Infected toes and Brexit blues: how Anna Soubry hopes to win three-way fight in bellwether Broxtowe

Anna Soubry – barrister, MP, one-time cabinet minister in Her Majesty’s government – opens her office door with one foot in a heeled boot and the other bare and sockless.

“My bloody toe is in agony” is literally the first thing she barks at me. “Come in, darling.”

It is, I feel assured, set to be an interesting few hours.

The toe, first? “Not a campaign injury,” says Soubry, fiddling with an offending nail. “I think it’s infected. I’ll walk it off.”

The reason I’m here, second? Because Broxtowe – the Nottinghamshire seat Soubry has held for nine years, firstly as a Tory, latterly as an Remainer independent – is set to be one of the most valuable prizes at the upcoming election; a three-horse race between her, Labour and the Conservatives which will, if history is anything to go by, be a bellwether for the nation as a whole.

“Come on, come on, let’s get out,” Soubry is saying as she straps on her second boot and throws on a Russian Cossack hat. “It’s a Labour town, is Beeston [Broxtowe’s biggest town and location of her office]. Proper, old, socialist Labour. But you don’t win elections by only talking to the base. Come on.”

The first time my partner ever saw Soubry on TV she was giving a typically forthright interview on Channel 4 News. She was minister for small business, industry and enterprise at the time, I think, but still not shying away from putting the boot into her prime minister David Cameron.

“Is she drunk?” my partner asked.

No, I said. I think that’s just Anna Soubry.

In person, she’s no different; a whirlwinding force of nature; all waving arms and teddy bear growls; tearing into any subject put in front of her, ripping chunks off it, before coming out with a conclusion that is – generally – more logical than it has any right to be.

“People talk about democratic deficit if we don’t leave the EU,” she says of Brexit at one point. “What about when we crash out and this nirvana people were promised doesn’t materialise? How is that democratic deficit going to be filled?”

In Beeston – a mix of independent traders, chain outlets and charity stores – she is demonstrably well-liked. “Best of luck, duck,” becomes a soundtrack to our day.

“It’s weird,” the 52-year mother-of-two says. “When I was first elected, walking round here, all I’d get was, ‘Bloody Tory, bloody Tory’.”

What changed? “People have seen I’m real. I’m hard-working. I’ve always” – a growl – “always put my constituents before career or party. Do you know the best part [of being an MP]? It’s getting problems sorted. It’s…“

She looks around searching for an example and her eyes fall to the pavement.

“The best thing is sorting out a drop curb because it’s causing an issue for someone,” she finishes.

Right on cue, a constituent wanders over to thank her for helping him over claiming his dad’s war medals. Another approaches to remind her how she stepped in when his Bosnian step-daughter was repeatedly refused citizenship.

“She’d lived here virtually all her life,” explains Robert Bryden, 64. “But every two years, all the way into her twenties, she had to request to stay. This was her home but she still had to ask.”

Only when he contacted the MP, he says, was she finally granted citizenship. “She’s 31 now, just had a baby,” he beams proudly.

“That does me good to hear, lovey,” Soubry beams back.

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Even those who don’t agree with her politics appear to enjoy her conversation.

Ken Cooper is stood outside the town’s Last Post pub puffing on a cigarette. He’s 69, a retired asphalter and a grandfather of 23. (Does he lose count? “Never.”) He’s also Labour and Leave.

“Sorry,” he says, but he’ll be voting Tory for the first time in his life. He wants Brexit done. A friend with him, who declines to be named, agrees.

“I want it settled, Anna,” says Cooper.

This may be a sticking point.

Soubry quit the Tories because she is Remain through and through. She has become one of the highest-profile Final Say campaigners – a stance that has seen her receive repeated death threats. But her constituency voted leave. The Broxtowe council area – which, roughly speaking, is split between Labour towns and Tory villages – polled for Brexit by 54 per cent. Just as pertinently, perhaps, this constituency has returned an MP belonging to the winning party ever since it was created in 1983.

Plotting a route to victory as an independent Remainer appears overwhelmingly difficult. Has she thought of a life after politics, I ask. “No,” she scowls, and the subject is dead.

I’m met with the same expression when I ask about the Independent Group for Change, the pro-Remain outfit formed in February when she and 10 other MPs quit their respective parties to start what they hoped would be a new force in British politics.

