Labour’s pick to take his seat hits out
What’s the worst lie you’ve ever told? Danny Beales, Labour’s candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, looks astonished by the question, almost flummoxed, as his eyes dart up to the right to think. He shouldn’t be. Lies are what brought down Boris Johnson, the man who would have been his opponent. But now Johnson has quit politics, abandoning his constituency after the Privileges Committee found him to have repeatedly and deliberately misled Parliament, and sparking perhaps the most electric by-election in a generation.
“At the moment,” says Beales after failing to think of a whopper, “the lie I tell most people is when they ask, ‘are you alright?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine!’” He laughs. So how is he really? “It’s a lot of pressure.” With Johnson gone, “that pressure is somewhat alleviated but it’s still a huge amount”. He’s only sleeping “on and off”. He seems excited though too. “For someone from my background, it is a massive privilege to have this opportunity. And I just don’t want to let anyone down.”
To take this seat from the only Tory prime minister to have won a huge majority since Margaret Thatcher would be more than symbolic — a kick to Conservatives’ morale far deeper than the other three by-elections taking place this summer.
“It’s going to be a tough and tight election,” says Beales. “It’s certainly not going to be a landslide for Labour because traditionally, the whole time I’ve been alive, it’s been a Conservative MP.” The latest local opinion poll from Britain Predicts suggests he’s 11 points ahead, the kind of figure he’ll need to overturn a 7,210 Conservative majority. On the doorstep, he says, he encounters a rich mix of views, but one theme recurs. “People are fed up with this Government. People have said, ‘I’ve only ever voted Conservative, but I can’t condone this mess any longer.”
To win here, he says, could be profound. “We have a real opportunity to send a powerful message about everything that’s happened with the previous MP here, about the type of politics and politicians we want: that we can have honesty, decency, hardworking politicians who care. And a message that people really want change in this country.”
Outside Uxbridge Tube station stands a bronze statue of a mother holding her two children, under which the name of the artwork shimmers in the midday sun: Anticipation. It certainly captures the mood here, with less than a month to go before the by-election. A television news crew is parked nearby filming a piece to camera. Candidates are frantically canvassing, with Labour MPs — front and back bench — descending to offer support to their great hope. Keir Starmer is due to arrive soon. A win here would be a huge endorsement for the leader.
Six months ago, Beales sat in his flat alone talking with i about his past, of the single mother who raised him in poverty, about the homelessness they endured, about growing up in this constituency, being bullied, being gay, and somehow managing to get to university before entering a career working for charities. But six months is a century in politics. Johnson is gone, perhaps forever locked out of Westminster, and Beales is not alone now. A Labour communications man sits opposite us in a blank office near the station. He records the interview too. Nerves are high. It seems they’re leaving nothing to chance.
When Johnson quit as an MP on 9 June, Beales was “completely shocked” he says. His phone never stopped that day. “Since then, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind.” Johnson hangs inevitably over the conversation, even though Beales seems almost uninterested in him, like a teacher refusing to give attention to the troublemaker. Should voters be paying the £250,000 legal bill Johnson racked up in the “Partygate” inquiry? “It sticks in the jaw that we’re still picking up the tab,” says Beales. “People here have paid a lot of money for their MP over the last 10-plus years and not had a proper local MP, and on top of that, as taxpayers, we’re still paying for his defence.”
What did Beales think when he read the Privileges Committee report into Johnson? “It confirmed everything we knew; that those making rules were breaking them. Those who should be setting an example – our leaders, our rule-makers – have to respect the law, but to treat it with such disregard, to treat us all with contempt and then lie continually is deeply offensive. I hear people now on the doorstep say, ‘I couldn’t visit my loved ones in hospital, I couldn’t go to funerals.’”
The first Christmas of the pandemic, when some Conservative officials were dancing and partying, Beales stayed in his flat. “I stuck by the rules. I didn’t go home. I couldn’t see my grandparents or my mum. My nan had been in the hospital. My mum was recovering cancer. For us all to make those sacrifices, but those at the top weren’t, is deeply upsetting.”
The underlying issue now dominates political discussions throughout the land. “Truth matters,” he says, “decency, honesty, integrity matters in politics.” He returns to his childhood. “I was brought up by my mum and grandparents, focussed on honesty and respect for others, and a sense that you stick by the rules, you work hard and try to get on. My mum had two jobs at times, stacking shelves in the Co-op at the weekend and working in the week to barely put electric in the meter.”
