Labour can beat Reform UK by focusing relentlessly on the cost of living, the party’s mayoral candidate for Greater Lincolnshire, who is taking on the Conservative defector Andrea Jenkyns, has said.
Jason Stockwood, the former chair of Grimsby Town Football Club, is standing for Labour in the most high-profile mayoral race of the local elections.
Nigel Farage’s party is hoping the mayoralty will be the centrepiece of its local election results if it wins its first mayoralty with Jenkyns, a former Tory MP who lost her seat and defected to Reform UK. The mayoralty is also being fought hard by the Conservatives, who would otherwise have been favourites.
Farage is to launch his party’s local election campaign in Lincolnshire with Jenkyns, who has promised “Doge Lincolnshire” to cut government waste – a reference to Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” in the US – and uses the slogan “No to net zero madness”.
Labour’s chances of gaining the seat are likely to be low. But Stockwood, a high-profile tech investor who has never had a career in politics, said that he also wanted to use he race as an opportunity to take on the “nonsense” surrounding net zero denial and said it was a “key dividing line”.
He said the national party could learn from his frontline fight against Reform by taking note of the distain that most voters were showing for all politicians – and talking more about costs and less about intangible economic growth.
Stockwood has been holding meetings with groups of voters attracted by Reform and said many had told them how angry they were at the status quo.
He said one key conversation with a successful local businessman had struck him. “He was saying: we need to blow it all up so we can rebuild it again. That is so dangerous,” Stockwood said. “We’re at a really precarious point in our politics and I was like, I’ve got to have a go, because the alternatives are really, really frightening.”
He said he had connected with many of the Reform voters because of their disillusionment with the state of the economy and politics.
“Most people, in my experience, just feel politically homeless and are fed up with the status quo. They see politics not working for them, being an elitist merry-go-round rather than people that are making their lives better,” he said.
“I’ve definitely calibrated my own view having had those conversations. We’ve had decades worth of flatlining real-terms salaries, a cost of living crisis, jobs going offshore, so we need to make sure we have people who are prepared to have that conversation.”
Stockwood said politics was often missing the human connection – whether it was politicians talking about artificial intelligence or economic growth.
“I think Labour are trying to do that, but not necessarily always communicating that as clearly, but it’s really clear within Labour that it’s key we are delivering tangible results that affect people, not just talking about growth,” he said.
“People don’t understand the growth story, we know that is to enable us to do the social justice stuff that we all care about but people aren’t translating that. We grow the economy so that we do the things we care about in public services. That isn’t landing with people. We’ve got to bring that narrative alive.
“When you’re talking about that, sci-fi and robotics and autonomous vehicles, people are saying, but I can’t pay my rent. It just doesn’t connect.”
Stockwood said that he would also be taking on Reform’s argument about net zero – saying that Labour could win the debate on renewables as a boost for jobs and growth.
“I’ve worked around the world with global investors. Global investors aren’t debating whether net zero is a thing or not. They’re investing in it because they have returns on capital and the amount of jobs it’s going to create. My argument is – you need a leader that understands that investors are ready to make the investment in our county,” he said.
“The nonsense of having people that are focused on net zero denial, the actual focus should be on their investment. If we have people who lead the region denying the economic opportunity that net zero is going to create, then that’s really dangerous. We’re going to miss out on a once in a 100 year opportunity. I think that’s a key dividing line for me.”
Stockwood said it would be a tough race in a mayoral battle where the Tories have also traditionally been strong. The party is running the leader of North Lincolnshire council, Rob Waltham.
“This has always been known as the Tory county but the way our politics is going I just don’t think those lines are as clear as they were historically,” Stockwood said.
“We won seats like Lincoln and Grimsby, the central part is historically very rural and Conservative, in the south there really has been a sense that people have been forgotten politically and that’s where you see Reform winning in places like Boston and Skegness.”
Stockwood said he believed people would see the value in having someone from outside the political world in the role. “There’s not a tremendous amount of love for traditional politics,” he said.
“If you want something genuinely different, someone that’s got a real plan and got real experience, then we’ve got that chance. I wasn’t looking for a job, I’m not looking for a career in politics. This is my one and done career in politics. I’m going to come and try and do this. If I don’t win, I’m not going to try and find another place to stand.”
