Bishop Auckland was once part of the Labour Party’s heartland in the North East of England. But it fell to the Tories in 2019 as Labour pushed to appease anti-Brexit campaigners. And Transform candidate in the general election Rachel Maughan doesn’t think today’s Labour is a meaningful alternative to the Tories.
She spoke to the Canary about the immense damage Keir Starmer and his ilk have done to the party that used to dominate in the region.
The rich are to blame for the North East’s troubles, not immigrants
Most of the poorest places in the UK are in the north of England. And in the North East in particular, as ChronicleLive reported in 2023, “54.6% of homes were classed as deprived”, which “was the highest rate in England and Wales”. Government statistics show lower life expectancy there than the national average, along with other serious issues.
One of the towns that Westminster has severely neglected is Bishop Auckland, which Northern Echo readers voted “the worst town for empty shops in the North East”. And this is where Rachel Maughan is standing.
As academic papers have insisted, the Brexit campaign managed to capitalise on “deep-seated political disaffection as people railed against prolonged economic abandonment and social injustice” in areas of Britain that southern political and economic elites had apparently forgotten about.
Far-right opportunists tried to make the vote about immigration, and to some extent succeeded, but the North East in particular was the region that had long received the smallest number of immigrants in the whole of England. And Maughan also believes that it’s wrong for right-wingers to scapegoat immigrants for the problems of the region. As she told the Canary:
The reason there’s no jobs is because no one’s creating jobs.
And she knows where ordinary people should really place the blame – on a system that works loyally to “satisfy the rich”:
They’re the ones who are taking everything. Nobody else.
Starmer has “absolutely trashed” Labour
County Durham was once Labour-dominated, but the Tories took four seats in the area from Labour in 2019 after the latter adopted its controversial second-referendum policy.
In 2017, Corbyn had a clear line on respecting the Brexit vote but, in the following two years, that clarity faded as he faced significant pressure from right-wingers like Keir Starmer. And as Rachel Maughan explained, there were people in traditionally safe Labour areas like Bishop Auckland who thought it was “the right and democratic thing to do” to respect the Brexit vote:
That part of the thing against Corbyn was ‘well what he wants to do isn’t democracy. We’ve already voted for Brexit.’ So he was kind of put in that… impossible position.
Bishop Auckland is one of the places in Britain that is economically left-wing but socially conservative, and which voted quite strongly for Brexit.
Labour’s 2019 election loss and the dodgy rhetoric around why it happened, meanwhile, empowered people like Keir Starmer who pushed for a change of direction. And Maughan has a very clear view of what Starmer has done to Labour since taking over:
So he tells us he’s permanently changed it. And I’m inclined to believe him. I think he’s absolutely trashed it.
As an MP, Rachel Maughan “would make sure” she “was accessible”
Sending a message to people in her constituency, Rachel Maughan insisted:
If they voted for me, I would be doing the job to satisfy them. So I would want to deliver… I would make sure that I was accessible and knew exactly what they wanted me to fix for them, and then I’d go and do it. I wouldn’t be held to a whip – I think that’s the main thing.
So if we’re having votes in parliament, I’m not coming back and saying ‘oh, Keir Starmer said I had to vote like this ‘cos that’s the best for you’. I would be going to Westminster and saying ‘well actually, my constituents told me to vote like this’. And there may be times when that might go against my personal belief…
I would hope that by engaging with people and being accessible, that actually when it came to voting for things, we were more on the same page and there would be less division, because that’s what we’ve had since 2016 and Brexit…
The way we do politics in this country needs changing, and it’s never going to change with one of the main two parties in charge, because obviously it works for them.
So really, ideally, if people vote for independents and we can have some kind of hung parliament, we might be able to get to a system of proportional representation or some kind of change in our democracy so that we can hold people to account.
And she stressed just how invested she is in the community, saying:
I mean what I say. I’m not in it to line my own pockets – I’m in it to actually try and make a difference. I was raised here. I’ve raised my kids here… I really care. I’ve got parents here who are getting older – they’re gonna need social care. My extended family are here.
So I really care about what happens in this town. I also actually really care about what happens in this country, and I’m scared of this lurch to the right and I feel like we really need to do something to rein it back.
For more on Maughan’s comments on the election and other issues, see the full interview on our YouTube channel:
Feature image via the Canary
