‘You see it in people’s faces’: out on the doorsteps with a Tory candidate

Knocking on the doors of disgruntled voters in the midsummer sunshine, Bolton West’s Conservative candidate mused on the impact his party’s troubled national campaign has been having on the ground.

“You don’t expect everything to go perfectly and you always expect glitches,” said Chris Green, as he canvassed his swing seat in north-west England. “But we’ve allowed those glitches to become the narrative of the election.”

Green snatched his seat — a semi-rural cluster of towns and villages on the edge of Bolton, a former mill town near Manchester — from Labour in 2015, by just 801 votes. At the last election he increased his majority to nearly 9,000, as Boris Johnson swept to a landslide victory on a mandate to deliver Brexit.

But Green said the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, had set the tone of this campaign five weeks ago by announcing a snap poll in a downpour without an umbrella.

What followed, including Sunak’s decision to skip part of the recent D-Day celebrations and a growing election betting scandal, has been “very frustrating”, he added.

“The soaking in Downing Street was the bacon sandwich moment of the election,” said Green, referring to a notoriously unflattering photograph of then-Labour leader Ed Miliband eating on the campaign trail in 2014. “After that, it’s difficult for anything to be seen in a more positive light.”

On Wednesday Green was mainly canvassing previous Conservative and swing voters in Blackrod, a small commuter town with sweeping countryside views. Most of those who answered the door stated they were undecided or would not be voting at all.

“You haven’t got mine,” replied painter and decorator James Mullen, 73, when Green asked if he could count on his vote. “It’s all this betting.”

He recounted in disgust the scandal that has hit the Conservatives over the past fortnight, in which 12 individuals — including Tory candidates, party officials and police officers — have been placed under investigation over bets they placed on an early election date.

Mullen had historically been a Labour voter but his support had been “wiped away” by left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn at the last election. This time he was considering a protest vote. The D-Day story had shocked him, while the betting scandal “just shows you the psyche of MPs”.

“Until we get this trust in politicians, we’re going to be floundering around,” he added.

D-Day and the betting scandal had not actually been explicitly mentioned that often by voters, said Green, in between knocking on doors. There was, in his view, no need.

“You see it in people’s faces, you just look at them,” he added. “These things are all rolled up into a frown.”

Nevertheless, he said, there appeared to be little energetic enthusiasm for Labour either, including fewer boards and posters than usual advertising household support for the party.

While national polling has consistently projected a comfortable or landslide win for Sir Keir Starmer’s party at this election, it has also continued to show high numbers of undecided voters and low enthusiasm for Starmer himself.

Green said Bolton West’s general lack of voter appetite reflected that “national mood”.

“You get the impression they don’t know what they’re doing,” said a 93-year-old man of MPs. “They take on their positions with their fancy titles and do absolutely nothing. It’s not just the Conservatives, Labour are the same.”

He added that Starmer “can’t make up his flaming mind which way he’s jumping”.

He had voted Conservative in every previous election but “at the moment I’m not supporting anybody”, he said. Previous manifesto promises — including reforms to social care — had been repeatedly “put into the long grass”.

He remained unmoved by Green’s assertion that such changes had been delayed by the pandemic, but would be delivered in 2025. His bin, he complained, had not been emptied for six weeks.

A few doors down, a young woman complained about bin collections and the state of the local roads. She had voted Tory in the past and “can’t stand Keir Starmer”. But she, too, would probably not be voting at all.

She summarised her position by describing an online meme somebody had sent her. “I’ve got electile dysfunction,” it read. “None of them are working for me.”

This has been a “very tough election”, admitted one activist as she pushed leaflets through doors, adding that this particular estate should be “very fertile territory” for the Conservatives.

Nonetheless, Green is hopeful of holding on by emphasising his record as a constituency MP. On the doorstep he is also making two main arguments on behalf of his party: that the pandemic and the war in Ukraine had thwarted its plans for delivery; and that a local Conservative would be needed in order to put the brakes on a Labour government with a huge majority.

Mike Pendlebury, 71, had already been won over.

“I’m scared to death of Labour,” he said, pointing to concerns about their approach to tax and spend, the economic impact of net zero policies and a fear that Starmer would take the country back into the EU.

He would definitely be voting Conservative. But he also demanded to know why Sunak had not had more impact on illegal immigration.

Politicians “tell you stuff before the election and there’s no interest in putting it into practice whatsoever”, he added, before noting that both Sunak and his predecessor, Liz Truss, had been installed by Conservative party members rather than the electorate.

Such caveats are typical of the mood among Tory supporters, said Green later. But every vote really does count, he told Pendlebury, adding that it would stop Labour “going full socialist”.

For plenty of others, however, that argument is yet to land.

“I can’t promise any support, to be quite honest,” said one middle-aged woman nearby.

Her concerns included the state of the NHS, which she said was “falling to pieces”. But she was yet to decide who to vote for.

“They argue too much instead of working together as one,” she said of politicians, adding she and her husband had been watching the television election debates in an attempt to make up their minds.

Nonetheless she was not sure whether they would bother to tune in to that evening’s final BBC head-to-head between Starmer and Sunak.

“Possibly,” she said. “Until I get annoyed with what they’re saying and then we’ll switch over.”