Getty Images Amid a vast expanse of rubble, dust and noise, a green crane tears away at a corrugated iron roof, like a frustrated dentist trying to pull out a particularly stubborn wisdom tooth.
Honda’s Swindon plant, once one of the most advanced car factories in the world, is to be demolished thirty years after opening.
This was once one of the fastest growing cities in Europe. It was one of the jewels in the crown of investment drawn to the UK by Margaret Thatcher’s brand of 1980s entrepreneurship. Swindon voted for her, John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. It was also one of the first cities to vote in favor of Brexit, with 55%.
But last year the city council fell into Labor hands. The council has had to continue to accelerate the cuts to local services, by implementing a budget with massive cuts to avert bankruptcy.
Inflation, rising healthcare costs and central government cuts meant cuts to libraries, the Dial-a-Ride community transport service and dimmed street lighting. Municipal tax has increased by almost 5%. The council leader has warned that further cuts will impact frontline services.
What is happening in Swindon is a visible consequence of slow long-term economic growth. Cuts in public spending, low private investment, de-industrialisation and shrinking disposable income have left scars, even in what was once one of Britain’s famed growth cities.
The Honda site will become a warehousing and logistics facility. In another world, it would have been replaced by another major global manufacturer. Tesla, for example, was invited. While five years ago the promise was to uplift the depressed northern towns, places like Swindon feel neutralised.
The question of what growth will emerge in this city is crucial for whoever wins Thursday’s election.
Elsewhere in the world, sites like these are being converted for the production of electric cars. The Americans are pumping government money into their factories to try to compete with China, which will soon become the world’s largest auto exporter. Emerging economies from Indonesia to Vietnam to Turkey are also investing in and growing their auto industries.
Last year, Honda’s entire production line, including dozens of unused industrial robots, was packed up and shipped to Turkey via the M4 and the port of Bristol.
Swindon is not just about Honda. It is part of the M4 corridor where there are plenty of jobs in the knowledge sectors and in the financial sector, for example at the headquarters of Nationwide. The overall unemployment rate is just 2.6%, but the number of people not working and not looking for work is 18%.
Marcus Kittridge, a former Honda engineer who now runs a cafe in the city center with his wife Tracey, acknowledges there are still “good employment prospects” but says many are earning the minimum wage or “50p above”, saying that this has contributed to a decline in disposable income in the city centre. “It’s like a northern city that lost its industry in the 1970s,” he tells me.
They now close the café at 2pm every day due to high energy prices. He expects to pass on his rising costs in higher prices over the next year or two. They have also stopped selling smoothies, following a noticeable drop in the availability and quality of fresh fruit, which they attribute to changes following Brexit.
“We were told that the quality of food would increase after Brexit, but I can now tell you that is not the case. I’ve hardly heard a politician talk about it, but it’s definitely had an impact on us,” says Tracey.
Perhaps she had some bad luck purchasing fresh produce? “If I’m unlucky, I’m unlucky every day and I’m probably the unluckiest person on earth,” she says.
Their experience shows that some of the underlying factors of slow long-term growth – high energy prices, low disposable income, low investment and new trade barriers – can come together in unusual ways.
Gary Huett, a retired graphic designer, also from Swindon, contacted us as part of the BBC’s Your Voice, Your Vote project and invited you to tell us what matters. He wanted to know why Swindon town centre looks ‘rotten’ and asked if anything could be done to change it.
“We now have mainly pound shops, and the thriving nightlife, full of the yuppy set of the 1980s and 1990s, is gone and in decline.”
The Conservatives say the green shoots are already there. The latest growth figures for January to March show Britain now has the fastest growing economy in the G7 group of advanced economies, following last year’s brief recession. Swindon’s jobs record remains strong. The Honda site has seen new investment and jobs, albeit in warehouses rather than production, will return.
For Labour, Swindon, a benchmark town where residents have voted the same as the eventual national winner for the past 40 years, is proof that there are no quick fixes.
They do not compete with the US or the European Union (EU) with large public investments in green energy. Council expenditure remains unprotected and subject to the same persistent pressures. A looser planning regime could help build more houses or expand the solar farms that dot the countryside around the city. But the task of transformation is very real. When asked what will happen if the economy doesn’t grow, Labor has responded by saying some variation of “I’m not defeatist” or “we can do it”.
When I interviewed Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves in Swindon, I said that if she was relying on planned changes to transform growth prospects, they would have to be a revolutionary, almost Thatcher-esque ‘Big Bang’. She told me: “These are big reforms we are offering… unless we grow the economy, we will be stuck in a doomsday scenario of low growth, high taxes and poor public services.”
Labour’s hope is that there will be a tsunami of private investment that has been kept out of this country due to political and economic instability. This, the party says, can be unleashed by tens of billions of people with a strong and stable pro-growth government.
When I met Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Surrey the same day, he said the party’s focus was now on cutting taxes – which his party had raised to the highest level in seven decades.
“We raised taxes because we were helping families in the cost of living crisis. We were very honest about it, it was the right thing to do.
“The difference is that we don’t think it has to be permanent, and we are prepared to do the hard work to cut taxes because we know that a more competitive economy will see more growth and then more money for the NHS and schools.”
Whoever ends up at number 11 after the election, Swindon are showing the enormous task they face.
It shows what an economy looks like that is not growing at normal rates. A former boomtown that is struggling. The challenge is not just to deliver robust economic growth here and far beyond, but to ensure that this renewal is visible to people like Gary, Tracey and Marcus here in Swindon and to others like them across the country.
You can find a full list of candidates for the Swindon North constituency hereand that for the constituency of Swindon South here.