A generous estate agent might describe the two-up, two-down terraced houses on the cramped side streets that lead towards Gillingham’s Priestfield Stadium as “snug”.
On this warm day, the windows of several are open and the smell of frying mince and onions hangs over the turnstiles in the Brian Moore Stand, an open ‘temporary’ structure held together by scaffolding that has now been in place for more than 20 years.
Priestfield seems an unusual place to launch a General Election campaign that — if the opinion polls are correct — is likely to end at 10 Downing Street. Yet it is here where Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer appeared, with his deputy Angela Rayner, at the end of May, making a quip about Manchester City being an opponent of Gillingham the last time Labour were in government.
Starmer spoke broadly about his aspirations to “rebuild our country”, but rather less expansively about the place he was visiting. Yet there was a purpose for his presence: the constituency of Gillingham and Rainham — in the county of Kent, not far beyond London’s southeastern outskirts — is a key Labour target, with its candidate, Naushabah Khan, looking to overturn Conservative incumbent Rehman Chishti’s 15,119 majority.
From left: Rayner, Starmer and Khan (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Football has helped shape this election.
Starmer, an Arsenal fan, has also visited Crewe Alexandra and Northampton Town, lower-division clubs also located in target constituencies, as well as Aldershot Town, the non-League side representing one of the UK’s biggest military garrison towns. There was also a visit to Bristol Rovers, of third-tier League One and in a seat currently held by Labour on a narrow majority, and a party political broadcast with Gary Neville, the former Manchester United and England defender turned pundit and podcaster.
Football has crept into policy, with Labour promising to introduce an independent regulator to the sport.
The same policy was first floated by the ruling Conservatives in 2021 and is part of their manifesto this year, too.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a Southampton fan, has also attempted to weaponise the sport. He, along with the other major party leaders, has made a point of tweeting regularly in support of England and Scotland at the European Championship, although there was an early campaign misstep when he asked an audience of Welsh brewery workers whether they were “looking forward to all the football”. Wales failed to qualify for Euro 2024, losing a play-off against Poland on penalties at the final hurdle.
Tense finish but they got the job done.
Jude Bellingham is something special. Onto the next one! 🏴 pic.twitter.com/0rMAV2cs0l
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) June 16, 2024
Football has often proved a convenient PR vehicle for politicians in search of a photoshoot.
Margaret Thatcher posed with Emlyn Hughes and Kevin Keegan, then two of England’s most popular footballers, before the 1980 Euros, while Tony Blair took part in a game of head tennis with Keegan, then Newcastle United manager, in 1995, two years before his first landslide election win as Labour leader.
Blair and “New Labour” coincided with a revolution in British football following huge investment by Sky television. While this has since led to a boom in interest, it has also created a financial gulf and huge challenges for clubs such as Gillingham, currently in England’s fourth division, albeit with a wealthy foreign owner now backing them.
“There is an increasing probability that a distressed town has a distressed football club, because local people can’t afford to invest in it,” says Tom McTague, the political editor of news and opinion website UnHerd.
“If a fan then sees a politician at that football club, it can say to the fan, ‘I care about your club and the place you come from’. Potentially, this can be a very powerful combination.”
Most people in Gillingham tend to agree that the town’s biggest problem is the decay of its high street, now dominated by charity shops and takeaways. The local Conservative club nestles near a Poundland discount supermarket and a pawnbroker.
Stuart Bourne, the Liberal Democrat candidate running against Khan and Chishti, says the place is a “skeleton” of what it used to be. Gillingham, he suggests, is a town where “people just want their lives to become a bit easier. Lots are struggling. Bills are going up and up”.
London is less than an hour away by train, yet Gillingham has little of the capital’s affluence.
McTague sees Kent as the most ‘northern’ of the southern counties because of its sense of de-industrialisation and large working-class communities, thanks largely to the dockyard at neighbouring Chatham. In 1984, Chatham ceased being a naval base, causing a surge in unemployment.
In recent years, Gillingham has reflected the UK’s wider political trends. Having previously returned a Labour MP just once, in 1945, it turned red in 1997 as Blair swept to power on a wave of optimism.
The town’s football club, too, felt upwardly mobile back then, after a significant investment from its owner, Paul Scally.
