The Telegraph’s pub poll: ‘Farage is right – nothing works anymore’

“We want someone to lead us into battle. A Churchill.” Richard is an undecided voter. He knows there’s no Churchill on offer at the forthcoming general election, and isn’t especially thrilled about the alternatives.

Like the seven others sitting with him in a Wolverhampton pub, the 38-year-old voted Conservative in 2019, but remains undecided on who to support this time. “Across all parties, nobody has come out and ignited something in my mind and [made me say] ‘yes, those are the people for the job’,” he says, dejectedly.

We’re sitting in the back room of the Ashmore Inn, in a residential corner of the West Midlands city. Richard, a service engineer, is part of a focus group assembled by Public First, a research and opinion consultancy, on behalf of The Telegraph.

The aim is to hear from those who propelled the Conservatives to victory at the last election by voting for them five years ago – and to learn more about what they feel now.

One thing they evidently don’t feel is any strong desire to return Rishi Sunak to power. “I was quite excited when he got in because he’s quite a young, vibrant person,” says Kirsty, 45, a housing officer. “But I don’t think he’s done a great job.”

Sara, 48, a bar worker, doesn’t trust the Prime Minister, and although Richard thought Sunak made a good chancellor – “he did a lot of good for the working class with furlough” – since he’s become Prime Minister “my estimation of him has gone down a lot”.

Asked what had changed in the past five years to cause them to abandon the Tories, John, 47, sums it up: “Nothing’s changed, that’s what’s happened. And because nothing’s changed, we want a change.”

His comments reflect a vein of public opinion that spreads far beyond the constituency of Wolverhampton North East, where these eight voters live. It’s a sense of general disillusionment with politics and politicians; an idea, wearily expressed, that “they’re all the same”; that no one is listening or representing the concerns of working people. That promises are made and then broken, while those at the sharp end of economic headwinds struggle to heat their homes and feed their families – or see a brighter future ahead. “It’s voting for the lesser of two evils rather than for someone who inspires me,” says Sara of the choice this summer.

The local Conservative candidate, Jane Stevenson, is defending a 4,000-strong majority after capturing the Red Wall seat from Labour. Before 2019, the Tories hadn’t won here since 1987.

Since then, Wolverhampton has not escaped the winds of change that have swept through many of post-industrial Britain’s smaller cities and towns, with high streets emptying out and living standards falling. Along with neighbouring Sandwell and Walsall, it was named as one of the five areas most vulnerable to the cost of living crisis by the Centre for Progressive Policy think tank.

Once a thriving centre for coal mining, steel production, lock-making and automotive manufacturing, the former Black Country market town has been “on a downward spiral for the best part of two decades”, one local newspaper reported last year. In 2016, Wolverhampton – once the political home of Enoch Powell – voted for Brexit, with almost 63 per cent of locals choosing Leave.

After winning two seats here in 2019 (the Tories also took Wolverhampton South West, from Labour), the present government has acknowledged some of the city’s needs. Ahead of the publication of its white paper in 2022, Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove declared: “We want a government as focused on Wolverhampton as it is on Westminster.” It was chosen, along with Sheffield, as one of the first places to benefit from regeneration funding, with money made available to pay for new infrastructure.

Last year, the Government announced Wolverhampton would receive £20 million from the levelling up fund to help create a new City Learning Quarter. But there’s little sense in the focus group that things have improved. “It’s all promises, but does it ever come to fruition?” wonders Jane, 53, a payroll supervisor. “I don’t think it does.”

Brian, 47, who works for a business improvement district in a nearby city, doesn’t think any of the main political parties understand the issues affecting people. “I see a lot of homelessness and it’s heartbreaking, and what are we doing for this? Nothing,” he says. “We try to throw money towards stuff occasionally… But I don’t think [the Government] actually serves us anymore.”

But if they’re disappointed by Sunak, they are not much more enthused by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. “I can’t see him being prime minister; he’s not strong enough,” says Jane. “He just gives the answers he thinks everyone wants to hear. He’s got no backbone, no charisma.” To Brian, he “might be a nice person” but isn’t up to the job of leading the country. “He doesn’t stand out,” he says.

“He’s lacklustre,” agrees Kirsty. “He seems a bit bullied and lost. I don’t think he’s very strong at all. I might even go somewhere else and not vote Conservative or Labour this time.” She’s tempted by the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.

Brian is leaning in a similar direction – that is, away from the main two parties. “I don’t think I can vote Labour or Conservative,” he says. “I can’t see either of them [being] strong enough to lead the country.”

Sara, too, plans to vote for “one of the others” – meaning neither of the two main parties. She doesn’t yet know which.

