Amid the latest round of speculation that Rishi Sunak could opt for a summer general
election , one particular line from a No 10 insider caught my eye this week. With defeat seen as “inevitable”, an adviser reportedly said the real focus was damage limitation and “doing whatever they can to protect Sunak’s reputation and legacy”. Yet whenever the PM does finally decide to go to the country and campaign for re-election, his party will be missing the one Tory politician whose own legacy is almost certain to outlast anything Sunak could hope for. Robert Halfon, who this week quit as skills minister and announced he was not contesting the next election , is the Tory MP whose campaigning led to the Cameron-Clegg coalition to freeze fuel duty way back in 2010 and it’s remained in place ever since. So politically powerful is the policy that it’s almost impossible to imagine Rachel Reeves unpicking it (indeed one
Labour insider told me last year that a renewed fuel duty freeze could well be sold as “Rachel’s first tax cut”). The freeze is far from popular among economists or environmentalists, many of whom point to its huge price tag. Costing more than £6bn a year, and £130bn since its introduction, it’s no wonder David Cameron once joked that Halfon was “the most expensive MP in parliament”. But whatever the criticisms, including the charge that wealthy motorists benefit most , Halfon’s policy has for years given the Tories one of their few “retail” policies on the doorstep on the cost of living. Just as importantly, the Harlow MP’s drive for “blue collar Conservativism” also played a key role in persuading his party to lean into Labour’s National Minimum Wage (instead of bitterly opposing it as they did under Blair and Brown), with George Osborne introducing an enhanced “National Living Wage” in 2015. The significance of that shift will be underlined on Monday, when the minimum wage rises from £10.42 to £11.44 an hour, the third-biggest increase (in real terms and cash terms) in its 25-year history. Halfon’s legacy will also be felt in the shape of degree apprenticeships and the Lifelong Learning Act, which allows adults more flexibility to study vocational courses. He was also the first MP to hire an apprentice in his Commons office, now something more common. Again, although the policies are far from perfect (the apprenticeship levy on businesses is due serious reform), this was an agenda aimed at responding to the needs of working-class
Britain . That’s because Halfon’s seat of Harlow is a “New Town”, one of the many created after the Second World War to house people across the South and the Midlands. And their high concentration of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers – plus their lower than average number of public sector workers – means these really are bellwether constituencies, where a switch to one party normally signals a change of government. What’s fascinating about these seats is just how marginal they are, and how local and hardworking any politician has to be to convince their voters. In Harlow, Halfon (who was the first MP to put his constituency in his
Twitter name ‘@halfon4harlow’) was the losing candidate in two general
elections before winning in 2010. In Northampton North, Labour’s Sally Keeble fought a staggering seven general elections, winning three times and losing four times. The often wafer-thin majorities in New Towns ram home just how many floating voters there are. Labour’s Bill Rammell won Harlow by just 97 votes in 2005, while Tory Mike Penning had a 499-vote margin that year in Hemel Hempstead. In Crawley in Sussex, Labour’s Laura Moffat won by 37 votes, prompting her to get a tattoo of the number 37 on her foot. Moffat joked that if she won a bigger majority next time “I’ll have to tattoo somewhere bigger, like my bum”. She didn’t stand again, and the Tories won in 2010. Read Next Why some Tory MPs are eyeing a June election In fact, in 2010, the Tories won every single one of the 16 New Town seats in
England, a dramatic turnaround from 1997 when Labour won a clean sweep of them too. Crucially, all of the New Town seats are still true blue today. Even in 2017, the “Corbyn surge” that was powered by discontent with
Theresa May failed to make a dent in these seats, with just one of the 16 (Peterborough) briefly going Labour before falling back to the Conservatives in the Johnson landslide of 2019. After the 2017 election, Labour conducted some soul searching research specifically in these seats. It discovered that while its anti-austerity policies were popular, too many voters distrusted the party on
Brexit,
immigration, support for small business and economic credibility. The disastrous result of 2019 suggested none of those lessons was learned – the Tory majority in Harlow increased to a massive 14,000. And while polling in the so-called “ Red Wall ” suggests Labour is set to win back its former heartland seats in the North and the Midlands, the real prize is to win the swing New Town seats and other marginals (like Blackpool South, where a by-election takes place in May) that determine which party forms a government. To do so, the party has to prove it has a compelling vision on skills, apprenticeships,
Job security and fairness at work. In each area, trade unions are vital and it’s not a coincidence that Halfon once urged his party to “stop the union bashing” (advice long since unheeded). But most of all in these New Towns, it’s housing policy that could prove key. Don’t forget their very identity is rooted in the post-war need for affordable homes for the less well off. New Towns were started by the Attlee government but massively accelerated by the Conservatives under Macmillan, and were dominated by council housing. That consensus, plus Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy turning tenants into homeowners, is partly why the “toxic Tories” tag doesn’t work as well in these seats. In 2024, however, the need for affordable housing is more acute than ever and the past 14 years of failure to build enough homes to rent (or buy) could be why the New Towns turn against the Tories. Last year, Halfon himself warned his party to invest more in social housing and they just haven’t listened. Not for nothing has Keir Starmer promised a new generation of “new towns”, though the party needs to spell out just how much will come from council housing, not just private investment. Halfon is not the only “New Town Tory” who has decided not to contest the next election. Steve McPartland in Stevenage, Henry Smith in Crawley, Lucy Allan in Telford, Mike Penning in Hemel Hempstead will quit the field too, perhaps anticipating another generational shift taking place. On 2 May, Tory-run Harlow Council has “all out” elections (where every seat is up for grabs). If Labour makes serious gains, that may tell us more than any other area which way the wind is blowing for the general election . But no one can be sure yet just how these seats will vote. And that’s the best thing about them. With a history voting both Conservative and Labour, they lack the tribal ties and buyer’s remorse that will be in play in the Red Wall. Politically omnivorous, the New Towns will judge both main parties on what they have to offer for the future as well as their past record. Whoever has the best plans for better homes, jobs and skills will win their votes – and deservedly so. Paul Waugh resigned as i ’s chief political commentator in January to stand as the Labour candidate for Rochdale, a contest won by Azhar Ali