If Plymouth’s relationship with politics had a Facebook status it would be “it’s complicated” – and that’s before you mention the trees. In the past 25 years or so in Britain’s Ocean City, there have been four Conservative majority administrations, five Labour majority administrations and, as there is now, there have been four periods of “no overall control”. Currently, three MPs cover the city in Devon: two Conservatives and one Labour. While there is no overall control, the council is governed by a Conservative minority administration. And then the trees happened. On 14 March, the Tory council leader signed an executive order to fell 110 trees overnight on Armada Way, a major commercial street in the city centre, prompting a public outcry and ultimately the leader’s resignation. In response, the two Conservative MPs, Johnny Mercer and Gary Streeter, called for the Labour opposition leader to take over the council until this week’s local elections. Out on the doorsteps with Labour campaigners ahead of Thursday’s poll, there is a sense that this election is theirs to lose. The team of eight canvassing the Eggbuckland ward in the north of the city are confident and optimistic that they can win the 12 out of 19 seats up for grabs needed to wrest majority control of the council. “People are coming back to Labour,” says Tudor Evans, the opposition leader and councillor in the Ham ward. “Last year, people were chasing Labour from their doorsteps; this year, they are chasing them but to catch up and ask them for a poster to put in their window.”
Unexpectedly, Evans seems uninterested in making this campaign all about the trees, insisting it has not really come up on the doorstep, although he does later concede that a Conservative voter has told him he will switch to Labour over the issue. “The city centre is in decline, it needs a lot of investment,” he says, bright red leaflets clutched in his hands. “We have stalled infrastructure projects, problems with the NHS, but all the media wants to talk about is the trees.” But why not capitalise on the anger? “It’s not really mentioned on the doorstep,” he says. “Labour would make the centre greener, increase the trees, the number of wildflower meadows … but the city centre, as much as it needs nature diversification, it needs economic diversification, too.” The national political picture feeds through to local voting decisions, Evans says. “Britain has had a pay cut, Plymouth has had a pay cut,” he says. “People are fed up and are realising it doesn’t have to be this way. “In the main, people make up their mind based on their feelings for national politics, so issues coming up are: cost of living, energy prices, price of food.” Nearly three miles away, in the Moor View ward, which sits within the constituency of the minister for veterans’ affairs, Johnny Mercer, the Conservative contender Andrea Johnson disagrees. When the cost of living does come up on the doorstep, it is more often an expression of gratitude for the support provided by the government, she says. “People are saying: ‘Rishi Sunak has been good to us.’” Johnson concedes it will be a challenge to win the seat in the Moor View ward, which again is a mixed bag, with an independent, Labour and Conservative councillor, who is not standing again. Johnson, who lives within the ward she is seeking to represent, says she is not being confronted on the doorstep over the national issues flagged by Labour. The “stop the boats” immigration policies do not register for reasons of “geography”, and Brexit does not come up “because it is done”, she says. Furthermore, Johnson does not appear fazed by Westminster polling showing Labour leads, insisting they are interesting but not “scientific”, and are “narrowing”. She does admit that access to GP appointments and the dental crisis – describing the area as a “dentist desert” – are brought up on the doorstep, “but these tend to be conversations – this is not what people are voting on”. She adds: “The trees have been a big issue, but for every one person distraught about the trees there is a person who is supportive of the redevelopment of the city centre. It’s a fairly balanced view. “The council have heard and I would be surprised if anything like that would happen again.” In Moor View ward, there was a council byelection in January after it emerged one of its Conservative councillors was living 120 miles away in Gloucestershire. This in part inspires Johnson’s emphasis on the importance of her residency in Moor View. “I hope that the work that I’ve done as a community activist will help; people will come back to pick a person who is passionate about making their community better, someone who has skin in the game,” she says. Back in Eggbuckland, Tess Blight has much the same pitch as she runs for Labour in the ward in which she lives.
Blight, who worked as a secondary school teacher in east London for 30 years before retiring in Plymouth seven years ago, is running as a first-time councillor. On the doorstep, she is hearing local concerns: potholes, bus cuts, a housing developer’s desire to build on fields near a secondary school. But national politics is also coming up time and again on doorstep. “They want a change,” she says, having just spoken to an 80-year-old woman who had never voted Labour but was planning to switch from the Conservatives for the first time. Blight is a magistrate in Plymouth and former foster carer, so why choose now to run for council? “Because I live here, I’ve seen what hasn’t been done – the potholes, the bus stops being taken away – the area is neglected because people don’t tend to complain in this part of the city.” There are three Conservative councillors currently representing Eggbuckland, and Blight accepts it is a challenge, but she sees her ward as a bellwether for the entire city. “If we win Eggbuckland on Thursday, we’ll win control of the council,” she says, a wad of bright red leaflets clutched in her hand, “and it’s in play.”