Jaywick: Brexit's Impact on England's Poorest Town

The “grand opening” banner was still draped limply across the window of Flappy Joe’s fast food chicken shop in Jaywick on Monday, two days after Nigel Farage cut the ribbon. The Reform UK leader and MP for Clacton-on-Sea had been out and about last Saturday in his constituency, 130km northeast of London on Essex’s North Sea coast. Jaywick is a village in the constituency, 3km west of Clacton. It is also one of the most notorious enclaves in Britain, to the chagrin of locals. Many are weary of Jaywick’s reputation, which they say belies its community spirit. For 15 years, Jaywick has been officially ranked by the UK government as the most deprived neighbourhood in England. It topped the list again at Halloween, despite the improvement efforts of Tendring district council. “It’s not a surprise,” says Farage – he says it attracts “people down on their luck” seeking cheap houses. Property prices average £175,000, a quarter of London. Jaywick is Brexit-by-the-Sea. About 70 per cent of locals voted Leave. Farage, a Brexit architect, reversed a 25,000 Tory majority in the wider constituency in 2024 to win the seat with a 45 per cent swing. If there is a stereotypical – though not always particularly accurate – establishment media view of the average Brexit voter, they probably live in Jaywick. The village of 5,000 is 97 per cent white, almost 40 per cent are pensioners and more than 60 per cent are on benefits. Two-thirds of the working age population are economically inactive. Jaywick is used to being traduced. In his 1983 classic travelogue, The Kingdom by the Sea, US writer Paul Theroux infamously dismissed it as being like an “Argentinian shanty town”. The Channel 5 documentary series, Benefits by the Sea, was filmed here in 2015. A blustery day in mid-January probably wasn’t the fairest time to judge a seaside village already on its uppers, but I arrived on Monday anyway, prepared to make allowances. [ Inside Tommy Robinson’s world: Leader of Britain’s right-wing nationalist upsurgeOpens in new window ] The taxi driver who brought me in from Clacton said he was the son of a Kerry man. “I also married a Galway girl,” he said, chuckling. “But that didn’t work out.” Many local residents of Jaywick, built in the 1930s as a holiday resort for the new working-class car owners of London, are cockneys who made the move permanently. The driver had moved from Cricklewood 20 years earlier. “People say there is no money to be made here in the winter, but there is if you put in the hours,” he said. I asked what he earned. “I did seven days last week and took in £800, but I have to give 40 per cent to the company that owns the taxi.” That worked out at about £70 (€80) a day for the driver, before tax. Golf Green Road, running from the Three Jays pub down towards the sea, was hardly a bastion of deprivation, with many large houses. It was also a motorway of sorts for the elderly residents on mobility scooters who zoom all over the town. Many had mocked-up “reg plates” with their names. I waved hello to “Betty”, who beamed back. Jaywick’s notorious deprivation was apparent closer to the coast. Its vast sandy beach is a dream, but some of the areas off the promenade were more of a nightmare. Fly tipping was endemic – parts of Jaywick are littered with abandoned couches and boarded-up bungalows. It got worse as I ventured west into Brooklands, the most deprived part of the most deprived place in England. There was cheer amid the grimness. Several houses, some next door to derelict units, had incongruously whimsical names, like Cockney Dream and Why Worry. There was also evidence of council attempts at regeneration. In 2023 it opened the £5.3 million new Sunspot indoors market, where the units include We Buy Any Scooter and Flappy Joes chicken outlet, owned by local woman Joanne Campbell. In advance of the opening of her shop she told a council promotional video that the best thing about Jaywick was its local spirit: “Everybody, no matter who you are or where you’ve come from, is treated the same.” After he cut the Flappy Joe’s ribbon, Farage visited other businesses including Richard Smith’s carpets outlet. The Reform leader is not universally popular, even here, but business owners were glad to see him. “Love him or hate him, any public figure visiting to promote your business is a good thing,” said Smith. Jaywick’s main street of Broadway, however, was still in a dour state, with a surfeit of shuttered and grubby outlets. The council is struggling to fund a £126 million revamp plan for Jaywick, the bulk for flood defences. Back at the Three Jays, where the televisions were tuned to GB News, the friendly, mostly older Jaywick locals had settled in for their evening pints. Many don’t recognise the hellhole town that is depicted in British media. The pool table was busy, the chat was brisk, and they all marvelled at Gerry’s bulldog, the size of a small horse. It felt like as if there must be worse places than Jaywick, although the UK government disagrees.