On the streets of St Helens, would Reform win?
Polls show support surging. St Helens should bleed the red of Labour. But if a general election were called tomorrow, would it?
For many, the name St Helens carries echoes of a roaring rugby league crowd, cheering on one of the top Super League teams in the world. Or, more recently, the success of darts superstar Luke Littler, who trained at the St Helens Darts Academy before becoming the youngest world champion in the history of the game. St Helens is a post-industrial town in Merseyside (formerly Lancashire). Once a significant town for coal mining, and then glass manufacturing, St Helens is better known for its sporting success and good pies.
For me, it’s the wheels of a skateboard that sound the most like home. As teenagers, we would sit on the benches in Church Square, where there would be at least 20 kids hanging out, or skating between the shoppers. As I pass by on my way to meet Alex at the DIY skate park he and our other old friends built just outside the town centre, half the benches are missing.
“I think most of them just broke, and they didn’t replace them,” says Alex. He’s 26, and has lived in St Helens his whole life. “No one hangs around in town anymore,” he tells me. “You don’t see any alternative kids and stuff like that. There’s just a few shops, like Home Bargains, and the [food] delivery drivers.”
If there is anything to know about St Helens town centre in 2025, it’s that it’s not what it used to be. It’s no real surprise, then, that St Helens is one of the numerous towns which have been projected to vote for Reform UK in 2029. In April, an MRP poll by the think tank More in Common found that, if a general election were to be held immediately, Reform UK would win with 180 seats.
It is projected that Labour could lose 246 seats, including 153 to Reform UK. St Helens is a typical red wall town. It has been built on industries like coal and glass, and the two constituencies, St Helens North and St Helens South and Whiston, have been safe Labour seats since they were formed in the 1980s. But years of austerity and a general sense of being left behind have caused severe disillusionment among everyone from young skaters to retired teachers – and it is proving fertile ground for the rise of Reform.
Changing shapes
“When you walk around the town centre in St Helens, there’s absolutely nothing to do,” Rosie, a 32-year-old funeral arranger who has lived in the town her whole life, tells The Lead. “There’s nothing here worth coming for, and I think people are disappointed to see that the town that they have grown up in is just completely deteriorated, and nothing's being done about it.”
In the last five years, St Helens has changed massively. One of the three main shopping centres, the Hardshaw Centre, was marked for demolition in 2023, while another – St Mary’s Market – is next. Since January, as we’re told by one shop owner, Sultan Ismailaf, at least four stalls have closed down. He doesn’t know what he’ll do once the building is gone.
The town is currently undergoing a 20-year regeneration plan which will see a new hotel, a new market hall, 65 new homes and a new bus station with improved transport links. The Labour-run council wants the town to be a “source of pride,” and “a child and family-friendly place, home to thriving local businesses, quality homes, leisure and outdoor spaces, with great transport links, digital connectivity and future-proofed to address the climate emergency.” With more retail, “enhanced” public spaces and a new and improved market, featuring modern dining, new shops and a space for entertainment, the regeneration is likely to be a vast improvement on the current high street. But it isn’t without its critics.
When we meet Tracey, who owns an artificial flower shop in the town centre, she’s already doing Christmas in July. “I had a girl working for me, but she had to finish,” Tracey tells The Lead. “I couldn’t afford to keep her – the town’s dead. It didn’t work for two of us, so I’ve had to start Christmas in July to get on top of it.”
Tracey rents a shop on the main high street along with another Tracy, who sells old-fashioned sweets. The pair had previously run two separate kiosks in the Hardshaw Centre, but came together after the building was closed. “We had only just recovered from COVID,” Tracy recalls. “So after all that struggle, we came back thinking we could get back to normal, and then we got the letter. We couldn’t get a break.” That was in 2021, and the pair set up shop here in 2022. In recent months, they have resorted to closing an hour earlier because there aren’t enough customers to justify opening longer.
Unemployment is rising, and more people are renting privately. Tracey’s 33-year-old son still lives with her. “He can’t get on the housing ladder,” she says. “It’s too expensive.”
“It has just gone downhill,” says Tracey. For her, the promise of regeneration feels like it’s too late. “I mean, all this work that’s going on, it’s just killed the business.” When asked if she thinks the updates will be worth it, Tracy says; “I can’t see it. There’ll be no shops left when it does happen, there are no businesses left to put in the town. We are really, really struggling.”
But shuttered windows and dwindling sales are not the only way the town has changed. Many locals point to increased immigration as a source of worry and discontent.
Changing faces
Historically, St Helens hasn’t experienced a high level of migration, although it has grown in tandem with the rest of the country. According to the most recent Census data (from 2021), 3.2 per cent of St. Helens residents did not identify with any national identity associated with the UK, an increase from 1.5 per cent in 2011. While this was more than England at large, it was lower than the entire North West. Overall, some 94 per cent of people who lived in St Helens in 2021 were born in England.
However, locals say immigration has “definitely increased” in recent years, becoming a lot more visible, particularly in the town centre. This is likely due to an influx of asylum seekers. St Helens has been housing asylum seekers since 2016, as part of a broader partnership with the Liverpool City Region. There is currently one hotel housing asylum seekers in St Helens, the Oyo Lakeside Haydock Hotel, a few miles outside of the town centre. The most recent Home Office statistics, from 2024, showed there were 51 asylum seekers being housed in hotels in the town (down from 289 a year prior) and that a total 636 asylum seekers were receiving a form of government support. More recently, the council confirmed it was in talks with Westminster about how to better support asylum seekers.
