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The Conservatives election machine has finally swung into action in Clacton as the party picked former 1980s television star Giles Watling as their candidate to fight Ukip defector Douglas Carswell, and despatched more than 30 MPs in an attempt to love-bomb the seaside resort.
The party is playing catch-up against Carswell, who is well ahead in the polls and was the town's popular MP before he resigned as a Conservative to re-contest the seat for Ukip.
Conservative sources said they believe the seat to be winnable and that their candidate will benefit from tactical voting among residents wanting to keep out Ukip. However, they are suffering backlash after former Tory MP Matthew Parris suggested in a Times article the party should turn its back on a town and its people who are "going nowhere".
Michael Gove, the Conservative chief whip, dismissed the comments as ridiculous when questioned about it by a local reporter.
Giles Watling with fellow Bread actor Melanie Hill in 1990. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/REX
Watling, a director and actor, is best known for playing Oswald the vicar in the 1980s television sitcom Bread, and is described on his website as a keen sailor who owns two small yachts.
He was selected out of a choice of just two candidates, both vetted by the party headquarters, at a US-style open primary meeting attended by around 240 residents.
It was picketed by a group of Ukip supporters from the north-east, who had travelled down by minibus to express their delight that Nigel Farage's insurgent party is on course to win its first parliamentary election.
Carswell has retained a large amount of support in Clacton, with residents honking their horns and approaching him with their best wishes as he canvassed around the town.
But Ann Walters, a 74-year-old Clacton resident attending the Conservative open primary, said Carswell is "an honourable gentleman but naive."
"Ukip supporters are stupid ... How dare Farage say there's too many immigrants? We've always had immigrants," she said, on her way into the meeting.
However, another resident, Steve Delarossi, drove down to the public meeting to tell the Conservatives that their leaflets were a "tissue of lies" over their claims about freezing council tax. The 51-year-old, who is suffering from lung disease and heart disease, said people on disability benefits have had to pay more in council tax. He has voted for Labour in the past, for the Conservatives in 2010 and will now give his vote to Ukip. Several voters cited Parris's inflammatory article as a reason why they would not be supporting the Conservatives.
Carswell said he did not want to "have a pop" at Parris, but added: "I think it's very sad that the party I spent twentysomething years being a part [had its] selection meetings chaired by someone who clearly holds those views."
The Ukip candidate said he was trying to counter the view that Nigel Farage's party was backward-looking and reactionary – by offering a sense of hope in contrast to the "absurdly patronising" attitude of those at the top of the Conservative party towards those who they stereotype as "white-van Essex men".
"Look around you, the customer hasn't got what it asked for," Carswell said. "There is a sense of alienation. I don't want to harbour that sense of alienation and stoke it up. I am trying to say to some very pessimistic people, 'let's do this together, let's change things'. On one of my leaflets, underneath the Matthew Parris article, I've actually got the slogan: Don't get angry, let's change things."
Clacton has been identified by the Manchester University academic Matthew Goodwin as the seat in England most likely to be receptive to Ukip because it has "lots of pensioners, lots of voters without a degree, lots of voters with no educational qualifications, and higher than average levels of economic disadvantage and unemployment".
Labour is third in the polls, about seven points behind the Conservatives. Tim Young, the party's candidate and another Colchester councillor who was born in Clacton, said his focus on the cost of living and the coalition's failures on the NHS was gaining support with voters.
He was scornful of Carswell's anti-establishment position, arguing that the former Tory had voted for coalition measures that had left people worse off. Young said he was stressing the rightwing nature of Ukip's policies and its record of "spreading fear" about immigration.
Asked why Labour is not performing better in the town and the south in general, he said: "There are issues in the south, but Clacton is a wide and diverse constituency. If you go to places like Frinton, places like that are not typically urban and lots of deprivation. It isn't a natural Labour seat. It's somewhere where Labour can get a lot of votes but I wouldn't pick it out as natural Labour territory … The cost-of-living is resonating without a doubt. People are on their uppers here."
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