Voters left cold by Labour and UKIP in Stoke Central by-election
In Stoke library, which also doubles as a council enquiry desk, my questions got a lukewarm response from people waiting in the queue. One mum, nursing her baby, has never voted and can’t see a time when she ever will. She had not heard of Tristram Hunt, the resigning MP, and didn’t know there was a by-election. Her concerns were for her baby and her mum: “So long as they are all right.” She also believes that elections are fixed: “They know what is going to happen before it happens, and it is always that the rich get looked after and the poor don’t.”
Another mum said she wasn’t really bothered about the EU but might be persuaded to vote for someone who could provide her with better housing.
David, aged 30, explained he had tried hard to understand the EU issue, but became confused by all the information. In the end, he based his choice from what he had heard his colleagues discuss. They have now all been made redundant, after the company relocated to Berlin. This time round, David will decide who to vote for after reading the leaflets which come through the door. He felt that after last June, he couldn’t trust what he reads on the internet. “It is hard to know what is true, and what is not true anymore. With social media, it is so easy to get stories out there which might not be true,” he said.
A pensioner reading the paper in another part of the library was despairing at how few people vote. “Not enough people vote. Around two thirds won’t vote yet they complain about the NHS,” he said. He voted for Brexit and he knows he won’t vote Labour, but is unsure where to put his cross. “It’s been like because it is Stoke, we will all vote Labour. I don’t agree with that, it’s as if we don’t have any of our own thoughts,” he said.
In what has always been known as a Labour heartland, I came across one Labour voter. All the other people I spoke to were either not voting, or have not yet made up their minds. Richard, aged 64, was having lunch at the Penkhull Community café. He said: “Most people round here think Brexit is a good thing, but they are deluding themselves because it will be an unmitigated disaster. People don’t realise how much the EU subsidise areas. They have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked.”
Despite describing himself as a Guardian-reading liberal, who believes in voting, he had little truck for politicians describing them, in his honest opinion, as ‘a bunch of lying, self-serving, greedy, narcissistic twerps — most of them’.
It seems that in this by-election, the battle is not so much persuading people who to vote for, but giving people a reason as to why they should vote. Disconnection, disillusionment and distrust are all playing a part in keeping people away from the polls.
