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Launching an informal tour of the town where Nigel Farage is expected to triumph as an MP, Rewa Ahmad reels off a list of the successful small businesses and the countries that are the homeland of their owners.
“I’m Kurdish – Turkish, Vietnamese, Bangladeshi over there – Cypriot, Iranian … and if you go further down the street there’s a Turkish-Kurdish restaurant,” the 32-year-old, also known by his adopted English name of Jay, told The National.
“So how much business are we bringing into these streets? Let's say if we all go, this street will be dead.”
Mr Ahmad’s BazCut Barbershop sits in the centre of Clacton-on-Sea, a town about two hours from London on the coast of the county of Essex. Mr Farage has put cutting immigration at the heart of his national comeback campaign with Reform UK and his local battle to represent the town and constituency.
As final laps of general election campaigning are run, The National visited the town to see where people who live and work there stand on the thorny issue of migration and how they feel about living in a town which has become the focal point for Reform, the upstart right-wing party set to take votes from the Conservatives but which stands accused of being racist.
The constituency is a mixture of leafy countryside and neat suburbs mixed in with real pockets of poverty. The village of Jaywick, a few minutes’ drive along the coast from Clacton, was named the most deprived in England.
It is one of the left-behind areas of the UK that lined up behind Brexit and ranks third in the areas that most heavily backed the Leave movement. Its population is also the sixth oldest, the demographic that was strongest in the Brexit vote to leave the EU.
Not only must he put seven failed attempts to be elected to Parliament, including a previous loss in Clacton, behind him, but Mr Farage's prospects may have been dented after Reform campaigners were secretly filmed making offensive comments about immigrants and Muslims.
UK net migration reached a record high of 764,000 for the year to December 2022, figures last year showed, though latest figures show it has dropped by 10 per cent.
As well as legal migration, the issue of asylum seekers coming across the English Channel remains a concern for many voters.
According to the latest figure, 12,901 people seeking asylum have crossed so far this year, passing the previous six-month record of 12,747 in 2022. Polling by YouGov shows immigration of all kinds consistently in the top three issues of concern for voters.
Mr Ahmad, who is from near Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish region of Iraq, has some advice for politicians keen on cutting migration.
“I saw one of my customers, he was on TikTok talking about Nigel Farage,” he said.
“He said Farage was good on British values and I told him if you keep all the foreigners out, this country is going to collapse. They don’t see that we make businesses and make money, this is the problem. They only see your face, that’s it.”
Mr Ahmad was speaking rising from his seat outside his barbershop, where was enjoying a vape and a can of Red Bull. They are the two items that are standard issue for Kurdish barbers, he jokes.
He exchanges “all right mate” greetings with local men, with whom he appears to be on excellent terms, though that was not always the case.
“When I first opened the shop, people walking past, they would say nasty things, which I just ignored,” he said.
Nowadays, the genial Mr Ahmad said he gets on well with people, even if they are backing Mr Farage.
He added that two doors along is “an English lady who is Reform and has a poster in her window and I’m friends with her”.
Mr Ahmad touches on the subject of migrants crossing in small boats, much of it organised by fellow Kurds.
“I mean some of them, they just want to come here for a better life. If you look at the youngest people, they have nothing to lose. No wife. No kids. I mean, I came here when I was 17.”
As well as the line of shops, a care home around the corner shows the dilemma the UK is facing over migration.
Health and care is the main industry driving net migration, along with students, and the sector is increasingly reliant on overseas recruits to fill vacancies that are unappealing to British workers.
One member of staff, who asked not to be named, told The National that “nearly all” the staff are from overseas and it would be impossible for the home to operate without them.
Clacton is a seaside town like many in the UK with the pier and Ferris wheel the focal point of a long beach, which attracts healthy number of visitors on a hot summer’s day, even during the week.
Visitors typically eat fish and chips and buy ice creams at the seafront cafes.
The town itself is in need of a makeover with many of the shops in the main areas run by charities, though the side streets have a bit more life to them with pleasant cafes and a supermarket selling goods from all over the world.
A few minutes’ drive out of town lies the home of David Aean, whose England flags draped over a boat and Reform sign in the front garden are hard to miss. In the window are posters of the ever-grinning Mr Farage.
The retired tiler, who is 77, took time off from working in his garden to share his views with The National.
“I’ve never been into politics in my life. I’ve had some very good years but these last 11 years, things have gone down and down,” he said.
Asked what he thinks Mr Farage should make his top priority. he answers with one word: “Immigration.”
“We need people to come into our country but they should come here legally,” he said.
“That’s no problem whatsoever. But if they don’t come here legally, then they shouldn’t be here.
“I also think that people who come to this country and want to live here should learn to speak English. That’s all I would ask and they would be more than welcome to move next door to me.”
Until last year, those crossing the English Channel were not technically illegal migrants if they were claiming asylum, but last year’s Illegal Migration Act has prohibited anyone who arrives by irregular means from seeking refugee status.
In common with many people who share his views on migration, Mr Aean is adamant he is “definitely not” a racist and has friends of “all colours and backgrounds”.
Talk of politics takes a back seat for a moment, though, as he invites The National to look at his beloved collection of Vespa scooters, stored in a specially made shed in his large garden.
Mr Aean explains he was a Mod in 1960s, a group known for their stylish dress sense who drove Italian scooters.
The shed is a shrine to that way of life, with pictures of The Who, the band beloved of the Mods, adorning the walls.
Back out front as he shows off his boat, which he takes out fishing twice a week, Mr Aean details what he hopes Mr Farage will achieve.
He wants him to “put a spanner right in the works and stir things up”, though he admits “I don’t think he would ever run the country”.
Reform has based itself in a first-floor office among the amusement arcades that characterise many British seaside towns.
Staff there are friendly and upbeat over their chances of winning, though are wary of speaking on the record.
Migration is far from the only subject that voters are raising, one volunteer helping out with the canvassing operation insists, with the economy also high on the agenda.
“We’re also getting young people supporting us, through TikTok,” he said.
For Steven Page, 54, who spoke as he walked towards the seafront with his mother Ann, migration and more money from the government are the priorities.
“All the seaside resorts on both sides of us, they’ve had money but we’ve had nothing,” he said.
He is supporting Mr Farage, though wishes the Reform party leader would express his views in a less confrontational way. The politician recently faced criticism after claiming Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose parents are East African Indians who migrated to the UK, does not care about “our culture”.
“For the most part I think he says the right things. He just says it the wrong way. But if he can bring money into Clacton, then yes, I’ll vote for him.”
Not all local people are impressed by Mr Farage.
One man, who votes for the Conservatives, said while the scale of immigration was a “massive” problem for the country, Mr Farage was not the man to deal with it.
He said “Clacton is an easy target” for the Reform party leader who was “stirring things up” by standing in a less ethnically mixed constituency.
“It was the same last time with Brexit, wasn’t it? That was his big bolster with Brexit – immigration,” said the man, who asked for his name to be withheld.
“But here we are eight years later and it’s worse and he’s blaming everybody else. Now he’s saying the Conservatives have messed it up.
“I don't think anyone could have lied more about Brexit, He never knew what would happen about Brexit. He never knew how we could cope with it, not a clue.
“But he was happy to jump on the bandwagon, wave the flag, run it and when Brexit happened, yeah, he was the first one to disappear.”
