Thursday’s general election looks likely to be a historic pivot: one of those long-remembered moments when the established order at Westminster is swept away by what Jim Callaghan, the victim of one such shift in 1979, called a “sea change in politics”. Yet as Guardian reporters fanned out across the UK during the campaign to spend time talking to voters and non-voters in 15 varied constituencies for the Path to power series, they found precious little hope that things will be different come 5 July. Every constituency had its own particular concerns that bubbled up repeatedly in conversation: in Waveney Valley it was unwanted pylons, in Burnley it was the Gaza conflict and in Clacton it was immigration. But several common threads run through much of the reporting, forming a dark narrative about the state of Britain and its people as Labour prepares to take power. Everywhere reporters went, the infrastructure that makes up everyday life, from GP surgeries to libraries to roads, has been eroded by more than a decade of underinvestment. In Chingford and Woodford Green, in north-east London, the parlous state of the pavements came up; people in North Cornwall are crying out for a bypass. The NHS is raised again and again, in a litany of terrible stories, leavened with British stoicism. “I’m not knocking the NHS but it’s frustrating,” was how 26-year-old Katie Hayton, in Whitby, described her situation while awaiting a cornea transplant, for which she will have to travel 50 miles to York. Sue Wright, in Waveney Valley, a seat the Greens hope to take, drives 135 miles to her former dentist in Surrey because the other options locally are so expensive. At the A&E in the new constituency of Caerfyrddin in Wales, where healthcare is devolved, the Guardian found mothers and babies sitting on the floor, and four ambulances waiting outside. “It doesn’t feel like we’re living in a first world country,” lamented one mother, Jo.
Acute housing challenges are widespread, too. The waiting list for a three-bed socially rented home in Hitchin, Hertfordhsire, is nearly four years. In Birmingham Ladywood, Sephena Reece is living in a leaky council flat plagued with mould. “The ceiling is completely black at its worst,” she says. “I really worry about my son. He has to have inhalers and he’s in here every night coughing away. It’s been going on for years.” Amid these grim dispatches from the frontline of a crumbling state, there are also uplifting tales of concerned citizens taking things into their own hands. In Camelford, in Cornwall, a former NatWest branch has been transformed into a community larder, where local people can pick up basic food and hygiene products. The scheme has been able to continue operating due to a £90,000 levelling up grant from the government. When Boris Johnson was promising to level up the UK, during the 2019 general election campaign, few can have imagined that he meant carpeting the country in food banks. In Belfast East, where the cost of living crisis contends with community loyalties to shape people’s votes, another community larder serves struggling locals; in Midlothian, Scotland, volunteers have transformed a disused bowling green into a community garden. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the chaos at Westminster that has played out against the backdrop of a cost of living crisis, disgust at the Conservatives’ performance is widespread.
Rishi Sunak is disparaged as wealthy and out of touch, and with memories of the pandemic scarred deep into the public psyche, the Partygate scandal comes up regularly. In Midlothian, where the partisan battle lines are different, it is the behaviour of the Scottish National party, in office in Holyrood, that draws voters’ ire. “The impact of ‘motorhomegate’ has dented people’s confidence – if a party couldn’t manage its own finances there’s a concern about what it could manage,” says Neil Heydon-Dumbleton. Keir Starmer appears likely to be the main beneficiary of much of this anger on both sides of the border, if the polls are right. But the Guardian’s reporters found little love for Labour across the country, with many voters preparing to turn to smaller parties, or to stay at home. Bristol Central candidate Thangam Debbonnaire may be walking up Downing Street to be appointed culture secretary on Friday morning – or with the Greens targeting her seat, she may be confronting life as a former MP. “The climate crisis is something I’m really passionate about, I definitely experience eco-anxiety,” says local voter Monsoon Modi. “The Greens are much stronger than Labour and the Tories on the climate.” A very different small party, Nigel Farage’s Reform, hopes to take control in the economically deprived constituency of Clacton, playing on concerns about immigration. As one voter put it in the seaside town, which is 95.3% white: “He’s for English people.” Starmer claims that he is ready to “relight the fire of optimism” among voters. The Path to power series suggests that expectations are set so low that the political reward for effecting even modest positive changes could be significant. But for the moment, the embers of hope appear to have been well and truly stamped out. As William Harbour, a resolute non-voter in Burnley, put it: “The country’s on its arse now but it’s not going to change – it’s gone too far.”