To discover optimism, I usually go to Milton Keynes – and if that triggers a smirk, it’s most likely proof that you’ve by no means been there. Lengthy generally known as England’s pre-eminent new city, it was granted metropolis standing two years in the past, which matched not simply its dimension and variety however a contemporary optimism that you simply do not need to attempt laborious to seek out. For certain, it has issues with poverty, inequality and homelessness. But it surely additionally pulses with a captivating sense of the long run.
On election day I used to be in certainly one of Milton Keynes’s extra disadvantaged neighbourhoods, speaking to folks as they got here out and in of the native polling station. And at about 4pm I spoke to Sandra, a younger girl who had simply completed her A-levels and was voting for the primary time. What, I puzzled, had she been serious about as she determined who to assist. “Workers’ rights, jobs, education, not serving in the army like Mr Sunak wants,” she mentioned.
And what sort of nation did she need to dwell in? “A country where people’s voices are listened to,” she mentioned. She then paused. “I don’t know how to say it. Equal. Fair. A society like that. Where you have a voice. A say, you know?” Within the early autumn, she was going to Birmingham College to start six years of finding out drugs. “I just want to make a difference,” she advised me.
It quickly grew to become clear that she had voted Labour. The three new constituencies in and round Milton Keynes all had notional Tory majorities, and at daybreak the next morning I watched all of them flip crimson: a watershed second of what Keir Starmer calls “ordinary hope”, in a spot that was based 57 years in the past on roughly the identical spirit.
I used to be there with my Guardian colleague John Domokos, on the final leg of a sequence of movies for our Wherever However Westminster sequence. And as we nicely knew, Sandra’s tentative positivity was an exception to what we had been tending to seek out. In all over the place from suburban Surrey to post-industrial Scotland, numerous folks had mentioned they needed the Tories out, usually with a biting ardour. However religion in Labour and any stable perception that it might change the nation was laborious to seek out. Fairly often, in reality, the phrase “change” – Starmer’s six-letter mantra, used all through the marketing campaign – felt prefer it was being shruggingly thrown again at us.
On the meals financial institution run by Birmingham Central Mosque, one girl parcelling up groceries had parried my questions in regards to the election with certainly one of her personal: “We’re under the Conservatives now. If we’re under Labour, what’s going to change?” Within the former metal city of Consett, in County Durham, we met Rachel, who labored as a dinner woman. She advised us about children sneaking additional parts of meals to take house. However on the point out of Starmer’s celebration, she sighed the identical sigh we had heard for weeks: “I’m just not convinced that they’re drastically going to change things,” she mentioned. Even amongst individuals who mentioned they’d undoubtedly be voting Labour, there was numerous the identical doubt and disconnection.
In the identical city, we spoke to Roger, a daily customer to Glenroyd Home, a charity that runs an array of recommendation providers and social teams, in addition to a meals financial institution. Fifteen or so years in the past, he mentioned, he had been headhunted by Nissan and moved north to work at its well-known manufacturing unit in Sunderland, earlier than retiring early due to sick well being. “I’ve got an interest-only mortgage and that’s gone through the roof,” he mentioned. “I come and get free food wherever I can, because I can’t afford to live very well.”
He mentioned he received his information from YouTube, and talked of his perception that Angela Rayner was a secret Marxist. He had already voted for Reform UK, by submit. Right here, holding a carrier-bag full of free bread, was the embodiment of forces that had intruded on the election simply as they had been sweeping with even better power throughout Europe. “Reform are the last hope for this country,” he mentioned.
Down the hall, Sharon, the girl in control of every little thing, took us into the room that homes donated meals. “We concentrate on people who are in working poverty,” she mentioned. “I get nurses coming in. Lorry drivers. People working in the care sector and shops.”
When he made his speech exterior the door of Downing Road, Keir Starmer mentioned one thing strikingly related, itemizing individuals who had fallen – or been pushed – into insecurity: “Nurses, builders, drivers, carers, people doing the right thing.” Throughout election campaigns, he mentioned, they get a little bit of consideration, however “as soon as the cameras stop rolling, their lives are ignored”. What he mentioned subsequent was fairly one thing: “I want to say to those people, not this time.” That’s fairly a pledge: if it’s not going to dissolve into the same old political white noise, it is going to should be not simply remembered however continually returned to.
What he mentioned delivered to thoughts issues we had talked about on the highway, each in locations that had been ostensibly prosperous and those who have lengthy been struggling. Give or take what occurred through the pandemic, the previous 14 years have seen the regular retreat of presidency from the material of on a regular basis life, a change accompanied by the rising insecurity let free by the monetary crash in 2008. The consequence has been folks and locations being left to fend for themselves, and an important dialling-down of political expectations, partly mirrored on this election’s low turnout. “They’re all the same” is certainly one of this nation’s hoariest cliches; what’s putting lately is how fervently so many individuals categorical it.
Now now we have a brand new authorities, how would possibly that indifference and cynicism be lifted? Britain shouldn’t be but the US; in the intervening time our politics continues to be rooted in on a regular basis actuality, and past the customarily slight and cautious guarantees within the Labour manifesto, change shouldn’t be that onerous to think about. Individuals and locations want new houses – and, specifically, flats and homes for social lease, with safe tenure, close by workplaces, and the type of buildings and areas folks can use to arrange and maintain group self-help. Self-evidently, the NHS must be returned to a state of dependability and widespread esteem. The identical applies to schooling: all over the place we went, folks talked about sons, daughters, grandkids, nieces and nephews with particular wants, and the way heartbreaking it was to see them being failed. Work must be restored as an precise route out of poverty; meals must be one thing folks purchase, not that they’re given.
The listing goes on, however you would possibly consider our nationwide challenges in a barely totally different approach. This must be a rustic with fewer Rogers, whose justified grievances have curdled into fury, and extra Sandras, holding on to a well-grounded perception sooner or later. That approach lies not less than a modest stage of hope – which individuals then would possibly lastly challenge on to the politicians who run the nation and need their votes.
