If you think Labour is in a bad place now, you ain’t seen nothing yet Disgruntled Conservatives who voted for me eventually returned to the fold. But those now turning their backs on Labour are lost for good 12 May 2021 • 2:58pm I first realised how vulnerable the Labour Party is to its white working class roots when I stood as the UKIP candidate in the Bromley and Chiselhurst by-election in 2006, following the death of the Conservative MP Eric Forth. As I canvassed with a team one Saturday morning in one of the poorer areas of the constituency, I was stunned by the reaction I received on the doorsteps. People were open about the fact that, after generations of voting Labour, they were no longer going to do so. The principal issue that had turned them off was mass immigration to Britain from new EU members and from much of the rest of the world besides.