Queen Victoria and Prince Albert idle past in a vintage car, followed by a samba band, a Keralan dance troupe and army cadets on the march, watched intently by Gurkha veterans with ribboned chests.
It’s Aldershot’s Victoria Day parade, an annual celebration of the Hampshire town’s links to Queen Victoria, who established it as the home of the British army in the 1850s. Aldershot Garrison is nearby and plenty of people here have strong military connections.
“We do Armed Forces Day too,” says Tonia Page. “Any remembrance days everyone comes out – it’s so nice because you see all the old men in their berets. Everyone’s here.”
Standing outside Princes Hall, at the start of the parade, the 53-year-old is one of many in Aldershot with strong views on Rishi Sunak’s decision to leave the D-day commemorations early.
“I am ashamed of the Conservative party,” Page says. “I never voted until the last two local elections and now I am a proud Labour supporter, especially after what Rishi Sunak did at the D-day parade.
“The reason the D-day thing hits so hard is because my son is ex-military,” she adds. “Everything the Conservatives have touched is turning to rubbish.”
Aldershot has always been a Conservative constituency since it was created in 1918 and the seat is being defended by Leo Docherty, who won with a majority of more than 16,000 in 2019.
It’s not a place that would ordinarily catch much attention during a general election, but Labour won a narrow majority on Rushmoor borough council in the May local elections, and polling suggests that, nationally, Labour’s candidate, Alex Baker, is neck and neck. It’s a measure of how seriously Labour HQ is taking the prospects of winning here that Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, paid a visit to the candidate alongside Mary Portas yesterday.
“People are struggling,” Page says. “People are lining up at food banks and I think they deserve better. I’ve looked at Keir Starmer’s policies – he may be a bit wishy-washy but his policies are more about helping working-class people.”
She is also upset at how people with mental health problems are “being stigmatised” by Sunak’s crackdown on what he called Britain’s sick-note culture. “It’s disgusting.”
Jeet Menyangbo is persuaded to tear his attention from some Chinese lions dancing towards the town centre. The 52-year-old is the son of a Gurkha and has voted Conservative and Labour in the past.
“I’m not happy with the Conservatives, so maybe this time I will vote Labour,” he says. “[The Conservatives] have run the country for the last 14 years and the economy, socially, welfare – these things are not very good. The Nepalese community is struggling to pay their mortgages because of interest rates.”
Another Labour voter is Robert Crockford, waiting with his dogs Spike and Flicker. “I just want the country to do better,” he says.
Voices such as these give Baker hope. The Labour candidate said she was getting a good reception in the military areas. “These are places we wouldn’t traditionally expect to get a good reception but we are having some really receptive, interesting conversations with military families,” she said. “There’s a feeling here that for the last 14 years they’ve lacked a champion who will stand up for local issues.”
Aldershot and Farnborough have one of England’s most pronounced shortages of school places, while the worn-out town centre and military accommodation are other important local issues.
Not everyone is keen on Labour, but hardly anyone who stops to talk is prepared to back the Conservatives. Helen Owen is a 39-year-old communications executive whose husband is in the military. She doesn’t yet know who she’ll vote for but was unimpressed with both Penny Mordaunt and Angela Rayner during the BBC debate last week. “I don’t think any party is putting their policies very well, and Rishi Sunak’s walk-out of the D-day celebrations hasn’t done him any favours.
“It’s really disappointing. He must have had bad advisers. He did the best anyone could do during Covid – he did a wonderful job, and I thought he would be a great PM. So to do something like that, to walk out of D-day to do an interview – I think he’s walked out of No 10 by doing that.”
Tom Langley, a plumbing, heating and gas engineer in his 30s, says he doesn’t feel as though his career is progressing. “I had all the confidence in the Tories,” he says. “But they lost me during Covid.” As a self-employed worker, he got no help with furlough. “Labour will run the country into the ground – what we need is a little bit of Reform.”
Only 88-year-old Mick Betts, here to support Help for Heroes, is a confirmed Conservative voter. “I will never forgive Tony Blair,” he says. “I lost a lot of people in Iraq.”
