Blackpool by-election: politicians hoping to inspire voters left apathetic by disgraced Tory Scott Benton

The Conservative, who was stripped of the whip after the scandal, was caught in a sting offering to lobby ministers, leak government documents and table parliamentary questions on behalf of gambling investors. He was suspended from the House of Commons for 35 days, after the Standards Committee found he gave the impression MPs were “corrupt and for sale”. 

Benton quit, triggering Thursday’s by-election in the most insalubrious circumstances. And it’s unsurprising that Sandgrownians are treating the vote with a high degree of apathy. As well as Benton’s ignominious exit, in the neighbouring Fylde constituency Tory MP Mark Menzies announced he’s standing down at the next election after allegations of improper use of party funds. Claims emerged that Menzies had called up his former campaign manager in the middle of the night to demand she transfer him £5,000 to pay off “bad people” who he said were holding him captive.

Voters along the bustling shopping street of Waterloo Road don’t have much time for politicians at the moment. Martin Jones is fixing a toy in Jackie’s Shop when I ask him about the by-election. The 55-year-old accuses politicians of “pocketing money”, before adding the familiar refrain “they are all the same”. He says: “I voted before, but I’m not voting this time.”

Robert Price, 58, repeats the maxim a few yards away, with similar anger. “They are all much of a muchness,” he says about the political parties, adding: “They never do anything.” Other locals I speak to along the front echo the same words - there’s no point in voting, nothing changes.

Paul Faulkner, a local democracy reporter for NationalWorld’s sister site the Blackpool Gazette, said Benton’s departure “does really set the whole tone and tenor of a by-election”. The paper ran a hustings ahead of Thursday’s vote, and Faulkner told me that “the issue of integrity and honesty did come up”. “People commented they want someone who is honourable to represent the best interests of the town rather than themselves, as they perceive to have happened previously,” he explains. 

“Somebody made a comment that MPs should be the best of us, and at the moment it feels like they’re the worst of us.” We’re standing beneath Blackpool Tower, with the wind whipping along the front on a cold April day.

When built in 1894, modelled on the Eiffel Tower, it was the biggest structure in the entire British Empire. This was the heyday of the seaside town, when millions of visitors packed into hotels to bathe in the sea to stay healthy. 

Blackpool became the first place in the world to have street lighting along the promenade, creating the famous illuminations, and also one of the first electric tramways. However, the resort suffered when Britons began favouring package holidays to Europe over a trip to the North West. The walk from the South Pier to the tower is fairly quiet on the day I visit, although I do get flagged down by tourists to take some snaps.

In the 2000s, Blackpool pinned its regeneration hopes on bidding for Britain’s sole super casino licence, but lost out to Manchester. The process was later abandoned by the government. Now, it hosts some of the most deprived parts of the country. Between 2020 and 2022, it had the highest rate of deaths caused by drug misuse in the UK. 

So it’s no surprise that high street regeneration and tackling crime is a priority for people here. As I walk to meet Labour candidate Chris Webb for Blackpool South at the Heritage Coffee Shop, a woman rushes outside to shout at someone for apparently allowing their dog to foul on the pavement. A huge pile of excrement sits behind a small dog that is waddling away. “Pick it up you scr***,” she screams, clearly unhappy at how people are treating the town.

Inside, Webb speaks to me while cradling his newborn son Cillian. He’s effusive about his links to Blackpool, clearly proud of his hometown. “My Dad was a postie,” he says. “My Mum moved to Blackpool to be a Redcoat in Butlins, where she met my Dad and two years later I popped along.”

Webb, 38, tall and bearded, describes growing up on “the borderline in the 80s”. “There were times when they didn’t know if the house was going to get repossessed,” he tells me. “High mortgage rates - dad worked all the overtime he could.”

He says Tony Blair’s Labour government was transformative for him and his family. “I went from a portacabin in my primary school, to a state of the art high school,” he explains. “I saw my mum and dad not worrying about making ends meet, it was no longer beans on toast at the end of the month when it was stretched.

“The minimum wage gave my mum a £1.50 increase an hour instantly and lifted our family out of poverty. I saw Blackpool transformed, we were able to get a GP appointment within a day.”

Webb became the first person in his family to go to university, doing a four-year course in Hull which had a year’s placement in Parliament. He spent that working with the current Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Labour’s former Blackpool South MP Gordon Marsden. 

He also volunteers as a delivery driver for a local foodbank, saying that families have been left in tears when he’s arrived with food parcels. “It’s horrific across the town, these are two-parent households working and really struggling,” he tells me. 

“We’re delivering 14,000 meals-a-week and working with 124 partners across the town and Fylde coast. The donations have dramatically decreased, yet demand is increasing.” Webb says his number one pledge is to launch a community investment fund “to bring the foodbank and businesses together”. “We can make a real difference now before a Labour government gets in,” he adds. 

Labour has been intensely targeting the seat, which it held from 1997 to 2019. Both Labour Leader Keir Starmer and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds have visited Blackpool South, to lend their support to Webb. The Conservatives’ campaign has been more low key. Party chairman Richard Holden visited and told the Gazette: “It obviously will be a tough election for us, especially given the circumstances that brought it about but we will be fighting for every vote.”

I reached out to Conservative candidate David Jones for an interview, however I did not get a response. He has pledged to reopen Blackpool Airport for commercial aviation “to restore flights to Belfast and Douglas to grow key markets in the island of Ireland and the Isle of Man”.

Another charity volunteer who is standing in the election is Reform UK’s Mark Butcher (not the former England test cricketer). He founded the Amazing Grace charity which supports homeless people, and says he will passionately campaign for Blackpool with his focus set on creating a film studio - to rival Pinewood Studios.

He told the Gazette: “If elected, I will be banging on the door of the culture secretary for a slice of £40bn funding to make this a reality - and I will not leave it alone. We need a £1.5m slice. 

“I will be the loudest, most annoying MP that has ever sat in a seat. This will bring more than just jobs, it will inspire our town and bring our kids back to life, we need employment all year round. 

“It’s our turn and it would attract Netflix, Warner, Disney, Paramount. We have already got a seascape and a tower, seven miles of golden sands. It would be so big for our town. Blackpool has been producing film and music for decades, it’s our heritage and history to make people stars, we need to keep our talent here.”

Blackpool voted two-to-one in favour of Brexit, and so Reform UK will be hoping to compete with the Conservatives for second place. Butcher’s vote will be a good barometer going into the general election for how much Richard Tice’s party are set to disrupt and damage the Tories. 

But even with Labour tipped to win, it doesn’t feel like there’s huge enthusiasm for Keir Starmer in the North West. Paul tells me that locally Labour politicians are talking about “the next Labour government not when Keir Starmer’s in power”. 

“Obviously there's a difference between political indifference and somebody being a political asset or political or electoral liability,” he explains. “Local politicians, their antennae are more tuned in than anybody. So if they thought these leaders were huge political assets they’d be talking about them constantly, their names would have been constantly on their lips.”

Back on Waterloo Road in Blackpool South, Robert Price is not a fan of Keir Starmer. “I don't like the way he performs U-turns, I don’t like the way he backtracks,” he says. “Stand by what you believe in and be a bit more strong.”

On Rishi Sunak, he tells me he feels the Prime Minister is “struggling to do the job”, before adding that he’s “a bit of a weak leader”. Ahead of the by-election in Blackpool South, apathy abounds. 

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.