The West Midlands, which has the second-highest unemployment rate in the UK, is prime hunting-ground for Reform UK .

The party has already taken Staffordshire and Warwickshire County Councils. But Nigel Farage is a bogeyman at this Constituency Labour Party (CLP) where Powell is among friends.

“The debate gets defined by ‘all the ills of this country are caused by immigration’. I completely reject that,” Powell tells her mixed-race audience, who stop taking photos of her on their phones long enough to applaud. New Feature

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The competition between Powell and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson to succeed Angela Rayner as Labour’s deputy leader comes after a summer of Labour drift, where Reform UK’s weekly press conferences pushed

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