grandchildren are facing.
Several people angrily told me about rumours that the old swimming pool is “becoming a mosque,” and that the former cinema and children’s soft play unit would be converted into “an immigration centre.”
I can understand the frustrations behind this. Many buildings in Runcorn sit empty and boarded up, with little sign they will ever be reopened as community spaces. But when I investigate these claims, I find no cvidence to support them, only a few social media posts repeating them.
Local Reform representatives admit I am not the first to raise these questions, but they can neither confirm nor deny the rumours, telling me they are still “waiting on a definite answer.”
This uncertainty is a real problem. In towns already worn down by decline, a lack of clarity produces misinformation and division. Combine that with the disproportionate airtime given to certain voices and selective reporting by the national media, and these suspicions spread further.
In fact immigration numbers in Runcorn have actually fallen from 947 in March to 690 in June. Most people I speak to are unaware of this.
When I ask whether quality of life has improved in this time, I get the same answer: No.
This speaks to a nuance often overlooked in conversations about political shifts in this country: the power of lived experience.
When your quality of life is visibly worsening, with jobs scarce, facilities boarded up, bills rising, and you also notice new faces in your community, it feels easy to draw a connection.
What is much harder to see is systemic political inequality and decades of chronic underfunding of working-class communities. This kind of neglect has no obvious face. By contrast, the ‘enemy’ politicians point to on the news or social media is visible, tangible, and far easier to blame.
Alongside disillusionment, I also heard echoes of the widening right-left divide in the mentions of “Out-of-touch lefties” and “Right-wing racists.”
Not all division is bad. Drawing a firm line against bigotry is necessary.
If, after being given the chance to talk, someone reveals themselves to be a racist bigot, then please call them out and turn to insults. I’ll join you.
But currently, it seems that more anger is landing on those misled by lies rather than on the politicians who spread them. That is a wholly ineffective strategy. In the end, this misplaced anger only helps those in power who are culpable of stoking division hide from their responsibility.
It’s bizarre that we have reached a point where many ordinary people feel they have more in common with privately educated multimillionaires like Nigel Farage than with their own neighbours or with immigrants.
The wealth gap in the UK is now more savage than ever, widening by nearly 50 percent in eight years. The richest fifth of households in the country now hold 63 percent of the nation’s wealth, whilst the poorest fifth hold just 0.5 percent.
When I ask people whether they think Nigel Farage genuinely cares about working class people, the answers are split: some confident yeses, some confident nos.
One man says, “Yeah. If he does what he says.”
“Do you think he will do what he says?” I ask.
He pauses before replying. “Got to trust him to deliver, haven’t you? Something’s got to change.”
Right now, the narrative that is being pushed by the hard right is that immigrants are dangerous and that we need to “protect our kids” from them. And of course the unfortunate reality is that every community will always have a few bad people.
But what we really need to protect our kids from is the systemic destruction inflicted on working-class communities, destruction which sows division, misdirects anger and turns us against each other.
Immigrants are being turned into human shields for the elites who back Farage and Jenrick. This treatment of people as pawns, shuffled and sacrificed for political and economic gain, should make us furious. But this anger must finally land on the right targets.