But Beales pulls a punch over whether Johnson should ever be allowed to stand as an MP again. Instead of saying, yes, or “the Tories should block that from happening again” he talks about the need for parliamentary processes and democratic principles. This is the opposite style from Johnson’s bombastic, linguistic flamboyance and vituperative insults towards opponents. But perhaps that’s the point.
Should Rishi Sunak have waved through Johnson’s departing honour’s list? “It shows we’ve got a Prime Minister who is more focusssed on appeasing his own party than putting public interest first,” he says. Sunak did not attend the vote in Parliament on the Privileges Committee report. “The complete absence by the Prime Minister,” says Beales, “feels like we have a Government who isn’t showing up for people in this country.”
In the Commons, Labour’s knives are sharpened. Cries of “liar, liar, liar” at Johnson have turned to “weak, weak, weak” at Sunak. “We need a general election now,” says Beales. “We’ve got a Government completely out of ideas, totally focussed on internal political matters. Rishi was never elected by the public, wasn’t even elected by his own party members. He was beaten by Liz Truss. He’s clearly unable to get a grip on inflation and the economy.”
Above all, it’s the economy, poverty, and housing that seem to matter most to Beales. He talks about the problems facing voters on the doorsteps of Uxbridge and South Ruislip as he’s been out campaigning.
“People feel poorer, they are poorer. People say, ‘I can’t afford to put milk in my cereal anymore — water instead of milk.’ They’re cutting back on the basics. I’ve done some work locally raising money for the local food bank [where there’s] an exponential need. Nurses using food banks. This is not the country that I remember 10-15 years ago. I think we can and should have better than this.”
One of the threats to people’s security is interest rates, which the Bank of England raised again this week. But some now doubt the wisdom of using interest rates to tackle inflation, not least because the mortgage costs are becoming unmanageable. Repossessions are looming. Would Labour overrule the Bank of England’s decision to keep raising interest rates? Neither Beales nor his party support this.
Instead, he says, “We need much more action on mortgages and mortgage support, as well as the cost of living more broadly. The Labour Party will take bold and significant action on mortgages.” Yesterday, the party released their five-point plan, calling on the Government to require mortgage lenders to allow borrowers to switch to interest-only deals temporarily, to lengthen the duration of their mortgage, and to delay repossessions by six months.
Beales is braced for his own mortgage coming up for renewal in January. But until then, the obstacle politically is the Conservative candidate, Steve Buckwell. What does Beales make of him? “He seems like a decent bloke,” says Beales, before adding, “I worry that yet another Conservative here is just going to be in Parliament, toeing the line, involved in the same-old Tory melodrama. Seeing the fact that he seems to support his own Tory council closing nurseries and youth centres in his own ward, I don’t get the sense he’s willing to stand up even against this own party and fight for the interests of local people.”
Despite repeated requests by i to interview Steve Buckwell, the Conservative Party did not respond and did not make him available.
But there’s another obstacle to Beales winning this seat. “Apathy is a big challenge in politics at the moment,” he says, “because of the sense that we’ve been made promises continually that have never been delivered. I think people are ground down after the last 13 years — a sense of desperation, that there’s so much fix, where do you even start? So it’s difficult in that context to still inspire people that we can have better.” But, he says, “Politics can be different. The NHS can work. You can have a better MP.”
Beales is best, I think, when conveying hope or connecting with the struggles of voters, rather than at demolishing his opponents. This might work, and perhaps seem refreshing, but there’s a risk. His rhetorical caution can, at times, seem baffling. One of his opponents in the by-election is Laurence Fox, the actor-turned-activist now standing for the Reclaim Party. Days before i meets Beales, Fox filmed himself setting fire to a string of LGBTQ Pride flags in his garden, claiming Pride is a “celebration of the mutilation of children.”
But asked if he condemns the burning of Pride flags, Beales replies: “I believe in freedom of speech. And I don’t think it’s for the government to regulate what people do…. But I don’t think it’s helpful and I would not condone those behaviours.” He goes on to describe how offended people would understandably be by it, but does not hit back. Instead, he offers something else about Fox.
“I hope he’s OK, to be honest.” It’s delivered without sarcasm or mockery, but with genuine concern. In our enraged political landscape this seems more shocking than refusing to condemn Fox’s actions.
To spend time with Beales could not be more different to the marauding scenes we witness in the Commons. It’s akin to having been in a shouty pub for hours, only to finally escape outside with a friend who says quietly, “I’m worried about you”.
And he is worried. There’s one final opponent we discuss in the upcoming by-election: a political satirist who goes by the name Count Binface. He stood as an independent against Johnson here in 2019 winning a surprisingly high 69 votes.
“I hope I don’t get beaten by [Binface],” he says, laughing. “That would be more embarrassing.”
