“I genuinely think the people of Uxbridge do not like being taken for a ride,” John Randall said, speaking with an authority founded on long experience.
Randall was the surprise Conservative victor, by 3,766 votes, of the by-election held in Uxbridge in July 1997. The sitting Tory MP, Sir Michael Shersby, had unexpectedly died seven days after being returned at the 1997 general election with a majority of only 724.
Labour were expected to take the seat, but had a fearful row about candidate selection. “They got quite desperate in the end,” Randall told ConHome. Tony Blair, freshly elected in Labour’s landslide victory in May 1997, broke with the convention that Prime Ministers did not campaign in by-elections and came down to speak, and Peter Mandelson descended on Uxbridge and made unavailing efforts to rescue the campaign.
In the by-election to be held this Thursday in Uxbridge and South Ruislip (the boundaries were changed before the general election of 2010), Labour is also in difficulties.
This time the problem is ULEZ, the Ultra Low Emission Zone which Sadiq Khan has decided will expand to the outer boroughs from 29th August.
In Uxbridge (which is in London’s westernmost borough, Hillingdon) this is deeply unpopular. Randall, campaigning at noon on Saturday outside Uxbridge Station at the end of the Metropolitan and Piccadilly Lines, was wearing a “Stop ULEZ” badge, and so were his fellow Conservatives, including the party’s candidate Steve Tuckwell.
There was nothing about this group to show they are Conservatives, a point only to be found buried in the leaflets they were handing out.
Nor was the Labour candidate, Danny Beales, seen later walking down the High Street past Uxbridge Station, wearing a Labour rosette.
The fashion for local candidates has gone so far that they no longer advertise their membership of national parties.
Beales was born in the local hospital and grew up in the local area, but suffers the handicap of being a councillor in Camden, in central London.
A nurse sitting with her husband drinking coffee said: “The biggest issue is ULEZ. I’ve retired from the NHS after 49 years. What about the carers who can’t make visits any more?”
People in Uxbridge tend not to conform to media stereotypes, for example that the NHS is in an unbearable state of crisis. The nurse said: “If I had my time again I’d do the same job again. I love my job.” As she walks round Uxbridge she is often greeted by her former patients.
How will she vote in the by-election? “Up until Jeremy Corbyn I was a Labour person,” she said. “Labour looked after the schools, the hospitals and the elderly.
“But the party has changed now and I’m afraid I have no confidence in them. Keir Starmer wouldn’t come out and actually go against Sadiq Khan [on ULEZ] in a television interview, when he was asked about him.
“Boris as MP for Hillingdon had done well. We’ve got new schools, and we’re getting a new hospital.”
The by-election was triggered by the resignation from the Commons of Boris Johnson, who in 2015 succeeded Randall as MP, and in 2019 was returned with a majority of 7,210.
It was impossible, in the High Street, to forget the ULEZ issue. A candidate called NoUlezLeo was performing anti-ULEZ songs outside the Pavilions Shopping Centre, while a hundred yards nearer the station Piers Corbyn, brother of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, broadcast from a loud speaker mounted on his ancient Vauxhall Cavalier: “Vote for me, Piers Corbyn, your best hope of stopping ULEZ.”
By-elections are a chance for voters to protest, and in Uxbridge there seems to be a stronger desire to protest against Khan’s traffic plan than against Rishi Sunak.
Residents of Uxbridge (abolished as a Municipal Borough in 1965, when it was made part of the London Borough of Hillingdon, and of Greater London) tend not to regard themselves as Londoners.
“I’m a Middlesex person,” one woman declared. The tide of suburban housing swept out along the tube lines, enveloping ancient settlements, but not obliterating ancient loyalties.
ULEZ is a trendy metropolitan idea which will force everyone in Uxbridge with a non-compliant car to pay £12.50 a day to use it.
A retired printer said: “I would not like to see a change round here. It’s a decent enough place to live. It’s a pity that Mr Johnson had such an arrogant streak to get caught out. Pity we don’t still have a local man, Mr Randall.”
A woman having a smoke at the back of the Pavilions Shopping Centre said: “I just want Boris back. I really like him. He’s got personality, and he was visible in Uxbridge.
“He actually visited people’s places of work. He came to where I work [as a credit manager]. I liked him for all the things he did during lockdown, even though he broke the rules, but who didn’t break the rules?
“We wouldn’t have had the Covid jab if it wasn’t for him. If he ever stood again, I would vote for him. We all want him back.”
Will she vote Conservative on Thursday? “Well reluctantly,” she said. “I’ve always voted Conservative, but I’m just not sure I’m going to this time.”
Another woman said: “They shouldn’t have got rid of Boris. I said I wouldn’t vote for them any more after what they did to Boris. But now I’m thinking we’ve got to keep Labour out.”
But a third woman, sitting on a bench with her husband, said: “We’ve always voted Conservative, but we’re not going to vote this time. We are thoroughly cheesed off with the way the Tories have behaved in recent times.
“Johnson I’m afraid is totally bent in respect of HS2.”
“He’s been a terrible let-down,” her husband agreed. “He could have been the best Prime Minister since Churchill and Thatcher. He hasn’t lived up to expectations.”
“I’m a fan of ULEZ,” a man sitting on a bench in the High Street said. “I’ve been into London and the air quality is poor. You see it on the news, children growing up getting lung diseases.
“I think the Labour Party will get my vote. I always think we need to share things round, and that’s the Labour philosophy.”
A young man born in Holland, resident in England for seven years, said he will vote for whichever party is most friendly towards immigrants.
Seventeen candidates are standing in Thursday’s by-election. A courteous man from Southend who is standing under the name “77 Joseph” told ConHome: “God is preparing me to become the future Archbishop of Canterbury, the future King and the future Pope.”
If Labour wins in Uxbridge, Khan will treat the result as an endorsement of ULEZ. But what is striking about the people of the town is their refusal to take their opinions from anyone else.
In 1972, an earlier Conservative MP for Uxbridge, Charles Curran, died, and it was expected that the party would lose the resulting by-election, instead of which it hung on there but lost the seemingly safer seat of Sutton & Cheam to the Liberals.
Uxbridge is a small-c conservative place which often refuses to conform to metropolitan expectations, and which on Thursday might do so again.