Stagnation, Segregation and Shit-Life Syndrome – Why the Faragist Right Thrives in Some Places and Not Others
As Nigel Farage stages his embarrassing by-election, author Jonas Marvin reflects on why his home town of Stoke-on-Trent is so vulnerable to Reform UK – and how the rightward march could be halted.
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Growing up a Londoner, I found the burgeoning dominance of property developers and the exorbitant costs of living and renting made life in the capital increasingly suffocating. Eventually, I made the choice to leave. After 18 months, once I’d settled in Stoke-on-Trent and started to fall in love with the place, I began to process what it was that drew me to this city. A far cry from the image of monoculturalism projected by Westminster politicians, the Potteries are home to people from all over the world, more often than not, living, learning and creating together. It doesn’t have the kind of saturated and well-financed artistic offer that London has, but there exists a tapestry of artist communities making sense of the region and remaking it, often with an ecological twist, bending the city’s industrial past to present beauty. There is real community too, within and between the famous six towns, not yet trampled upon by the rampant march of real estate-led gentrification.
But paradoxically, these conditions are also what makes Britain’s rustbelt regions so vulnerable to the politics of Reform UK, even as Nigel Farage stages an embarrassing by-election in Clacton in an attempt to absolve himself of allegations of financial corruption.
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