Hope is scarce: what our election reporters discovered on their trip across the UK

TThursday’s general election looks set to be a historic turning point: one of those long-memorable moments when the established order in Westminster is swept away by what Jim Callaghan, the victim of such a shift in 1979, called “a sea of ​​change in politics”.

Yet Guardian reporters, who travelled across the UK during the campaign to talk to voters and non-voters in 15 different constituencies for the Path to Power series, had little hope that the situation would be different on July 5.

Each constituency had its own specific concerns which came up repeatedly in the conversations: in Waveney Valley it was about unwanted electricity pylons, in Burnley it was about the conflict in Gaza and in Clacton it was about immigration.

But there are a number of common threads running through the reporting, which together tell a dark story about the state of Britain and its people as Labour prepares to take power.

Everywhere reporters went, the infrastructure that shaped daily life, from doctors’ surgeries to libraries to roads, had been hollowed out by more than a decade of underinvestment.

In Chingford and Woodford Green, north-east London, the poor state of pavements has been raised; in north Cornwall people are calling for a bypass.

The NHS is mentioned again and again in a litany of horror stories, tinged with British stoicism. “I don’t want to bash the NHS, but it is frustrating,” was how 26-year-old Katie Hayton, from Whitby, described her plight as she awaits a corneal transplant, which requires her to travel 50 miles to York.

Sue Wright, in Waveney Valley, a seat the Greens hope to win, drives 135 miles to her former dentist in Surrey because other options locally are so expensive.

At the A&E in the new constituency of Caerfyrddin in Wales, where health care is decentralised, the Guardian found mothers and babies lying on the floor, and four ambulances waiting outside. “It doesn’t feel like we’re living in a first world country,” complained one mother, Jo.

Acute housing problems are also widespread. The waiting list for a three-bedroom social housing unit in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, is almost four years.

In Birmingham Ladywood, Sephena Reece lives in a leaky council flat plagued by mould. “The ceiling is completely black at its worst,” she says. “I’m really worried about my son. He has to have inhalers and he sits here every night coughing. It’s been like this for years.”

Amid these grim reports from the front lines of a crumbling state, there are also encouraging stories of concerned citizens taking matters into their own hands.

In Camelford, Cornwall, a former NatWest site has been converted into a community pantry, where locals can pick up basic food and hygiene products. The scheme has been able to keep running thanks to a £90,000 government levelling-up grant. When Boris Johnson promised to level-up the UK during the 2019 general election campaign, few would have imagined that he meant filling the country with food banks.

In Belfast East, where the cost of living crisis and community loyalty are shaping the voices of the population, another community facility is helping struggling locals. In Midlothian, Scotland, volunteers have transformed a disused bowling alley into a community garden.

It is perhaps unsurprising that, given the chaos in Westminster playing out against the backdrop of a cost of living crisis, there is widespread disgust with the Conservatives’ performance.

Rishi Sunak is portrayed as rich and unworldly. And with memories of the pandemic deeply etched in the public consciousness, the Partygate scandal is regularly discussed.

In Midlothian, where the partisan battle lines are different, it is the behaviour of the Scottish National Party, which holds power at Holyrood, that is angering voters. “The impact of ‘motorhomegate’ has shaken people’s confidence – if a party can’t manage its own finances, there is concern about what it can manage,” says Neil Heydon-Dumbleton.

Keir Starmer looks set to be the biggest beneficiary of much of this anger on both sides of the border, if the polls are correct. But the Guardian’s reporters found little sympathy for Labour across the country, with many voters preparing to turn to smaller parties or stay home.

Thangam Debbonnaire, the candidate for Bristol Central, could walk into Downing Street on Friday morning to be appointed Culture Secretary. Or, with the Greens eyeing her seat, she could be faced with 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 climate.”

A very different small party, Nigel Farage’s Reform, is hoping to seize power in the economically deprived constituency of Clacton by playing on concerns about immigration. As one voter in the seaside town, which is 95.3% white, put it: “He’s for English people.”

Starmer claims he is ready to “rekindle the fires of optimism” among voters. The Path to Power series suggests that expectations are so low that the political rewards for achieving even modest positive change can be significant. But for the moment, the embers of hope seem well and truly extinguished.

As William Harbour, a determined non-voter in Burnley, put it: “The country is on its knees now, but that’s not going to change – it’s gone too far.”