In the nine months since, it won not a single seat in the European parliament elections, did not stand anyone in the locals and has had eight of those MPs now quit the group altogether. Several joined the Lib Dems.

What went wrong? “I’ve said all I have to on that,” snaps Soubry.

All the same, she clearly feels let down – not just by those who quit the new group but by those who never joined.

“There were MPs who said to me, ‘Anna, you’re doing the right thing,’ but they were terrified of losing their seats [if they left their parties],” she says. “There was lack of courage. They treat being an MP as a job to pay the mortgage, and they didn’t want to risk that.”

She tells a story of a Labour parliamentarian who promised to join the group but renegaded later. “He said he couldn’t leave Labour because his mother was worried how he’d pay his house off if he lost his seat,” she says. “His mother!”

Talking of running scared: Darren Henry, Broxtowe’s Conservative candidate – parachuted in from Wiltshire – calls hours before I’m due to meet him on his own campaign trail in the leafy village of Awsworth to cancel. Or rather, his wife Caroline calls.

Apparently, he has a big beast visitor who won’t do press. That’s Grant Shapps, as it turns out – the transport secretary so averse to scrutiny he once used a pseudonym to hide the fact he was running a get-rich-quick scheme while an MP and then threatened to sue a constituent who drew attention to his second life. Nice.

Either way, CCHQ has been repeatedly accused of not letting candidates speak to the media during this campaign. Another example here, I wonder? Caroline can’t say. She’s got to go. She’s very busy. She hangs up.

No chance, then, to ask Henry – a former logistics officer in the RAF – if his attendance as an MP would be better than in his current post as a councillor in Wiltshire: he’s missed almost 40 per cent of all meetings this term.

And talking – again, again – of running scared: Boris Johnson.

Broxtowe was the constituency where, last week, the prime minister visited a school – but had sixth-form students kept away from him.

While here I visit the George Spencer Academy, in Stapleford, to ask those same year 12s and 13s what they might have said to BoJo given the chance.

“I think he was maybe – not afraid – but I think he didn’t want to be challenged,” says Harry Slater, 18, a product design student. “If he wants to get young people on his side, he needs to give them a reason and he can’t do that if he’s not even going to speak to them,”

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Of the four youngsters I speak to – Harry along with Samuel Halliday, Robbie Szymanski and Yara Hamed – two say they would vote Tory and two Labour. Each has made their decision largely based on Brexit.

Yet they are also overwhelmingly concerned that the focus on this single issue – one which has sound-tracked almost their entire teenage years – is sucking attention away from discussions on health, social welfare and education.

“This is not normal for a country,” says Yara Hamed, who studies biology, chemistry and maths. “It feels like it’s going on forever… At this point, it’s gone on so long, and parliament can’t agree on a deal, it’s just a sign it’s not working.”

Significantly Soubry does not figure in their considerations of who to vote for. In this election, they all agree, a vote for anyone other than the big two parties will be a wasted vote.

This, indeed, may well be an issue for Kat Boettge. The 42-year-old is the Green Party candidate here. It will be her third time standing in an election this year after she failed to win a seat on either the local council or in the European parliament.

“But it is the system that is against us,” says the psychotherapist who is originally from Germany but has lived here for 20 years. “We need proportional representation to stop this big party monopoly.”

When I point out the Euro elections are conducted using PR, she pauses for a moment: “It’s still not a very good proportional representation system,” she says. “If it had been a fairer counting system in the East Midlands, I would have been elected.”

Righto.

Her own campaign will be built on calls for a new green deal, investment in renewable energies and remaining in Europe. She may be helped by no Lib Dem standing – they’ve cleared the way for Soubry – but, even so, it looks like an uphill struggle.

Which brings us back to that square in Beeston.

The Labour candidate Greg Marshall, a local councillor, has not returned my emails and Soubry is not surprised. “He’s a Momentum Corbynite,” she says. “This area was Labour for 13 years up to 2010 but I think his appeal will be limited.”

All the same, as we return to her office, she momentarily admits the challenge she faces herself.

“We are up against two vast party machines,” she says. “I have worked hard. I have always stayed true to my beliefs and done what I think is in the best interest of my constituents. And I have a lot of support. But this is democracy. It cannot be predicted.”