The most powerful people in Britain: The Undecideds – POLITICO

KIDSGROVE, England — “I’m basically becoming obsessed with potholes,” Jonathan Gullis announces proudly to the half-full community hall. “That’s going to be my life for the next 12 months … My fiancée is really excited.”

Standing beneath a small disco ball in Victoria Hall in Kidsgrove, Staffordshire, the Tory MP is holding a town hall. He rattles off answers to residents’ questions in machine-gun style — on housing (we need more); train ticket office closures (bad idea); and local plans for a Motocross track (maybe, maybe not).

He keeps referencing his family, from his elderly mother’s cancer to his young daughter’s birth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tellingly, his Union flag banner bears his own name (and face), but not that of the Conservative Party he represents.

Gullis, in other words, is fighting for every vote. His 2019 victory in Stoke-on-Trent North ended Labour’s 69-year control of his seat. But since then, the Tories have fallen 20 points behind in the polls. Every Tory MP fighting a marginal seat knows they must outpace their party’s national performance to stand a chance.

But a year before the general election, the sorts of people who show up for an MP’s town hall event may be entirely the wrong crowd on which to focus attention. Almost every one of the 25 attendees says they have already decided how to vote.

A week touring ordinary workplaces in Labour-turned-Tory seats in the east and west midlands of England tells a different story.

The Undecideds

For months, Tory MPs have privately insisted Labour’s towering lead is not all it seems — as polls obscure the millions of voters who haven’t yet made up their minds. Winning over the Undecideds, they argue, will be key to any Tory recovery.

YouGov’s latest poll gave Labour a 20-point lead, they note, but only once “don’t knows” had been stripped out — standard industry practice when reporting voter intention.

The raw data, on the other hand, put Labour on 32 percent, the Tories on 17, “don’t knows” on 17, and people saying they would not vote at all on 12. Essentially, an enormous number of votes are still up for grabs.

That Labour lead is still huge, notes Luke Tryl, a former Tory special adviser who oversees polling and focus groups for the non-partisan More in Common think tank. He says Labour would win a majority if there was an election tomorrow. But “we have a really volatile electorate — people are just much less entrenched than they were,” he adds. He believes Labour are currently “winning by default,” because “people don’t like the Tories.” 

Where, exactly, the Undecideds would go — or if they would vote at all — is the great unknown.

More in Common’s data shows that of those who say they don’t know how they’ll vote, more would ultimately choose the Conservatives (22 percent) than Labour (15 percent) if forced to pick a side — making about a two-point difference to the final result.

“If you combine the ‘don’t knows’ with some narrowing [of Labour’s lead] based on the economy and NHS improving, then it could be game on next year,” says Tryl. “But that relies on a lot of things going right for the Tories.”

‘I’m sick to death of the bollocks’

In a week touring small business in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire — key parts of the “Red Wall” of old Labour constituencies that turned blue in 2019 — it’s striking how few people say they have decided which way to vote, or indeed whether to vote at all.

“I’m sick to death of all the bollocks, to be honest with you,” says John Donovan, founder of haulage firm JJX Logistics in Dudley. The long-time Tory voter says the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was “amazing,” but that “they went and let themselves down in other areas.” He adds: “I don’t like that Keir [Starmer, Labour leader] … I reckon he’s just full of promises that don’t get delivered.”

Back in Stoke-on-Trent, 34-year-old Daniel Waterman — whose animation studio is held up as a symbol of the city’s regeneration — is more pragmatic. He is undecided because Labour’s move to the center, following the left-wing leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, makes the choice between the two main parties more finely balanced. “There’s a lot of learning that both parties need to do,” he adds.

Also pragmatic is Christopher Nieper, 59, who runs the last remaining big clothes factory in the former textiles hub of Alfreton, Derbyshire. “I will do whatever I think would support this town best,” he says. He donated £10,000 to Boris Johnson’s 2019 leadership campaign because “I thought he had the best chance of delivering Brexit.” But “the combination of that and the [broken] promises of leveling up are things that have really let us down.”

