On paper, it is a constituency that should be a shoe-in for the Conservatives. But boundary changes along with voters disenchanted by the Conservative government are creating choppy political waters in one coastal town which has been true blue for the best part of four decades.
Could a big shock be on the cards? Political editor Paul Francis takes the political temperature in Herne Bay.
If you wanted a quintessential seaside town, then Herne Bay ticks all the right boxes. It boasts a pier, a bandstand, beach huts and fish and chip shops. Like a lot of coastal towns, however, it faces challenges, among them a local economy heavily dependent on tourism that has been knocked sideways in recent years.
Herne Bay’s heyday as a seaside resort was arguably during the late Victorian era; the population nearly doubled from 4,410 to 8,442 between 1881 and 1901.
Many were drawn to the town because of the belief that sea bathing had various health benefits, an irony given the current anger facing water companies discharging sewage into the sea.
So, why the interest in an electoral battle in what is on paper, the definition of a safe seat?
In every election since 1983, the incumbent Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale has triumphed - with the closest contest in 1997 when the Blair landslide nearly swallowed it up.
However, the constituency has seen boundary changes and been renamed as Herne Bay and Sandwich, dropping any reference to Thanet.
The faltering Conservative campaign nationally is reflected in wide variations in opinion polls with early figures at the start of the campaign suggesting a neck-and-neck tussle between the Conservatives and Labour.
But the outlook appears to have swung back to the Conservative veteran Sir Roger Gale, who has represented the seat since 1983. Electoral Calculus is now predicting him to have a 90% chance of winning – a significant turnaround.
The swings show the volatility of the electorate. Martin Baxter, the head of Electoral Calculus, says on paper, the seat ought to be a safe Conservative seat:
“The demographics show it is economically right of centre; socially Conservative and voted to leave the EU in quite strong numbers so it ought to be strong Conservative territory but it is marginal.
One unknown factor is how support for Reform UK may impact the main contenders, he says.
“If the Conservatives can squeeze the Reform vote, they could win it. But when we polled, Reform supporters did not want to vote tactically. So that could be very advantageous to Labour.”
Asked what the biggest threat is to the Conservative campaign, he says it is that voters are facing in lots of different directions.
“Some have gone to Labour; some have gone to the Lib Dems; many Tory supporters say they will stay at home, Reform UK will take votes away from the Conservatives but they won’t win any MPs.”
Strolling along the promenade on a sunny Saturday, with the noise of fairground rides on the pier in the background, plenty are willing to talk about not just the failings of the government but the failings of all the parties.
Amber, a 25-year-old health worker in east Kent, says she normally backs the Green party, supporting them partly as a protest vote.
“I don’t like either of the two big parties at the moment; neither have historically done what they have said they would.”
Has Rishi Sunak just been dealt a poor hand? “If you are dealt a poor hand, there are ways to handle it. He seems a bit naive to me.”
Top of the new government’s priorities should be affordable housing for younger people to get a foot on the housing ladder. “There is no way in the current market that I can afford to buy a house. Even the deposit has gone up over the last 14 years; it is something like a minimum of £80,000; there’s no way I can find that.”
Stopping to chat to Ruth and David at a bus stop as a shower threatens, Ruth scoffs at the government’s plans to curb migrants. “They’re not stopping anyone; they fly out to Rwanda; then over here we have the human rights’ people and no-one picks up the fact that they have come through safe routes,” adding that she has worked at a hotel in Margate, which has accommodated hundreds of child asylum seekers.
Another couple come into the shelter, keen to get their views known, one of whom is also called Ruth.
She says: “It doesn’t matter who you vote for, it doesn’t matter because whoever gets in they are going to say the same thing - ‘oh, the Tories left such a mess...it’s going to cost us to get it fixed.’
It is a refrain heard a lot from disenchanted voters - that the main parties are all the same.
Dan Watkins, Conservative county councillor for Herne Bay East, said: “It is a town which is wonderful in many ways but does have challenges and we want to address those challenges. Missed opportunities? Yes, there is the levelling up fund that is one - we had hoped that would help with the bandstand and the Kings Hall and with some transport issues. There have been some successes; the up-grade to the train station is taking place.”
The failed bid to get some government cash to invest in redeveloping the seafront has been a particularly bitter pill to swallow.
He says the town needs to exploit its main asset - the pier - focusing on what could be done to draw visitors who may be seduced by their flashier neighbours in Margate and Broadstairs.
“It is not blessed with a massive creative industry in the way Margate is,” he says. Businesses, meanwhile, are cautious about the local economy and whether it has turned a corner.
Hassan Hassan, who runs two coffee shops in the town, has been in catering for the best part of two decades. “We are still in a bad period and I don’t think we are going to be coming out of anything soon; in fact I think it will be worse before its gets better.”
He says his own business is strong. “We have been in the trade for 30 years and the reason we have hung on when times are bad is because we are super-efficient.”
Unusually, he cites Brexit as more damaging to the economy than the Covid pandemic. “The cost of goods has just sky-rocketed; Covid was a big smokescreen - no-one really saw the effect [of Brexit] because something else came along. Covid had its own issues and all these things have happened one after the other.”
But if there is one issue that unites rather than divides parties, it is the scandal of water companies discharging polluted material directly into the sea. Like all the beaches around the north Kent coast, it has seen the stink of raw sewage over the seafront affect visitor numbers.
Hassan Hassan says he sees for himself the impact. “I’m on the seafront so I see the numbers year in, year out. And I have seen a decline over the last four years and a massive part of that is the amount of untreated sewage being pumped into the sea.”
Green party candidate Thea Barrett says there is genuine outrage at the cavalier way that the water companies deal with the complaints.
“Sewage is the number one issue on the doorstep; it is called a sewage spill but it is a sewage dump; we know what is going on and the harm to the sea and it puts people of swimming so we lose out in tourism.We need to be holding Southern Water to account rather than just imposing fines.
For Labour, the issue of affordable housing is emerging as a key priority according to candidate Helen Whitehead, a former headteacher who now works in the NHS and is deputy leader of the Thanet council.
"It is very clear that voters across Herne Bay, Sandwich and West Thanet want change. It is equally clear that our commitment to public services, cleaning up our seas, and ensuring we are producing the right homes in the right places is a future that voters are backing.”
Kent’s longest-serving MP has insisted there is all to play for in the general election and the party could still be in power after July 4.
Sir Roger Gale says he has “enough fuel in the tank” to continue with his work and to achieve his political ambitions.
He acknowledges the party was on the back foot and had been harmed by the latest row over betting.
“There is a lot of anger about Farage’s support for Putin; so people who may have been dallying with Reform are now realising that it is not what they want to do. There is a straight choice between Labour and me.”
He says the Conservatives are faced by the strangely British attitude that it was time for another lot to ‘have a go’ at running the country.
“You can’t fight that; we have been in power for 14 years. What we have done and what we have done right is almost immaterial.”
And he echoes the view of senior figures in the party to flag up the dangers of giving Starmer ‘a super-majority.’
“Given the unwieldy economy I think we will see very significant tax rises. It is a very very dangerous situation. Governments need healthy opposition.”
He accepts the waste water authorities needed to do more to improve the system but warned that improvement plans would be “massively costly” for companies and lead to extensive work on main roads.
List of candidates for Herne Bay and Sandwich:
Conservative: Sir Roger Gale
Labour: Helen Whitehead
Lib Dems: Angie Curwen
Green party:Thea Barrett
Reform UK: Amelia Randall
