Trafford is Greater Manchester’s only Conservative-run council. Labour hopes to change that next month
ANDREW WESTERN no longer plays “car bingo”. When canvassing in Trafford, a generally prosperous borough south of Manchester, the leader of the local Labour Party used to guess whether a household voted Labour or Tory based on the car in the driveway. This was until 2012, when he came across a new-build estate full of BMWs and Land Rovers. To Mr Western’s surprise, most planned to vote Labour. “We stopped at that point,” he says.
The once solidly Conservative borough is now a marginal council that Labour hopes to win in local elections on May 3rd. When it comes to Greater Manchester, Trafford is the only Tory in the village. It is easy to see why. Overall, the borough is rich. The gross weekly wage for a man in Trafford is £673 ($965), barely £30 less than in London and £158 more than in nearby Salford. Its treasured grammar schools are among the best in the country. (A local Conservative MP, Sir Graham Brady, quit a shadow minister role in 2007 because of his party’s opposition at the time to grammars.) Well-to-do suburbs blend into a sea of villages and golf courses. It should be Tory territory.
Things are changing, however. High house prices in central Manchester are forcing young, Labour-voting people farther into the suburbs. Trafford backed Remain in the Brexit referendum of 2016, something that is mentioned on the doorstep, according to Kate Green, a local Labour MP who represents a less well-off chunk of the area. Sir Graham’s majority halved at the election last year, while Manchester’s new Labour mayor, Andy Burnham, won every ward in Trafford.
Now Trafford council may be ripe for a takeover. But what type of Labour can win over a Tory borough? Greater Manchester has a few models to choose from. On one side of the River Irwell, in Salford, is a mayor loyal to Labour’s far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Salford council brags about plans to build social housing and shake property developers until they cough up cash for affordable homes. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the MP for Salford and Eccles and shadow business secretary, is an acolyte of Mr Corbyn and sometimes tipped as a future leader.
In Manchester itself, the council has a different approach. Affordable housing has come second to a relentless focus on attracting investment, a tactic that in the past two decades has turned Manchester into Britain’s second city. Lucy Powell, the Labour MP for Manchester Central, was among those who tried to defenestrate Mr Corbyn as leader in a coup in 2016. The change that Mr Corbyn has brought to the top of Labour nationally has done little to alter the party’s course locally.
Trafford is left in the middle, doing its best to ride a surge in support for Mr Corbyn that has trebled the local party’s membership since 2015, while at the same time trying not to alienate Tory swing-voters, for whom Mr Corbyn holds little appeal. Mr Western plays down any internal differences. Labour’s local manifesto contains pledges to build social housing, stop further outsourcing, and block development on green-belt land. “I would describe it as solid Labour,” says Mr Western. “Nobody in Manchester or Salford would disagree with those aims.”
Voters don’t pay attention to internal party machinations, says Ms Green. Some people may not be that keen on Mr Corbyn, but it was no different under his predecessor, Ed Miliband, she insists. Local Conservatives, meanwhile, play up Labour’s differences. Its factions “are different parties”, says Laura Evans, a Tory councillor. “They are as far away from each other as red and blue.”
What matters most is the sense that public services are under strain. For the first time since 2010, this year’s budget contained no new cuts. But the effects of nearly a decade of belt-tightening are starting to show. By 2020 Trafford’s grant from central government will have fallen by nearly 90%, to £5.3m, since 2014. Potholes are common, says Mr Western. One dent in the road was so large it caused an accident that flipped a car. That would concentrate the mind of any voter—especially one who drives a BMW.