‘Britain’s on its knees’: The broken UK town backing Nigel Farage

Clacton-on-Sea, with high unemployment and low immigration, looks set to finally deliver the right-wing populist to parliament on his eighth attempt.

Clacton-on-Sea, United Kingdom – As the midday sun spreads over Clacton, seagulls cawing above the quiet seafront, Lee* meanders around searching for shade.

He stops at an ice cream stand but decides against a purchase.

“I don’t give my name out because you could be Old Bill [police], couldn’t you?” he jokes in a thick East End, London accent. He requests a pseudonym and refuses to be photographed.

At 75, he has lived in Clacton for years having moved from the capital. He has a head of slicked-back grey hair and is dressed in a red polo. He is suspicious of the media and political class and talks of a bygone era.

“We live in a woke country where we’re told what we must think, what we must say, and what we should do. It ain’t the world that we grew up in … We had respect for other people, manners.”