May's Small-Town Brexit Strategy

Walsall voted to leave the EU. Will it abandon Labour next?

“This time I won’t bother. I can’t see what’s being done”

- Thomas Penny

Walsall, a town on the western side of the English Midlands, is famous for making leather goods and not much else. It was in such blighted communities in the U.K.’s industrial heartland where the desire to leave the European Union was strongest. And those constituencies will prove the masterfulness or recklessness of Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to send her country back to the ballot less than a year after the Brexit vote.

Walsall’s Launer leather factory once produced handbags for former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but the town never embraced her politics. Now, as the June 8 election approaches, residents must reconcile their ardent support for Brexit with their habit of voting for the Labour Party, May’s opponent. “The key for me is Europe,” says Alan Smith, 61, who was part of the 68 percent of Walsall who voted to separate from the world’s largest trading bloc. “Labour say they will leave, but I don’t believe them.” He says he plans to support May’s Conservative Party this year.