‘This country almost needs a coup’: disillusionment rife among voters before local polls

Asked to sum up Britain in one word, the voters in four focus groups held across the country last week were brutal. In Lincolnshire, people summed the nation up as “a shambles”, “depressing”, “chaotic”, “fragile”, and “desperate”. In the West of England the participants described the UK as “expensive”, “gross”, “divided”, “fractured” and “rapidly going downhill”.

Ahead of this week’s local and mayoral elections, the public mood is grim. There is an overwhelming sense of disillusionment and disappointment both with politics and the state of the country. Keir Starmer was mistrusted and few people knew that Kemi Badenoch was the Tory leader.

Polling by More in Common shows three of the four mayoral races are on a knife edge, as the electorate fragments in multiple directions. Both Labour and the Conservatives are struggling to hold on to their 2024 voters, with many turning to Reform, the Liberal Democrats or the Greens.

The Conservatives are braced for heavy losses. Reform and Labour also face a battle in the Runcorn by-election, contested after the resignation of the former Labour MP Mike Amesbury.

More in Common held focus groups last week in the four areas that have metro mayor contests on 1 May: Greater Lincolnshire, Hull and East Yorkshire, West of England, and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

Gary, a sales manager from Boston, told the Lincolnshire group: “I’ve given up on the system if I’m being totally open and honest. Nothing really changes ever. You go from one bunch of lying so-and-so’s to the next lot.” He thought radical change was required. “This is going to sound extreme but the country almost needs a coup d’etat … somebody to come in and say, ‘Right, this is what we’re doing and you will conform.’ There’s no proper leadership by anybody.”

In the West of England, Will, an insurance broker, said all prime ministers “seem useless frontmen for their rich mates”. With the cost of living a consistent theme, Holly, a personal trainer from Bristol, expressed her disappointment with Labour. “I personally don’t think they’ve helped at all and they’re doing the opposite to everything they promised.”

In Greater Lincolnshire, where the former Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns is standing for Reform, Nigel Farage’s party is narrowly ahead but the poll is within the margin of error in the polls. Reform is on 33%, the Conservatives on 30% and Labour in third place with 17%.

More than a quarter of voters who backed the Tories at the last election plan to vote for Jenkyns, while Labour is haemorrhaging votes to both left and right. Only 64% of those who voted for Starmer in 2024 plan to vote for the Labour mayoral candidate Jason Stockwood, while 13% will vote Green and 8% will vote reform.

In Hull and East Yorkshire, the contest is also too close to call, with the Reform candidate, Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxer, on 27%. The Conservative Anne Handley is on 24%, the Lib Dem Mike Ross on 22% and Labour’s Margaret Pinder in fourth place on 17%.

In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, a split on the left looks set to help the Tories take the mayoralty, while the mayoral election in the West of England has split into is a five-way contest. Labour’s candidate Helen Godwin holds a paper-thin lead on 23%, followed by the Tories’ Steve Smith on 21% while Reform and the Greens are tied on 18% and the Lib Dems are on 15%.

Luke Tryl, UK director of More in Common, which ran the focus groups and polling, said the striking finding was “quite how unpredictable the next week in British politics is set to be: “What we are seeing is that British politics has fragmented to an almost unprecedented degree – accelerating the trend in last year’s General Election as voters abandon the traditional main parties.

“If there is a unifying theme to these elections, it is the sense of disillusionment and frustration with ‘broken Britain’ that we heard in focus group after focus group. From the cost of living and the NHS to immigration and crime voters think the state isn’t working. Britons desperately want change, but they just aren’t sure who can deliver it.”

Photograph Ben Birchall/PA Wire