NIGEL FARAGE RESONATES WITH UK SEASIDE VOTERS -Britain’s July 4 election will be Farage’s eighth attempt to win a seat in parliament
Nigel Farage’s brand of politics has found a home in the English seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea, where voters described the right-wing party leader as a straight talker who, unlike other candidates, understands their problems and wants to solve them.
Britain’s July 4 election will be Farage’s eighth attempt to win a seat in parliament after the anti-EU, anti-immigration campaigner entered the race proclaiming his aim to supplant the ruling Conservatives as the main party of the right.
Farage is an expensively educated former financial trader. But decades of railing against the establishment have earned him the trust of supporters who say they feel other politicians talk down to them.
“I feel like he’s more normal. He understands us,” Venetia Maynard, 29, a cleaner, told Reuters while out shopping on Monday (June 17).
Clacton has all the hallmarks of a British seaside resort: fish and chips, ice creams, and pockets of deprivation left by a shrunken tourism industry and decades of underinvestment.
Interviewed on the day Farage launched his Reform UK’s plan for government, Maynard said she was going to vote for him although she didn’t know that much about his policies.
Under Britain’s electoral system, Reform can’t win this election, Farage himself said on Monday. But he says Reform can emerge as the main opposition to a center-left government of the Labour Party, which is forecast by polls to win a thumping majority.
First, Farage himself must win a seat in Clacton. Polls show the seat is likely to be a close three horse race between Labour, the Conservatives and Reform.