“I think it’s become more prominent, and you can see that the more that you go out around St Helens,” says Rosie. “It is a lot more than it used to be.”
Julie*, a dinner lady we meet on the benches in Church Square, agrees. “Immigration has made a big difference to the town,” she tells The Lead. “I don’t disagree with immigration, but there are people that are here that weren’t here before, you know?”
For both Rosie and Julie, immigration isn’t a big deal. “I just don’t really think about it too much, to be honest with you,” says Rosie. “I think it could do us all good if we all learned from one another.”
For Julie, it’s about contribution. “We’ve been told the government’s got no money, and nobody’s got any money,” she says. “But, there was an immigration event on at the church, with lots of different things from all over the world, and that went down really well. So I don’t like all this far-right stuff, but I do think the boats coming across need to be dealt with… how they do it, I don’t know.”
There were very few conversations to be had in St Helens that didn’t end up veering towards the Channel crossings. Rumours about the behaviour of asylum seekers swirl online and in real life, with vague mentions of “creepy” men and illegal work, with some businesses guilty of employing people without the right to work. This, says Alex, is where the real malaise lies
“It’s a major concern of mine and a major concern of everyone’s, really,” he says. “Even the lads at work, they're not against immigration, they’re all fine with people coming over, they’re not racist and xenophobic, they’re the most nice, kind lads that you'll ever meet – but they’re concerned, because it’s happening at a rate that’s way too fast for integration.”
Labour losing its grip
This is where Reform comes in. Tracey, the flowershop owner, has always voted Labour, but says she never will again. Next time, she’s voting Reform.
“It’s because they’ll stop the small boats,” she says. “It’s just getting worse and worse, there are so many just piling in.” The country, she says, can’t afford it. “Everyone that comes over here is costing this country, and unfortunately, we can't afford it. We haven’t got money to give nurses a good pay rise, but we can house all these. It’s like [the government is] looking after everybody else before their own.”
Beyond that though, both Tracey and Tracy expressed discontent with the current Labour leader, Keir Starmer. “I thought it was delirious when he did that speech, saying he knows what it’s like to be working class because his dad was working class,” says Tracey. “It’s like saying ‘my dad’s a brain surgeon, so I know about it.’ It’s a daft argument.”
Ken, 77 and retired, had voted Labour his whole life until last year, when he voted for Reform. “I’m not into politics, really, but Starmer won’t get in again,” he says. “I voted for Reform. I think it sounds all right. But if he does what he says, and sticks to what he says about these people coming in on boats.”
But even for those who have been swayed by Reform, an air of cynicism hangs over the conversation. “We don't know what he’s going to be like when it gets in,” says Ken. “He might not do what he says he’s going to do, but we won’t know until he gets in.”
A swell of disillusionment
There’s a sense that people in St Helens feel not just let down but totally disillusioned – a sentiment that has been growing in Red Wall towns since the Brexit referendum in 2016. Alex voted for the Green Party last year, because they “actually align with what I would actually like to see happen.” But, he says, he doesn’t see any genuine potential for them to come to power. Billionaire-backed Reform, on the other hand, could be a legitimate avenue for change.
“Labour, the Tories, they’ve not really done anything,” says Alex. “They’ve tried, but the country is always shifting back and forth. What makes Reform attractive is that they might just shake things up a little bit.”
Rosie is also at a loss for who she will vote for come 2029.
“I think people feel like they have to vote for Labour because it has always been Labour, but I genuinely don’t know,” she says. “I don’t feel like they deserve a vote.”
Disillusionment dissolves into apathy. For everyone who told The Lead they would vote for Reform, there was someone else who said they wouldn’t vote at all.
In the beer garden of The Sefton on a Tuesday night, we bump into a group of labourers. The conversation quickly turns to politics. Despite strong opinions about immigration, not one of them wants to vote.
“None of them do anything,” says 37-year-old Martin over a pint of lager. “They get voted in, and once they do, they don't want to go to bed at night thinking about us.”
At the skatepark, another group of young men tell us they don’t bother voting either. “They’re all the same,” they say, hard-faced.
As we close our interview, Martin echoes the sentiment that everyone has expressed: St Helens is simply not looked after. “Nobody cares.”
Things aren’t all bad in St Helens. New restaurants and coffee shops are attracting people to the high street, and a new dart shop (the biggest in the world!) is pulling in customers from all over the country, thanks to its association with darts superstar Luke Littler. Regeneration promises more of this, once complete. There are also community groups and programmes working hard to improve the lives of locals – examples include St Helens Mind which supports young men with their mental health, and the Street and a Half project bringing disused buildings back into public use with a focus on inclusive growth.
While the future of St Helens hangs in the balance, one thing appears for certain. Unless something changes, Reform UK will get in. “There’s no doubt about it,” says Rosie.■
About the author: Ella is a freelance journalist specialising in worker's rights, housing, youth culture, social affairs and lifestyle. You can find her work in Tribune Magazine, Huck Magazine, Novara Media, VICE, Dazed, metro.co.uk and - most importantly - here at The Lead.
Paid subscribers have exclusive access to watch Ella’s full 10-minute video here from her time in St Helens.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Lead to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.