In front of the Conservative office in Wellingborough, 44 Midland Road, stands an immoveable car, pictured above. Its rear off-side wheel is clamped and flat, its bodywork spattered with bird droppings, and grass has sprouted from the rotten leaves which have accumulated round the windscreen wipers.
No going concern would tolerate the presence of such an eyesore outside its premises, but 44 Midland Road, though still named on the leaflets of Wellingborough Conservative Association as its address, was on Tuesday locked and deserted.
And this is curious, for in two weeks’ time a by-election will be held in Wellingborough, and one would expect the Conservative office to be a hive of industry as the party defends its majority of 18,540 over the Labour Party, won in December 2019 by Peter Bone, who gained the seat in 2005 and first contested it in 2001.
But Bone was last October suspended from the Commons after the Independent Expect Panel ruled he had repeatedly bullied a member of his staff, and had on one occasion indecently exposed himself to the complainant.
Bone denied the allegations, but his appeal was rejected and the panel recommended he should be suspended, a verdict endorsed by the Commons, leading to the withdrawal of the Conservative whip and the triggering of a successful Recall Petition, signed by 10,505 of his constituents, which meant that on 19th December he was ejected from Parliament.
Yet on 7th January Wellingborough Conservative Association selected Bone’s girlfriend, Helen Harrison, as their by-election candidate.
ConservativeHome has heard that Conservative MPs are refusing to come and canvas for Harrison.
Harrison, by profession a physiotherapist, is a Northamptonshire councillor who stood as the Conservative candidate in Ashworth in 2015 and Bolsover in 2017, and worked for Bone as his Senior Parliamentary Assistant.
The office at 44 Midland Road was for many years run by Bone’s wife, Jennie, to whom he often referred at Prime Minister’s Questions, with David Cameron entering into the joke and saying “a very great part of my life is trying to give pleasure to Mrs Bone”.
Harrison continues to protest Bone’s innocence. Her election leaflets, which are displayed in the windows of 44 Midland Road, emphasise that she “is local through and through”, and that like Bone, she wants tough immigration controls:
“It’s Helen Harrison backing locals who want strong action to stop the boats.”
But no indication is given in the window of 44 Midland Road of where locals, or indeed visitors, who wish to campaign for Harrison should report for duty, and Charlotte Ivers, of The Sunday Times, recently spent a day attempting in vain to find her.
ConHome set out to discover what voters in Wellingborough think of all this. In The Gloucester pub, Peter Hughes, 61, a wedding photographer, warned against supposing that most people have made up their minds, or even intend to make up their minds:
“I don’t think people really give a toss about it, to be honest. I think the turnout is going to be really low.”
Hughes used to be a Conservative Party member, voted – as did 62 per cent of people in Wellingborough – for Brexit, but left when Boris Johnson became leader. He said he would like to know a bit more about Harrison before deciding who he will back this time, but admitted he is “worried by her connection with Peter Bone”, and added that he had signed the Recall Petition to get Bone out:
“I think he’s been tainted for some by employing his wife [to run his office]. It’s almost nepotism.”
He had heard the rumour that Bone threatened to run as an independent if Harrison was not selected, but did not know whether this was true, and went on:
“I’m more of a Rishi fan. He’s more of a centralist, and I’m from Southampton, same as him, and my father was a GP in Southampton, same as him, and my wife’s a Hindu.
“I keep hoping he’ll come up to Wellingborough to canvas. I’ve got my Southampton [Football Club] cap in the car in case he does.”
Hughes has already been canvassed on his own doorstep by Gen Kitchen, the young woman standing as the Labour candidate in the by-election, and has had lots of leaflets from Reform, whose candidate is Ben Habib.
But a pensioner in Midland Road said he will certainly vote Conservative:
“The Conservatives had a full back page [in their leaflet] saying what they’re going to do for pensioners. For 27 and a half years I worked permanent nights, 11.30 p.m. to 8.00 a.m., loading lorries for what used to be TNT until it was bought out by FedEx, and the actual Conservative message about pensions is what I want to hear.
“I liked Peter Bone, I’m not going to say a word against him. There’s about eight of us pensioners in these 12 houses, and we are going to get out and vote Conservative.”
Everyone in Wellingborough was friendly, but many people were unforthcoming about what if anything they will do on 15th February. One lady, when asked if she would like to comment on the by-election, replied:
“No I’m afraid I don’t. I’m really sorry. I do apologise.”
How one could conduct an opinion poll of such reticent and in many cases undecided people is hard to imagine. Several Poles declined to get involved in any way in the politics of Wellingborough, while a newsagent of Asian descent said with a merry laugh of the election candidates:
“They’re all as bad as each other! Simple as that!”
The Labour Party election headquarters, at 6 Sheep Street, a more prosperous thoroughfare than Midland Road, had an open door and was a hive of activity, one wall covered in the signatures of people who have already been to campaign for Kitchen, she herself just setting off in a red coat to canvas along with a colleague, and Toby Perkins, Labour MP for Chesterfield, setting out with two more campaigners in the opposite direction.
In Ye Golden Lion, a beautiful old building at 19 Sheep Street, a man said the Reform Party had been in there, but had just sounded like “naive reactionaries”, and people “grow out of that kind of idealism”. Of the selection of Harrison as Conservative candidate he said:
“I think it’s looked on as cronyism, nepotism, as many isms as you can find. It’s a funny way of going about things. Only a madman would think it’s a good idea.
“It’s detachment from common sense, or brazen stupidity, I don’t know which. It’s beyond belief, really. This is a bit of a funny town. It’s very diverse. They’re quite apathetic, I think.”
A man sitting on one of the commodious benches in the Swansgate Shopping Centre said of the candidates:
“Oh what a corrupt bunch of idiots! I wouldn’t vote for any of them. I don’t like that Keir Starmer. He talks a load of absolute garbage. They all do.
“There’s two Tory MPs that are actually convicted paedophiles – I happened to be looking at that on YouTube. So how can you trust them?
“I was a working man until I had trouble with my left knee. The only reason they couldn’t put me in Parliament is I tell the truth.
“And as for Peter Bone exposing himself, well, he should have known better.
“I’ve already voted – I do postal votes – but I’ve not even bothered with the big parties this year. I’ve gone not for Reform but for another one which promised to put British people first.
“They should be building houses for our ex-military men and women. My uncle was in the military, he was in the Royal Marines, he served in Aden.
“Me, myself, I rely on food parcels, it seems as though we’ve gone back to Victorian times.”
During the 2015 General Election ConHome sketched Bone as he, his wife, Harrison, her daughter and others canvassed for their young friend Tom Pursglove as he stood, it turned out successfully, for the Conservatives in Corby.
The approach of Bone and his local allies was to be “more UKIP than UKIP”: to demand tough immigration controls, oppose a European superstate, and remain ruggedly independent of Westminster.
But in this by-election, sturdy independence from Westminster has become brazen defiance of Westminster, and it is hard to see how the Conservative machine can work any better than the abandoned car outside 44 Midland Road.