STOKE-ON-TRENT, England — Paul Nuttall, the leader of United Kingdom Independence Party, is fond of calling Stoke-on-Trent the “capital of Brexit.” It’s now the place that will determine his and his party’s political future.

The industrial town in England’s West Midlands region epitomizes the political revolution that delivered the vote to leave the European Union. In last year’s referendum, nearly 70 percent of its mainly working-class, traditionally Labour-backing voters swung behind Leave.

Following the resignation of the Labour MP, Tristram Hunt, Stoke has become the scene of a by-election battle royale that has the potential to make or break not only the crisis-hit Labour Party, but UKIP as well.

Nuttall has taken the gamble of standing in the Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election himself, on the hope that enthusiasm for Brexit will translate into votes for UKIP, earning him something his predecessor Nigel Farage never achieved: a seat in parliament.

If he succeeds in the February 23 election, it will be read as proof that in a political landscape transformed by Brexit, UKIP stands to make huge gains in Labour’s former industrial heartlands, and with working class voters disillusioned with the party’s London-centric leadership and liberal stance on immigration.

Labour have seen the threat and are countering hard. “This is the moment when either UKIP break through in Labour’s northern heartlands or we turn the tide,” said Jack Dromey, the MP running the party’s Stoke campaign. “The stakes could not be higher.”

UKIP’s campaign reminds voters that the Labour candidate, local councilor Gareth Snell, was a committed Remain supporter.

At a press conference at the party’s headquarters in the city center Monday, Nuttall hit his theme. Whatever their current stance, rival candidates who backed Remain “are not the right people” to represent Brexit-backing Stoke, he said proclaiming himself “the only candidate who is a real Brexiteer.”

Born in Bootle in the northwest of England, Nuttall’s working class background has seen him contrasted with Farage — a privately-educated former City trader from Kent — and portrayed as a leader who stands a greater chance of making UKIP appealing in Labour areas.

He told POLITICO he believed the narrative had been driven by the media, not by him. “The one thing about Nigel is that he is able to appeal to people of all classes,” he said. “He is as at home in a pub in the north of England as he is maybe in a wine bar in the south.”

Under Farage, UKIP did well in this constituency, coming second to Labour in the 2015 general elections.

But they have a a difficult task ahead to bring out the vote. The city was hardly in the grip of election fever on a cold Monday afternoon this week. The constituency had the lowest turnout in the U.K. in 2015, just 51.3 percent.

Where strong views are encountered, they are as likely to be fiercely anti-UKIP as they are strongly pro-Brexit and sympathetic to Nuttall’s cause. The party polarizes.

“Their morals are wrong,” said Paisley Peake, who works in a clothing shop in the city center. “The UKIP guy doesn’t even live in Stoke, he doesn’t know what goes on here.”

Labour patriotism

A short walk away is Labour’s campaign headquarters in the city’s GMB union building. Inside are ceramic artworks by local children, reminders of a proud industrial heritage. A world leader of the ceramics industry, The Potteries, as the city’s six constituent towns are known, were hit hard by the decline in the British manufacturing base from the Thatcher era onwards.

Labour is determined not to be perceived as patronizing the patriotism of its working class supporters again — even if that opens the party up to accusations of trying to out-UKIP UKIP.

As old ways of life have changed and jobs departed, the old political allegiance to Labour has lingered on. Gareth Snell, the party’s candidate, hopes they will endure a while longer.

He may have been a Remainer once — he described the Brexit process as a “massive pile of shit” in a tweet posted just six months ago — but Snell told POLITICO he respects the democratic “will of the people” and now wants to seize “the opportunities that Brexit provides.”

The party’s campaign in Stoke has struck a far tougher, more patriotic tone on Brexit and immigration than the speeches of leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has been ambivalent about his stance on freedom of movement from the EU after Britain leaves.

In one campaign leaflet, Snell apes the language of the Vote Leave campaign, pledging that Labour supports the country “regaining control of our borders.” In another, his picture appears on a backdrop of the St. George’s Cross — England’s national flag and a symbol with a checkered history for the Labour Party.

In another by-election fight against UKIP in 2014, in Rochester and Strood, London Labour MP Emily Thornberry — now the shadow foreign secretary — was forced to resign from her front-bench job after archly tweeting a picture of the English flag hanging from a house. The tweet caused a media storm and Thornberry was criticized by then Labour leader Ed Miliband for showing “disrespect.”

“It’s a patriotic symbol of England. It is not something that I’m uncomfortable with at all,” Snell said of the flag leaflet. “We should be proud of that.”

In Stoke, Labour is determined not to be perceived as patronizing the patriotism of its working class supporters again — even if that opens the party up to accusations of trying to out-UKIP UKIP.

Snell’s campaign, which is being coordinated by Dromey, a former party treasurer and trade union leader, is drawing heavily on union members, with a “worker-speaking-to-worker” approach, as one campaign source put it.

Many who know Stoke best believe that despite their problems on the national scene, Labour will hang onto the seat.

“There’s a big protest vote out there about the way this city has been treated, taken for granted and ignored,” said Ed Fordham, a former city councilor and now coordinator for the pro-EU Liberal Democrats’ campaign. “But Labour should still win it. They are mobilizing their old mechanics to get out the vote.” The Lib Dems, for their part, are hoping to make gains as a home for the 30 percent of voters here who backed Remain.

The Conservatives, focused on winning the Copeland by-election taking place in Cumbria on the same day, are accused by the other parties of not putting large resources into Stoke, although a campaign source claimed both by-elections were being treated equally.

Nuttall's shift in priorities

Nuttall’s campaign, meanwhile, has been rocky, and UKIP sources are playing down the party’s chances, blaming the superior resources of the party’s rivals. UKIP is notorious for its chaotic internal structures and it has been criticized by its only MP, Douglas Carswell, for not taking a strategic approach to elections — an inheritance, party sources say, of Farage’s time in charge.

Nuttall had pledged reform, but said the opportunity to stand for election changes his priorities.

UKIP sources dismiss suggestions that defeat would do damage to Nuttall’s reputation. Rivals claim that if the party can’t win in Stoke, it can’t win anywhere.

“I did plan to do it starting early in the year, but obviously this has popped up, my focus has come away, it’s solely on the Stoke-on-Trent constituency,” he said. “But we’re going to look at the party and how it works internally over the coming months and we’re going to change the whole internal structure.”

The party has been left without the electoral data and polling expertise of the Leave.EU group, founded by UKIP’s one-time major donor Arron Banks, which has a database of Leave voters said to number 1 million, and was influential in the EU referendum campaign.

Banks, a close ally of former leader Farage, is instead focusing on his new media venture, Westmonster, and plans for a new political movement. When asked if Leave.EU was materially supporting Nuttall’s campaign, Banks’ associate Andy Wigmore told POLITICO via text message: “Leave.EU/Arron not making any more donations to UKIP or any other party. We support Westmonster and new movement.”

Nuttall has also been hit by controversies in recent days that have led the national press coverage of the by-election. On February 13, he distanced himself from a retweet posted by the party’s immigration spokesman John Bickley, showing a cartoon with the slogan: “if you want a Jihadi for a neighbor, vote Labour.” And the following day, he was forced to admit that previous claims on his own website that he lost “close friends” in the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster were incorrect.

UKIP sources dismiss suggestions that defeat would do damage to Nuttall’s reputation. Rivals claim that if the party can’t win in Stoke, it can’t win anywhere.