Picture a Reform MP in your mind’s eye and you will probably conjure a grizzled yet clubbable male boomer who looks like he’s just nipped out for a fag during Henley Royal Regatta. Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Lee Anderson and Rupert Lowe all fit the bill – but not the party’s fifth MP. South Basildon and East Thurrock’s James McMurdock, a 38-year-old father of four who grew up in a council house near Basildon, was elected in a shock result for the party and the wider political world after a recount on 5 July.
I spent election night at the London Cruise terminal in Tilbury where McMurdock eagerly awaited the South Basildon and East Thurrock verdict. Essex has been viewed as immovably Tory in recent years. But last week the Conservatives lost eight constituencies – five to Labour, one to the Lib Dems, and two to Reform (Clacton and South Basildon and East Thurrock). Clacton was won by Farage of course, overwhelmingly by comparison to McMurdock’s tiny majority. But while Farage remains most prominent in Reform’s retinue, this much smaller victory deserves closer examination. In the setting of Essex, it has much to reveal about the shifting politics of the region, but also the deficiencies of the party that has claimed so much of the vote here.
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