‘We’re taxing non-doms, not condoms!’: Labour strives to reconnect with disengaged voters

Even during a general election campaign with projections of historic – even unprecedented – results, people cannot always be relied upon to give their full attention.

“We met a guy who said he was going to vote Labour but wouldn’t now because he had just heard that we were taxing condoms,” said Labour’s Karl Turner, who was first voted in as the MP for Hull East in 2010 and is standing for re-election this time.

“I said, ‘condoms?’ ‘Yeah,’ he said: ‘I just heard on that [pointing to the TV] that you are taxing condoms, and I’m not having it. You’re not getting my vote.’ It was Terence [Turner’s parliamentary assistant] here who worked it out.

“‘We’re taxing non-doms, not condoms,’ I said. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Like the prime minister’s wife? Ah.’ He calls out: ‘Margaret: they’re taxing non-doms, not condoms.’”

It was one vote saved for Labour in East Yorkshire – but as the general election moves from what observers have described as the “air war”, where messaging is all-important, to the “ground war”, where mobilising the voters to actually visit the ballot box is key, it is the significant tranche of voters who have entirely switched off that worries Turner.

Hull East was the only constituency at the last general election where under half (49.3%) of the electorate turned out to vote. Within Turner’s constituency is the ward of Marfleet, which has a strong claim to be the most politically disillusioned place in Britain. Turnout was 11.6% in the last local elections.

Disillusionment and distrust when it comes to politics and politicians is a UK-wide phenomenon, and is strong in Hull East.

On Monday, the retired women at the Marfleet community centre were having an afternoon researching their family histories on laptops. “They don’t give a damn about the people below ’em,” said Lesley Robinson, a retired personal assistant. “What’s the point? They all lie.”

“They tell you what they think you want to know – they treat us as stupid,” added Sue Hurst, 78. “You are born in hope and die in despair.” Robinson agreed, interjecting: “They treat us like children or worse than that. At least children get pocket money.”

Pauline French, 70, who retired last year as the cleaner at the centre, puffed out her cheeks. “I will, but my husband and son won’t vote,” she said. “People just don’t bother.”

It is not that the people here don’t have problems. Marfleet is one of the most socially disadvantaged places in a city with plenty of issues, but there is a complete absence of belief that anyone is going to do anything about it.

A focus group of non-voters in the city, carried out by More In Common for the Guardian, offers further evidence of the depth of those feelings.

“I work for the NHS so nothing good comes out of elections for me … no one cares,” said Hameder, a trainee nurse.

Michael, a service engineer, described politicians as “brainless monkeys”. Sam, who is hoping to start an apprenticeship, explained she felt bad sometimes about not taking an interest in politics and that her friends told her off for it, but that it was hard when “everything does feel in so much disrepair … Everyone just hates politics and hates Rishi Sunak.”

The immediate concern for Labour beyond Hull is that, with Keir Starmer’s party so far ahead in the polls, the apathetic will be joined by many more who will assume there is little point in voting given the apparent certainty of the result.

It is a nagging doubt in Labour HQ that new polling from More in Common polling will do little to assuage.

Rather than asking individuals about their own engagement with politics, which people often overstate, respondents were asked about their friends and family.

Questioned as to whether their friends and family were more excited or more apathetic about the election, Britons were almost three times more likely to say apathetic. Asked if their friends and family thought the general election would make a meaningful difference to the country, barely a quarter (26%) agreed.

Most starkly, 41% said family and friends were more disillusioned with this general election compared with previous ones, while only 7% said they were less disillusioned.

Voter turnout is a Hull-wide problem. Three out of the four constituencies with the lowest turnout in 2019 were Hull seats, with the other being Chorley, where the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, stood unopposed.

Turner was born and bred in the constituency and is regarded locally as someone who cares, but it is difficult not to take the turnout figures personally at times.

Speaking from his constituency office, located between a branch of Pizza Mafia and the Witham Tandoori, the 53-year-old said: “I was on a doorstep the other day and the guy said: ‘I won’t be voting Labour.’ I said: ‘Oh, why is that?’ ‘It’s because I don’t like you.’ ‘Oh right,’ I said. ‘That’s very honest of you. That’s what my wife says as well’.

“As I was walking down the path, he said: ‘I thought you would come out with a fucking clever line.’ I said: ‘May I ask you how you will vote, for my data?’ He said: ‘I’m going to sit down and work out which bastard can stop you.’ He then said, real genuinely: ‘Can you help me with that? Who’s coming second?’”

It has become Turner’s habit to check the weather for polling day, in the hope that a clear sky could encourage people out.

But he believes beyond this election that a great challenge for Labour will be to convince people politicians are not “all the same” – a perception that he believes was deepened by the failed promises of Brexit and Boris Johnson.

He said: “I think the big problem is if you’re in a low-wage economy, then people have got bigger things to worry about: paying the rents, paying the mortgages, looking after the family, feeding the kids. Going along to the polling station hardly matters.”

Turner notes that there was real enthusiasm for voting for leave in the Brexit referendum, with the leave campaign attracting 73.4% of the vote in Hull East. Across the city, turnout was 62.9%.

There was also excitement for Johnson in 2019: Turner gave him the moniker “Boris the magnificent” because of the impression on the doorsteps. Turner was close to losing his seat to the Tories.

But that trust turned to dust, he said, after Partygate and the realisation that the most notable impact of Brexit on Hull had been a 50% loss in catching quotas for the city’s biggest deep-sea trawler due to changes in access to Norway’s waters.

Turner believes Labour’s cautious approach to its manifesto is the right one. Further empty promises would only deepen the problem, he says. He suggests that part of the solution might be to make it easier for people to vote by allowing them to vote over a number of days, for example.

But the rise of Reform, which is expected to come from nowhere and take second pace in Hull East, highlights to him how important it will be for the next Labour government to be truly radical and prove they are different.

“People in Hull East should be voting because, actually, it makes a real difference in areas like [this] to their lives,” he said. “To sort of persuade them to get from … that feeling of it doesn’t matter to actually giving them something to vote for is a difficulty.

“I’ve said to Keir and anybody else who was prepared to listen: ‘Look, what we need is policy, which really makes a difference in their lives.’”

The Sure Start centres of the last Labour government that helped young parents were the sort of initiative that Turner said gave people a stake in the election, but that they had needed more time to bed in.

For now, Turner can only hope that the votes are there on 4 July to make change possible – and that Labour’s message on taxing non-doms and the rest is getting through.