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Election in Britain’s ‘Brexit Capital’ Poses Test for Labour Party

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STOKE-ON-TRENT, England — Dennis Lancett can recall the days when workers in this former industrial hub could walk out of their front doors and into well-paid factory jobs.

Today, rather than a formidable lineup of porcelain manufacturers, there is “just a shopping center,” he says, drawing on a cigarette.

Mr. Lancett, 65, supports the right-wing, populist, U.K. Independence Party, known as UKIP, and he thinks that the Labour Party, for which he used to vote, “has lost touch with the working man.”

On Thursday, such feelings of alienation will be tested in elections for two parliamentary seats in struggling areas of middle and north England, Stoke-on-Trent and Copeland. Labour has held the seats there for decades. The contests have turned into a moment of truth for the party, which has been badly — some think fatally — split by the decision to leave the European Union.

Stoke has been nicknamed Britain’s “Brexit capital” because about 70 percent there opted to leave, and Copeland was not far behind. The vote seemed to be driven primarily by people like Mr. Lancett, who also have been displeased with the leftward turn of the current Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and attracted to the nationalist, anti-immigrant message of UKIP.

STOKE-ON-TRENT, England — Dennis Lancett can recall the days when workers in this former industrial hub could walk out of their front doors and into well-paid factory jobs. Today, rather than a formidable lineup of porcelain manufacturers, there is “just a shopping center,” he says, drawing on a cigarette.

Mr. Lancett, 65, supports the right-wing, populist, U.K. Independence Party, known as UKIP, and he thinks that the Labour Party, for which he used to vote, “has lost touch with the working man.”

On Thursday, such feelings of alienation will be tested in elections for two parliamentary seats in struggling areas of middle and north England, Stoke-on-Trent and Copeland. Labour has held the seats there for decades. The contests have turned into a moment of truth for the party, which has been badly — some think fatally — split by the decision to leave the European Union.

Stoke has been nicknamed Britain’s “Brexit capital” because about 70 percent there opted to leave, and Copeland was not far behind. The vote seemed to be driven primarily by people like Mr. Lancett, who also have been displeased with the leftward turn of the current Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and attracted to the nationalist, anti-immigrant message of UKIP.

On the other hand, Labour’s other core constituency — younger, urban liberals mainly in London and some other cities — strongly advocated remaining in the union.

A defeat here in Stoke-on-Trent Central or Copeland could imperil Mr. Corbyn’s standing and add further weight to the argument that Labour as currently constituted is incapable of acting as an opposition party, let alone winning a national election.

Even Labour figures see it as a defining moment, and Jack Dromey, a senior lawmaker, described the Stoke by-election as “arguably the most important for 20 years.”

By-elections, called when sitting lawmakers leave the House of Commons (as in these cases) or die, are unpredictable events often attracting low turnouts.

In Copeland, a large area that spans scenic landscape and urban decay, Labour’s main threat is thought to be from the Conservative Party of Prime Minister Theresa May. Were its candidate, Trudy Harrison, to win, she would be the first challenger from a governing party to win a seat from the opposition since 1982.

In Stoke, Labour’s main challenger is believed to be UKIP, whose new leader, Paul Nuttall, is standing for the seat, but who has stumbled during the campaign.

Despite its grimy image, there is some positive news in Stoke, where a gambling firm, bet365, is a big employer, and where the ceramics industry, which made the city famous, remains, albeit on a smaller scale. But there are reminders too of the factories that have disappeared, with greenery sprouting from the roofs and windows of derelict buildings.

Speaking in Labour’s campaign office in Stoke, Mr. Dromey said that voters here have legitimate discontents — a lack of secure jobs, low pay and squeezed education and health care provision — but that these were being exploited “by a grotesque populism” that Labour has a chance to thwart in the elections.

“Either UKIP breaks through in Labour’s midland and northern heartlands, or we turn the tide on UKIP,” he said.

That will be decided in places like the huge Bentilee housing estate, built in the 1950s, where at the Hollybush pub two angry-looking dogs pad up and down on a flat roof at the front of the building.

“If you think they are fierce you should see their owner,” joked Tony Ginty, 59 and unemployed, a former Labour voter who said he had lost faith in the party and its “plastic” politicians.

Outside the Lidl supermarket, on Dividy Road, Jeffrey Hartshorn, 31, said he wants to work to support his children, “but there is nothing at the moment. I apply but I never hear anything back.” For now, Mr. Hartshorn is sticking with Labour but analysts believe that its problems go deep.

“The fact that Labour is so vulnerable in both these seats is an indication of the party’s parlous standing,” said Mark Wickham-Jones, professor of political science at the University of Bristol.

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“It’s also clearly an indication of the party’s failure to recover from the shock both of the general election in 2015 and from the trauma created by the outcome of the referendum last year,” he added, referring to the Brexit vote and a national election in which Labour lost all but one of its seats in Scotland, a traditional stronghold.

A lifelong critic of the European Union, Mr. Corbyn campaigned only tepidly to remain and has since ordered his legislators to vote with Mrs. May to trigger withdrawal talks — prompting further internal discord. So poisonous is the atmosphere that some Labour lawmakers are rumored to hope that Labour loses on Thursday, believing that may prompt their leader’s departure.

Mr. Corbyn appears a bigger issue in Copeland, where the Sellafield nuclear power station is a big employer and where there are hopes of a new nuclear development at Moorside.

Although he has sounded more positive recently, Mr. Corbyn is not an enthusiast for nuclear energy, either. Battling the wind and rain in a bus shelter outside a hospital at Whitehaven, Labour’s candidate, Gillian Troughton, repeatedly batted away questions about her leader. She insisted that support for the nuclear industry is Labour Party policy, and added: “I’m 100 percent behind it — we need nuclear to keep the lights on as part of the low-carbon energy mix. We need it for good jobs in this area.”

She prefers to concentrate on health care — traditionally a strong subject for Labour — and warns that threats to downgrade maternity services at the local hospital will mean babies dying.

In the pharmacy at nearby Egremont, Carol Spedding, said that worries about the hospital will probably tilt her vote to Labour. But she believes that the north of England is “getting totally ignored” by politicians. “We don’t matter,” she added.

In Copeland, the contest has been more low-key than in Stoke, where Mr. Nuttall has made headlines as he seeks to craft a new identity for UKIP, after the Brexit referendum, one that is less about Europe and more about representing the left-behind voters in depressed urban areas.

The headlines have not generally been positive, however. Mr. Nuttall has been on the defensive since registering his address on his by-election nomination papers as a newly rented house in the constituency, making him appear more local than he is. Things got worse when he was challenged over incorrect claims on his website that he lost close personal friends at the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, when 96 people were crushed to death at a soccer stadium.

At a public meeting organized by Hartshill and Harpfields Occasions, a community group, Mr. Nuttall mixed defiance with contrition when accused of lying. After blaming the news media and the establishment of smearing him, Mr. Nuttall, admitted that the Hillsborough claim was wrong, adding: “I have apologized to the people that matter, to the people involved. They have accepted it, and now there is nothing else I can really do.”

Mr. Nuttall’s Labour opponent, Gareth Snell, has also been in trouble, after sexist Twitter messages made several years ago resurfaced.

“I was out of order,” said Mr. Snell, opting to get an apology in before one was demanded. His mea culpa out of the way, Mr. Snell acknowledged that times have changed and that in Stoke he can no longer “rely on the fact that generations of grandparents and parents have continued to vote Labour.”

“The Labour Party,” he said, “doesn’t deserve loyalty. The Labour Party should be working hard for every single vote that it gets.”

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