Shown a clip from ITV’s leaders’ debate this week of Starmer vowing he would stick with the NHS even if a family member was on a long waiting list for treatment, Chris, 44, was scathing. “He’s a joke of a man. If he’s not even going to look after his own family, how’s he going to look after us?”

There’s broad agreement in the group that what British politics needs is a strong figure – be they Labour, Conservative or from an alternative party – with a clear, bold plan and the charisma to sell it. They saw that in Boris Johnson and accordingly lent him their vote. Now they want it back. “The last strong person we had was Boris,” says Sara. “At least he had a personality.”

“Boris was a big personality [with] big charisma,” agrees Sarah, 39, a complaints manager. But partygate still looms large for her, and now she’s glad he’s gone. “He wasn’t doing the job he should have been doing.” Kirsty shares her disappointment. “He just mucked about, didn’t take it seriously.”

If Johnson wasn’t the heavyweight they’d hoped for, there are other figures from the past and present who they feel more positively about. “For those of us old enough to remember the days of Margaret Thatcher, she was a strong leader,” says John, who is self-employed. “Tony Blair was a strong leader… Even if you didn’t like him for being Labour, he was still a good leader.”

In the apparent absence of comparable strength from the current leaders of the two main parties, he finds himself drawn instead towards Ed Davey’s Lib Dems.

It’s not, then, that the right personalities aren’t out there somewhere, according to the group. Jess Phillips, the outspoken Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, and Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, are both mentioned approvingly. Rayner is seen as a gutsy character capable of understanding the concerns of working people.

“She’s working class, she’s worked her way up, she’s a single mum,” says Richard. “She’ll do a better job.”

John agrees that if Rayner was party leader, Labour would reap the rewards. “People can see strength in Rayner. They can’t see strength in Starmer.”

As for Nigel Farage, whose particular brand of personality politics could win him the Essex seat of Clacton for Reform UK, there are mixed feelings in the room.

For Richard, he’s the “only person I’ve seen with passion”. He adds: “He just says it how it is. If he does make it in, he’ll get it done.”

Sara agrees he has “the guts to stand there and say what he believes in”, while Chris, a steel erector, concurs with Farage’s diagnosis of Britain’s problem: that the political status quo “doesn’t work. Nothing in this country works anymore.”

But Sarah is unconvinced. “He’s playing us all,” she says. “I don’t want people to buy into what he’s saying because he doesn’t have any plans.”

If all this suggests a focus on personalities rather than policies, the group has plenty to say about what has been going wrong – and what they think Britain needs. Heavy cuts in government funding for local authorities is part of the problem, says John.

Government grants to councils were reduced by more than a fifth in real terms between 2009-10 and 2021-22, according to House of Lords Library figures. A string of local authorities – Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem-run – have effectively gone bankrupt in recent years. Wolverhampton City Council isn’t one of them, but has said its predicted funding gap by the end of 2024-25 will be more than £16 million, according to figures obtained by the local branch of the Trades Union Congress.

Still, the idea of working people paying, through higher taxes, for better public services – a functioning NHS, more police, good schools – is unpopular in the group. So where should the money to fix things come from?

For Jane, Labour’s idea of adding VAT to private school fees is appealing. “Normally any child that goes to a private school comes from a financially well-off family, so why not get them to pay a bit more?”

Sara, meanwhile, wants to see higher taxes on “the businesses who find the loopholes”, while Richard suggests targeting offshore accounts.

On the issue of migration, they want secure borders (though there’s little enthusiasm for Sunak’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda) and for British jobs to go to British workers. There’s also a desire for an increase in the national minimum wage, a decrease in the retirement age, free school meals for all primary and secondary pupils and a cap imposed on the rent landlords can charge. And if it’s not too much to ask for, they want to see Britain stand tall on the world stage again.

“We don’t do anything properly anymore,” laments Brian. “As a country we’ve lost our way. We were Great Britain, we built things, we made things.” And today? “We are a laughing stock now. We were strong at one point. It’s a mess at the moment.”

Ed Shackle, a researcher at Public First who moderated the group, says their views are echoed in other parts of the country.

“Keir Starmer may be drifting into Downing Street, but outside of Westminster many ordinary voters find it hard to fathom that he will be PM in a month,” he says. “They simply can’t picture him in the role, meeting world leaders and making the tough decisions. The group – as voters are starting to generally – felt they had a feel for him, and it’s his character that worries them most. People see him as weak and bland, while Angela Rayner is viewed as tough, relatable, and the one calling the shots.”

And as for Sunak, as elsewhere, the voters here are already talking of him in the past tense, Shackle observes. “These voters are utterly depressed, and desperate for an alternative to the big parties.”