CANNOCK, ENGLAND — “People are genuinely worried,” says Amanda Milling, the Conservative candidate in the Cannock Chase parliamentary seat narrowly won by her party in 2010 after giving absolute majorities for Labour in the three Tony Blair elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005. “There’s a real risk that money will go north of the border” — to Scotland — “and not to the West Midlands and Cannock Chase. And because of people who six months ago didn’t want to be part of the country.”

Cannock, about 10 miles north of Birmingham, is one of those industrial towns in England whose industries declined in the 1970s and 1980s, but which has grown more recently with white collar businesses and outflow from the larger metropolitan area. It looks not bedraggled but pleasantly up to date. (Cannock Chase, the name of the parliamentary district, was one of King Henry VIII’s many hunting grounds; the Brits give their districts not numbers, as Americans do, but picturesque names.)