The Prime Minister has vowed to “stop the boats” carrying asylum seekers across the Channel and is desperate to ensure he can before the country goes to the polls. But has Rishi Sunak left things too late?

Our political editor Paul Francis looks over the prospects for those standing to be Dover’s next MP as the number of people making the crossing continues to climb...

On a crisp sunny day, with a gentle breeze blowing, the seafront at Dover is busy with families making the most of the weather. Ken Green is among those enjoying a stroll and is happy to talk politics. A lifelong Conservative voter, he says he is switching to Labour whenever the next election is.

“I have supported the Conservatives all my life and I am so disappointed,” he says.

“They have made a mess of the NHS.

“They’ve made a mess of immigration, which has a huge impact on housing and they have never recognised that. I’m an economist, so I do know about supply and demand.

“I have no trust in the party. Starmer is not a brilliant leader but in the circumstances, it’s a case of any port in a storm.”

It is a trenchant view and one that ought to alarm the Conservative party. When it comes to voters like Ken, it appears that Dover and Deal could be a shoo-in for Labour, which held the seat up until the end of Tony Blair’s three terms in office.

There are degrees of disaffection in political parties and when you get to the most acute, deserting the party after a lifetime of supporting it is pretty near the bottom.

More worryingly, if Ken’s views are echoed among other party supporters it could be a grisly demise for the Conservatives.

It is a seat that has come to define where the main parties stand on immigration and asylum seekers but it is also a seat where the unemployment rate is among the highest in Kent, with only Thanet and Folkestone worse.

One polling company puts Labour’s chances of winning at 89% - a figure that suggests the party could put its feet up and watch the votes roll in. But it is not a scenario its parliamentary candidate Mike Tapp recognises.

“That would be nice but there’s no certainty - no votes have been cast,” he says.

And while he is prepared to acknowledge that he ”feels good” about his prospects, there are too many undecided voters.

“We must make sure they understand our vision and what we can do for them.”

Tapp, an ex-army and police intelligence officer, is organising a campaign using his military background to ensure his party’s pledges are well understood.

And the best way to do that? Knock on people’s doors and speak to voters directly.

This energetic approach might seem ‘old school’ but Labour believes getting their candidate in face-to-face meetings with voters has its virtues.

“What I’ve said to people is if I win, I don’t gain a voice - they do. Since selection, I have knocked on thousands of doors so have a good idea of what needs to be delivered.”

It is not his first stab at getting elected: he cut his teeth in Tunbridge Wells, standing in a council ward that was a Conservative stronghold and came close to causing an upset.

Dover seems winnable but Mr Tapp won’t be drawn into speculating, saying only: “We are working as if we were five points behind in the campaign.”

This cautious tone is echoed by the Conservative incumbent MP Natalie Elphicke, albeit for a different reason: the local election results in May last year saw a surprise win for Labour, which took control of the district council for the first time since 1995.

The electoral tussle to determine Dover’s next MP will be fought out between the Conservative party and Labour, as it has been for many years.

Mrs Elphicke, who succeeded her husband Charlie who was jailed for two years for three sexual assaults, secured a majority of 12,278 in 2019 when Labour was led by the divisive figure of Jeremy Corbyn. Dover is among Labour’s key targets, with a swing of about 12% needed.

Mrs Elphicke says the key pledges she committed to were to get Brexit done, improve health care and focus on jobs and money. Four years on, she contends they are all issues which have got some traction.

If there is one irritant, it is the increasingly high-profile Reform party, which has the potential to damage the prospects of some MPs.

But talking on the Kent Politics podcast, Mrs Elphicke downplayed the potential impact.

“We have been here before with Ukip and then the Brexit party and now the Reform party. It is up to all parties to set out their stall. All I can say is that I speak to lots of residents who say they are concerned by that party and [the way] it is trying to attract voters.”

As to who will be standing for the Reform party in Dover, the selection of a candidate has not yet happened - something that, given the nature of the seat, seems a surprise.

