Kitty Thompson: We cannot let Reform’s tide of teal take seaside towns

We are an island nation. The tides that have shaped our shores have defined our national story, too. Today, the waves are working against us. Storm surges now batter once-proud harbours. Cliffs crumble into the sea. Floods destroy livelihoods. Beneath the waves, marine habitats are vanishing with our natural resilience to coastal erosion, sea level rise, and climate change.

Alongside these environmental threats, many coastal economies face deep socio-economic challenges. Two-thirds of English coastal towns fall within the highest bracket of income deprivation. Their high streets are struggling, seasonal jobs continue to dominate, and young people often leave and don’t come back. I should know. I grew up in Skegness.

Skegness, like many seaside towns across Britain, has changed. Beneath the postcards and promenades lie deep economic and social challenges that have been decades in the making. Looking back over our 14 years in government, it is clear that – for all the talk of levelling up – we ultimately failed to provide coastal towns with a bigger, more hopeful vision for what their future could have in store.

The go-to response from successive Conservative governments was to throw money at the problem in the form of regeneration funds.

Yes, Skegness’ train station is being redeveloped (again) to provide many of the four million annual visitors with a ‘spectacular gateway’ to the Lincolnshire coast, but this town will not be revived by beautifying the end of the one-way track to Nottingham alone.

Our ambition to revive coastal communities has remained far too surface-level and we have paid the political price. My hometown now has a Reform MP, Mayor, and county council.

This should be a wake-up call for the Conservative Party. Reform didn’t just win in Skegness because of Nigel Farage. It won because too many people in coastal towns feel ignored, left-behind, and taken advantage of. They have seen, slowly but surely, the place they call home changing for the worse. They are right to feel that way.

The tide of teal was not an inevitability. And, going forward, it does not need to be either. We cannot let Reform set the tone in places like Skegness. It offers easy anger – not real answers.

But if we, as Conservatives, fail to offer unapologetically conservative alternatives, then we leave a vacuum for them to continue to fill.

Providing a vision for these communities is patriotic work. It is also one that can be rooted in conservative values: stewardship, enterprise, and resilience.

This begins by telling the truth – coastal communities cannot be some nostalgic relic of the past, to be preserved for tourists as a part of our heritage. They must be a vital part of our future too.

Seaside towns are faced with a suite of environmental threats that will only worsen as climate change intensifies. Resilience cannot just be about sandbags and sea walls. It can and must go hand in hand with economic renewal.

This is yet another opportunity to demonstrate that, while Reform certainly sounds the part, it cannot back up the talk with realistic and sane policy solutions. The answer lies with conservatism: bringing economic opportunity together with environmental stewardship for the betterment of our coastal communities.

That is what the Conservative Environment Network’s latest publication, Making Waves: A Conservative plan for nature-based coastal renewal and resilience, seeks to offer.

This publication does not recommend piecemeal funding pots or white-elephant regeneration projects. It seeks to provide a clearer vision for our coasts, and in this case it is one that embraces nature as a tool for renewal. Not in some abstract or romantic way, but through hard-headed pragmatism.

Saltmarshes, kelp forests, and oyster reefs can act as natural defences against flooding and coastal erosion, saving millions in long-term infrastructure maintenance costs and providing new nature-based economic opportunities for our shores. But they can be so much more than a natural defence – they can be a tool of economic revival.

As is ever the case in England, red tape is stifling economic growth. Complex and costly licensing rules stand in the way of new marine restoration projects that could funnel finance, jobs, and new business opportunities into our coastal communities. To take one example, the Solent Seascape Project, which seeks to restore saltmarshes, oyster beds, and seagrass to the Solent, will need to secure more than ten marine licenses for the privilege, with each one granted by the much maligned Marine Management Organisation, costing up to £15,000.

Equally, where opportunities exist to unlock private investment in marine environment restoration – through creating blue carbon codes that can be traded – government has dithered and delayed for years. The siren song of short-termism stood in the way of this novel approach to financing nature recovery and instead we continued to throw public money at the problem.

Rebuilding the resilience of our coastal communities is more than an environmental agenda. It is a national mission, shaped by our geography, rooted in our history, and essential to our future prosperity. This is ultimately conservatism in action: stewardship that safeguards our heritage, and economic opportunities that uplift communities.

Much like the Conservative Party’s, the story of our coasts is one of adaptation. With a clear vision, anchored in conservative values, both can thrive once more. This is not nostalgia. It is conservatism with purpose, marrying environmental stewardship with economic growth. So let’s start making waves.