Voters are ‘bruised and frustrated’

Dudley North MP Marco Longhi, a committed Brexiteer and former Johnson supporter, says similar. Despite progress, he says “we haven’t delivered on those benefits of Brexit” and “we haven’t taken back control of our borders. We’ve lost control of them.” Asked if his constituents feel “betrayed” by how Brexit has gone, he replies: “A significant proportion, if not most of them, probably do feel that way.”

Marcus Jones, Tory MP for neighboring Nuneaton — and also the Conservatives’ deputy chief whip — agrees that “people are feeling bruised and frustrated” by the soaring cost of living, but insists “we’re starting to see some initial signs” of progress.

And Longhi adds: “What I’m hearing on the doorstep is — ‘give us a reason to vote Conservative. We are absolutely not ready to vote Labour yet. But what we won’t do any more is vote Conservative if you just carry on promising things and not delivering.’”

Certainly, love for Labour leader Keir Starmer does not pour forth in the Midlands, Tryl, of the More in Commons think tank, says. “Talk to people in focus groups and it confirms the Tories haemorrhaging support,” he says. “But what you don’t see is massive enthusiasm for Labour. It’s really ‘a pox on all your houses’.”

In Dudley’s Black Country Living Museum, whose re-enactors in traditional dress saw Prime Minister Rishi Sunak launch the Tories’ local election campaign back in May, one anonymous volunteer is scathing of the Tory government.

But as a left-winger who voted for Labour under Corbyn, they are equally unimpressed with their own party’s new look. “I wouldn’t vote for Labour under Starmer,” they said. “He’s a liar. He buckles under the slightest bit of pressure from the press. He’s too interested in going to [Rupert] Murdoch’s parties.”

Another long-time Labour voter, Sarah Shilton, 56, who runs a nursery in bellwether seat Nuneaton, says she will also consider the centrist Lib Dems next time, depending on their childcare policy. She has no animus for Starmer, but instead feels her concerns about early years are ignored by politicians generally: “They need to ask. They need to listen.”

In Biddulph, Staffordshire, sandwich shop server Lesley Street was a lifelong Labour voter but has stopped turning out in recent years. “I’m not really interested in it,” the 62-year-old says. “I’ve just lost faith in it all. They’re just all bent. We don’t know what to believe from them.”

‘There’s nothing in the town center any more’

Time and again the same topics come up from people disillusioned with politics: they think MPs are only in it for themselves, and they feel ignored by Westminster. None of this is new, but it is repeated endlessly across regional English towns urgently in need of “leveling up,” as Johnson’s 2019 election promise put it.

In one of the few traditional shops left in Dudley, the woman behind the counter sighs: “If I didn’t work here, I wouldn’t come up here. There’s nothing in the town center any more.”

More upbeat is Jasroop Singh, 20, who has recently started selling perfume at Dudley’s open-air market, established in the 12th century. The rates are cheap, he says, but “it’s a bit too quiet.” He makes more money selling on TikTok.

Ashfield MP Lee Anderson, the Tories’ deputy chairman and a former coal miner, blames the loss of community on the closure of old industries. “We had in a small village of 3,000 people a coal mine, a factory, a school and 12 pubs,” he says. Social clubs would have snooker, darts and “three acts Friday, Saturday, Sunday.”

To Anderson, money is not the problem. “You can whine about the ‘cost of living crisis’ all day long,” he says, but “people in my patch are now going on cruises and all-inclusive holidays to Mexico. People never did that 20, 30 years ago.”

Tell that to Michael Owen — the last of what were once 11 butchers in Biddulph, a town on the other side of the Peak District. The 59-year-old calls himself an anarchist. He voted Tory in 2019. Not any more. His electricity bill has risen from £280 to £780 a month, and he keeps the shop open by “not having wages when there’s a bad week.”

Not everyone, of course, is undecided. A few doors down from Owen, 75-year-old Peter Williams is having a lunchtime pint of ale in the Wetherspoons pub. He has always voted Conservative — and will again next time. “If you don’t vote,” he shrugs, “you can’t argue if there’s something wrong.”