Carol Comey, who is the county coordinator for Reform, says she does not know why selection has not taken place. But she is clear about why the party is seeing its ratings nudge up.

She says: “The Tories have failed on every measure. Everything is broken; nothing works properly. And there is a failing of political will. Labour are worse. People want to see the country run properly and we think we have the policies to make the country a nice place to live.”

She accepts it would be a “big ask” to expect the party to win any seats in Kent. It does not share much with the Greens but as minority parties both fare worse under the first-past-the-post system.

Green candidate Christine Oliver goes further, saying she expects Labour to win. However, she also says that some Conservatives are switching to her party.

“Certain rural Tories can find a home with the Greens - people who would never potentially think of voting Labour. They care about the countryside, as do we.”

The party has made significant breakthroughs on some Kent councils, showing that it is not just a repository for protest votes and that voters are seeing evidence of some councils embracing the Green party agenda.

Ms Oliver says: “Sometimes people think we are a single issue party but we are not - actually we have some excellent policies across the board on all manner of things.”

The Liberal Democrats are aiming to improve on their performance in 2019 and its candidate Penelope James, a retired communications executive, says: “We doubled our vote share in 2019 and our previous candidate did not live in the constituency - our aim is to put the Tories into third place.”

As to the fear the Green party could split the vote, she says the Lib Dems have an “incredibly strong commitment to green issues and investment”.

The state of the local economy in Dover is also likely to be an issue, with the government allocating £18.5m from its ‘Levelling Up’ fund to help develop the new Beacon centre.

This is a regeneration project in the town that the council has claimed will boost jobs and be worth some £90m to the local economy.

The Conservatives are, however, on the back foot on the issue of stopping small boats from crossing the Channel and look unlikely to reverse that trend by the time the voters have their say.

After recording a drop of around 30% in arrivals this year, the numbers have crept up again: 791 made the journey over the Easter bank holiday weekend. On the following Sunday, 534 people in 10 boats successfully arrived - the highest daily total this year.

It means close to 6,000 asylum seekers have crossed the Channel this year.

It all adds up to a picture in which under Rishi Sunak, the party is facing threats on many sides and the odds of reversing its fortunes in Dover seem stacked against it.

It is a pessimistic assessment that is shared privately by many Conservatives and others in public. The latter include Sarah Hudson, chairman of Kent Conservatives, which oversees the party’s constituency associations.

In a candid forecast, she said: “We are not going to win the election, but saying that, we have still got a lot of support out there. Whether that support will bother voting is the problem.”

Dover could well be a weathervane seat for the rest of the county but the Conservatives may fall foul of the one thing they can’t control: time.

Election history tells us that voters have an innate sense of when governing parties have had the right amount of time in office. And when they do, they show no mercy or sentiment.

Small boats - how the parties would deal with the issue:

Mike Tapp (Lab): “We’d have a dedicated national crime agency cell and we’re looking at a couple of hundred officers minimum - investigators and enforcement teams. They will work with the French authorities upstream and further afield. It doesn’t have to be all about enforcement; these people are hard to catch, so we treat them like terrorists and terrorists are hard to find. If boats do still come, we speed the process up and that means more people in the Home Office.”

Natalie Elphicke (Con): “These are global people smugglers; this is serious organised crime. We have to close down the routes. Where there are return agreements in place they have been successful and act as a deterrent. We should have a cross-Channel agreement with France; so not only are boats stopped from getting in the water but wherever they are in the Channel, they are returned to France.”

Penelope Temple (Lib Dem): “We should have been cracking down on the criminal gangs years ago. We should have been opening up safe and legal routes and we have not done it; that was obviously a political decision by the Conservatives.”

Christine Oliver (Green): “There’s a perception that Dover’s divided but I have always found the people of Dover very welcoming. We would have a more compassionate system where they are not demonised. There are different ways we could co-operate with our international neighbours; it is only a very small proportion who move two or more countries and we already take less than our fair share.”