Huddled inside their cramped three-bed terrace, Gemma Grafton and Lee Stevenson are battling a silent fight that millions of struggling British families will identify with.
Lee, 46, works whenever he can, scraping by on a minimum-wage handyman job with hours that rise and fall without notice.
Mother-of-three Gemma, 41, wants to work too – she always has – but transportation expenses consumed what little she could earn as a parent juggling childcare.
The Middlesbrough couple say they are watching their finances collapse under the weight of rising costs and shrinking support, while reliant on benefits, which often leave them unable to cover the basics.
The working-class family were forced into the spotlight this week when they bemoaned Labour for what they see as preferential treatment given to migrants and asylum seekers, many of whom come to the UK by small boat.
Gemma told Sky News: ‘I think a lot of people’s backs are up because they get the food vouchers, they get the free mobile phones, free [school] uniforms, driving lessons, the houses.
‘It’s sort of like a kick in the teeth to think, well, why do we get none of that, why are they getting it all?’
For decades, towns like Middlesbrough formed the backbone of Labour’s support – proud, industrial communities that believed the party would always stand up for working people.
Now Reform is surging in these traditional red heartlands, with estate streets draped in Union Jacks and St George’s crosses.
That explosion, according to families on the gritty Brambles Estate, is because Sir Keir Starmer has ‘forgotten’ them while prioritising asylum seekers.
Gemma, who lives in an end-terrace housing association property, said: ‘Middlesbrough is broken and nobody cares about fixing it. Labour is helping the wrong people. I don’t want to be accused of being racist – I’m not – but I don’t think I’m seeing any help for my family.
‘Everyone is begging for help, and it’s not coming. Nobody gets it. It feels like we’ve been forgotten.
‘We are desperate for a bigger house. This is a tiny three-bed, and there are five of us. There’s not enough storage, and the bedrooms are really small.
‘They tell us that there’s no housing, then you see them putting people in houses.
‘It’s things like that which are frustrating. It’s like nobody wants to know.’
Gemma, born and raised in the Teesside town, had worked since leaving school – in care homes, cafés, kitchens and classrooms.
Last October, she gave up her 10-hour-a-week minimum-wage job as a dinner lady after the school relocated and her earnings vanished in bus fares.
She said: ‘I would have had to have taken two buses there and two buses back. So I would basically have been spending more in transport than I would have been picking up.
‘I was absolutely devastated that I had to leave because the kids loved me, but it made no financial sense.’
Some people will say that this couple shouldn’t have had so many children, and perhaps that’s true, but we are not at liberty to say how many children people should have.
Some babies are planned and some are by mistake. Are people now saying that those who are by mistake should be terminated? If that is the case, then we would become no more than a communist country like China.
British white people who were born in the UK are not the problem. The problem is the millions of migrants that have been allowed to come to our country to live, and all the freebies that they get from our government. If our government are giving them freebies, what are the good British people getting? Nothing.
We have been forgotten about, and it’s not by mistake; it’s by design, and therefore our government needs to be terminated!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 