‘It’d be nice to get a clear out and start again’: Labour facing battle on both fronts in the city where it was born

“It would be nice to clean up and start over,” says John Varey.

“I think a lot of people have lost touch with the Labor Party,” says the 59-year-old actor Independent At florist Blossoms in Bradford city centre.

“But they’re not doing themselves any favours,” Mr Varey adds, before offering a theory about today’s Labor Party and the parties it appeals to.

“Look, people in greenbelt areas are getting nice houses and thatched roofs,” he says.

Labor’s roots can be traced back to this West Yorkshire city, when it was a thriving mill town in the wake of the industrial revolution.

As you head towards the center of Bradford along Leeds Road, a mural depicting the city’s vital role in Britain’s political history stands out.

Painted on the side of the city’s Playhouse theater in 1993, the mural marks the centenary of the founding of the Independent Labor Party (ILP) on the site following mass strikes by textile workers.

The ILP merged with the Labor Party in 1900 and quickly became a parliamentary force built on the ideas of Bradford’s working class. Whether the party sticks to this line will go some way into determining its performance in such cities across England in Thursday’s local elections.

Mr Varey certainly won’t vote for Sir Keir Starmer’s party, and polls suggest most Bradford residents won’t either.

Bradford Council, which covers the city and its surrounding villages and towns, has been controlled by the Labor Party since 2014 but that may be about to change.

Currently, of the 90 councillors, 46 are Labour, 14 are Tory, 10 are Green and 15 are independent, with nine sitting as the Bradford Independent group.

Latest figures from PollCheck show Labor could lose 33 councillors, while Nigel Farage’s Reform England could gain 17 and the Green Party 12, leaving the Greens unable to maintain overall control as the largest party on the council.

Asked who he might vote for on Thursday, Mr. Varey was unimpressed: “I don’t want to say that, to be honest.”

But what is clear is that he is unhappy with the situation of this city, which is struggling due to job losses due to post-war deindustrialization.

The architectural splendor of Victorian Bradford remains, but Mr Varey says the 19th-century buildings have become a sideshow on streets now devoid of a variety of shops and dotted with empty units.

“There’s nothing that’s going to attract people downtown because they don’t want to get their nails done, they don’t want to go to the discount basement,” she says. “Give people a reason to come downtown.”

Bradford’s decline from its industrial heights has been noted by many in this city.

Outside the Grade I-listed Wool Exchange, now a branch of Waterstones, John Wilkinson, 87, who has since retired, says: Independent That Bradford never recovered from deindustrialisation.

“This was the textile city of the world,” he says. “There’s the Wool Exchange, where they do all their trading. Where did it go?”

“It all went to China, to Iran; all over the world. It went to waste.”

“You could stand in the center of Bradford and circle around and all you saw was chimneys and more chimneys.

“There were all these mills here. And all these places here were thriving.”

Calling himself a “true blue” Conservative, Mr Wilkinson believes one woman can turn the city’s fortunes around.

“Mrs Thatcher, she would handle these things,” he says. “Ma’am, she should have been made Queen.”

Mr Wilkinson, perhaps unsurprisingly, will vote Conservative on Thursday, but was tempted to change his vote for Mr Farage’s Reform for the first time.

“He was fine, Farage. But now I’m starting to get a little tired of what he will and won’t do.”

“He’s like everyone else; he changes his mind, he changes his mind, he changes his mind.”

Either way, like Mr Varey, he wants change at Bradford Town Hall. “He wants a new council,” says Mr Wilkinson. “He’s a bit of a pusher.”

But others are less convinced that a new management can solve Bradford’s problems.

Prithpal Singh, 60, runs ICreams ice cream shop in the city center and believes his job has become more difficult due to the problems seen all over the country.

“Believe it or not, people from Leeds used to come to Bradford,” he says Independent. “Bradford was growing rapidly at one time, but now that has changed.

“I think there are a lot of challenges, like other cities in the UK,” he adds, citing anti-social behavior and a lack of public transport options.

This makes the lack of pedestrians in the city center the biggest challenge, according to Mr. Singh, who says it is increasingly difficult to find a job.

“This is probably one of the busiest places, but there are three businesses for sale on that street. One of them has been there for 35 years. So that’s saying a lot.”

Mr Singh has voted Labor in the past but is yet to decide who he will vote for this time and questioned whether it would make a difference at a time when councils have faced years of funding cuts and are operating on smaller budgets.

“What can they do if there is only a certain amount of money for the game?” he asks. “What can they do?”

This view is shared by Marina Chapman, 78, who moved to Bradford from Colombia with her cousin Doris Tindale, 72, in the 1970s.

“It’s a tough job for the council,” he says. “Every government has the same mechanism behind it, regardless of whether it changes or not.

“Whether it’s Labor or Conservative, it’s the same. We owe London.”