“Not a penny more on your council tax, not a penny more than the bill you paid last year,” Sir Keir Starmer raved as he whipped up supporters at Labour’s local election campaign launch in Swindon in 2023.
Addressing members holding “build a better Britain” signs, Sir Keir’s statement to freeze council tax the following year – arguably irrelevant as Labour was not power – matched the ambition of other key pledges to cut energy bills and revive the high street.
Soon-to-be chancellor Rachel Reeves even said there were no plans to increase capital gains tax.
But three years is a long time in politics.
Gone are the heady days of a 17-point lead in the polls. Now is a critical moment for Sir Keir who, while struggling to maintain UK-US relations amid a war in the Middle East, is facing his own fight to save his government, and his job.
And in the bellwether area of Swindon – which has voted in MPs of the party that ends up in government since 1983 – the battlelines are being drawn for a local election on 7 May that could give the clearest indication yet on the future of Sir Keir, as well as the rise of Reform UK and the Green Party.
But on a visit to the former railway town last month, the outlook for Sir Keir and his party was bleak.
“I’ll be voting for Reform – it can’t get any worse,” said pensioner John Doult, until now a lifelong Labour voter who was among the thousands employed in the town’s once-famous car industry.
The 86-year-old bemoaned the “terrible” state of the town centre, attributing the loss of Debenhams and Marks and Spencers, while also hitting out at Ms Reeves’ decision to freeze income tax thresholds, which he said created a “two-tier” pension system by punishing those who had saved for retirement.
Immigration – a subject not far from the lips of many people – was out of control, he added.
Eddy, who is sat on a bench opposite near several boarded-up shops in the town centre, also indicated he would vote for Reform. “You can’t do any worse that what we’re getting today,” he said. “I think the ordinary person has seen we’ve had the Conservatives in charge here, and then Labour, and nothing has changed.
“We still have roads full of potholes, the town centre is only getting worse. We need new ideas, new people.”
During the six hours The Independent spoke to people in Swindon, not one person said they would vote for Labour, although not everyone was backing Reform.
Jennifer Selwood said: “This is first time I won’t vote for Labour, or not at all even. I wouldn’t vote Green, nor Reform. We’ll look at stuff that comes through the door.”
She and her husband Antony are unhappy over being “stung” for tax by Labour over their savings, NHS waiting times and a lack of housing for their grandchildren. She said the town centre was “tired and old” and avoided going unless for an appointment.
The town centre has been a focus of the Labour-controlled borough council.
Work has finished on a new transport gateway and artwork is going up along closed shop fronts at the site of the former outdoor market. There are also plans in the pipeline as part of a long-term strategy for a new entertainment venue and thousands of affordable homes.
The town centre is also home to Zurich Insurance’s headquarters, which opened two years ago.
But many areas clearly require investment, like the huge former Debenhams store, still abandoned six years after closing. Regent Circus, a shopping complex opened just 13 years ago, sits empty, apart from a Nando’s restaurant.
A council report last year said the town centre required “reinvention”.
Away from the town centre is the former Oasis Leisure Centre, which, with vegetation growing arounds its famous glass dome, has been shut for five years. On the northern outskirts of the town, the former speedway and greyhound track closed last year and appears destined for housing.
The town’s out-of-centre retail parks – Orbital Shopping Park and Greenbridge Retail and Leisure Park – appear busy, and there is major work ongoing to regenerate the closed-down plants left by Honda, when it ceased production in 2021, with the loss of thousands of jobs.
For some, the state of Swindon reflects the state of the country.
“Everyone is feeling it, everywhere in the country,” said Carol Richardson, who moved down the M4 corridor from Reading to Swindon with her partner to be closer to her daugher. Stood in the shadow of the closed speedway track, the 74-year-old added: “Cost of living, the building of houses without care and thought, the demise of our town centres. It has been a failure of promises to build a better country.”
In February, Swindon South MP and transport minister Heidi Alexander helped launch Labour’s local election campaign. The party won 41 of the 57 councillor seats in 2024, but has since seen its number fall to 34, with four councillors defected to the Green Party last year.
Tellingly, Ms Alexander used almost half of her 488-word social media plea for Swindon to “stick with us” to attack Reform, calling its members “a brunch of cranks and pound shop nationalists”. Mr Farage, on Thursday night, brought Reform’s national local election campaign tour to Swindon.
Meanwhile, the Green Party, buoyed by success at the Gorton and Denton by-election, has been flexing its muscles locally, with leader Zack Polanski telling supporters he was confident of more ex-Labour voters turning Green during a visit in October.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party has also said it will have a presence at the election.
Leading pollster Robert Hayward said the lack of party loyalty from voters in Swindon made the area a credible target for Reform. At the last election in Swindon South and Swindon North, the Tories lost 25 per cent and 27 per cent of the share respectively, with Labour increasing their own by eight and 10 per cent.
Lord Hayward said: “Swindon is that sort of area that became disenchanted with the Conservatives which didn’t necessarily vote for Labour, but they just wouldn’t vote for the Conservatives any longer. So you’ve got people who are disenchanted with politics and certainly they are the sort of people that Reform would play to very well.”
Asked what it would mean if Labour lost control of the council, Lord Hayward said it would be too early to predict the next general election, but said it would “confirm the problem that Labour have got with their white working class voters”.
