Is Reform UK on the rise? Blackpool’s soup kitchen candidate will find out

Mark Butcher, Reform UK’s candidate in Blackpool South’s byelection, watched as a carriage driver on the town’s promenade plunged a fist into the manure-collecting bag behind his horse. Petty bureaucracy, both men furiously agreed, was stifling the resort’s appeal.

“People came here because it was a magical place, but where have the donkey rides gone? Where are the ice-cream vendors?” asked Butcher, evoking a nostalgia for the town’s glory days and reciting a mantra that Blackpool had long been ill-served by a Labour-controlled council and – when the “red wall” crumbled in 2019 – a Conservative MP.

With recent polls putting Reform in third place nationally, next Thursday’s byelection could be a crucial bellwether moment for gauging the electoral potency of the Brexit party’s successor.

On the face of it, Labour’s Chris Webb is the firm favourite to win the contest after a lobbying scandal led to the resignation of Scott Benton, the former Tory MP elected five years ago with a majority of 3,690.

He faces a Tory, David Jones, reduced to warning in election material that a vote for Reform “risks letting Labour in” – even if the resources being deployed by the would-be populist party are nothing like the manpower once commanded by its predecessors under Nigel Farage’s leadership.

Yet in Butcher, a businessman with name recognition through work with the poor, the party also believes it has a strong candidate – albeit under some clouds. The Charity Commission said this week it was probing allegations – denied by him – that the soup kitchen he founded was used to promote his campaign.

Walking through the town centre this week with the Guardian, he was frequently stopped by homeless people singing his praises. Other interactions with locals suggested Blackpool-specific concerns – namely a need to restore pride in the town and questions about redevelopment – were foremost in voters’ minds.

In the run-up to polling, Westminster was still a world away in a town where Keir Starmer and Liz Truss stood level at seven each in terms of biography copies sold by the local Waterstones.

Nevertheless, the stakes are high in a place regarded as a test case for the levelling up promises of both the Tories and Labour. Private and public “regeneration” money totalling £2bn has poured in, with a new tram line among the most visible evidence.

But tentative gentrification in parts of the centre sits uneasily with streets not far away where boarded-up properties are common and ageing communities live with the highest rate of deaths linked to alcohol, drug use and suicide in England.

At a hustings at a Blackpool FC supporters’ club, the same concerns came up again.

“Blackpool should be the premier seaside resort in the north of England and yet you cannot bring your children into the water here because of the sewage spills. That’s a disgrace,” said Ian Nickson, a local builder who joined others questioning candidates at the Armfield Club in the Bloomfield Road area.

From the stage, Butcher insisted he was “not a politician” as he echoed familiar Reform UK talking points on immigration – “we are a Christian country with Christian values and a line has to be drawn” – and claimed Blackpool had become a “dumping ground” for paedophiles and criminals, alleging that paedophile rings now targeted its amusement arcades.

Such claims went largely unchallenged in the absence of the Labour and Conservative candidates, who were mocked by Butcher and the other candidates ranging from the Liberal Democrat to a handful of independents, including a woman who proudly recalled she had been “one of the first lady professional wrestlers on Blackpool beach”.

Webb could not be there because of a prior commitment, according to Labour, which rejected Reform attacks that the former staffer for a number of MPs and MEPs was “a career politician”.

Related: ‘Dirty rotten scoundrel’: Blackpool voters dismayed by Tory MP Scott Benton

A Labour spokesperson said: “Chris Webb is Blackpool born and bred. He was born here, he grew up here and still lives here with his wife and son,” adding that Webb had attended three out of the four hustings compared with Butcher’s two.

Either way, Labour was relaxed enough to miss a hustings at a football supporters’ club even at a time when the party is chasing the return of red wall voters. Whether this demographic will switch in any greater number to Reform will be one of the most interesting questions next Thursday. Labour is understood to expect the Conservatives to still finish second, although a close third place by Reform could pile further pressure on Rishi Sunak.

At the club, Nickson thought carefully when asked by the Guardian if he was tempted to vote for Reform after pressing the candidates on the need to clean up Blackpool’s water. His answer reflected the Marmite-like appeal and limitations of Reform.

Butcher, he suggested, was not a “typical” Reform candidate, with merits including a local record that other voters might be attracted to. But he added: “The image of the party nationally is not something I support, the idea of Nigel Farage being involved. When it comes down to it, if you are aligning yourself with that then they are not for me.”