This is really bad.
Can I just say we're knackered folks.
We've been all over the country and we're absolutely minced.
Watch it.
Take 55, indeed.
Ha ha!
Right.
For the past 11 weeks on this election tour we've been to quite a few places where it's
all kicking off.
But this election's coming down to the wire and the result's going to be decided in 20
or 30 seats. The kind of places, by and large, that don't make the news and people quietly
get on with life. This is one of them: Nuneaton.
Everybody knows everybody but I think that's good. It's sort of like an old fashioned community.
Average.
Dead centre?
Yeah.
Thanks to our increasingly dysfunctional electoral system Nuneaton is one of the 20 or 30 seats
that will probably decide who forms the next government.
It's a Tory-Labour marginal held by the Conservatives.
So crucial is this seat that Ed Miliband, Geroge Osborne and David Cameron have all
paid a visit to fire up the voters.
You don't fancy talking to us about the election do you?
No.
About the election.
Oh no.
I work for the Guardian - the newspaper.
I don't vote anyway lads.
You don't vote?
Are you going to vote?
Sigh.
Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!
I'm only laughing at the absurdity of it all. We've been traveling round the country since
mid-February. We've regularly found places where it's all kicking off and people are
angry or passionate for all sorts of reasons and inevitably the journey ends here.
I'm fed with all of them.
Go on then, tell me.
I'm fed up with all of them.
You know, I've turned off. I'm into politics. I listen to them all the time but I'm actually
switched off now because I'm bored.
All human life is here this morning: we've got Morris dancers of both genders; the Conservatives;
Green party over there; Ukip momentarily turned up; there are Gurkhas fundraising over there
but no Labour party.
I've checked with the campaign in Nuneaton and we're just not going to be able to help
you at this stage of the campaign.
It it had been three months ago we'd have...
But we wouldn't have been covering it three... We wouldn't have been covering it three...
I don't quite understand.
Not for the first time, we're having trouble with the Labour party press office.
They don't seem to want us anywhere near their Nuneaton campaign, which is pretty typical
in an election where the party's main pre-occupation has been to avoid what's now known as a Gillian
Duffy moment.
Can I just ask you, have you got any concerns about the way this is all going to be treated
or something?
I mean, is there a sort of elephant in the room here we're not dealing with?
Erm... No particular elephant.
After lengthy negotiations we're granted an interview... of sorts.
Is this a hospital? God, it is. Doesn't look like a hospital. Looks like a supermarket.
So here we are, we've been brought to the corner of a hospital car park on the outskirts
of Nuneaton to meet the Labour candidate for a a fairly strictly monitored six or seven
minutes. That was the extent of the access that we were allowed.
What are people talking about?
Get rid of exploitative zero hours contracts; pay decreasing; shops that have been vacated;
talking to one lady - do you have grandchildren? She said they use the Sure Start Centre, well
that didn't appear from nowhere. People understand that actually immigration can be a really
good thing as well. People are feeling really penalised if they end up, sort of, you know,
needing the welfare state for anything.
You're just the sort of Labour candidate we've been dying to meet for about six or seven
weeks, I have to say.
Thank you. Ha ha ha!
It's a shame because we've been palmed off by your press office and they said: "Oh, no
you can only have five minutes, you can't go out campaigning with them," and all that.
Are you out campaigning tomorrow or anything?
We're campaigning all the time.
Can we watch you canvas for at least like half an hour?
No? We can't? Why not? We can't do it?
Thanks guys.
Thank you.
That's one of the strange things about this election. She's a really feisty candidate,
who's not bloodless like a lot of the candidates are and has got an idea of what's at stake.
You know, and would inspire people like me to vote Labour with some enthusiasm.
That's our lot with her and her campaign. Our seven minutes has expired.
It's too close to call, there's all to play for, it's neck and neck. No cliche has been
left untouched in this election but are these cliches right?
It's very close here, you're going to...
It's really confusing.
One's pledging 30 million, one's pledging a couple of million.
I've heard everything.
I've heard they're going to put so many million into this.
Who's telling the truth?
So you might vote for one or the other?
Yeah.
People here hold the future of the country in their hands, right? What's going to swing it?
What I feel... Morning! What I feel is starting to swing things is that people here are feeling,
very slowly, that the economy's getting better for them. I think that, alongside the question
of whether or not people want a nationalist party from Scotland being part of the UK government,
I think they will really play through. I think they are starting to play through.
I think keep the Conservatives in.
Why?
Because he has done a lot.
He's done better.
For the working people.
So you're going to go from Conservative to Greens possibly?
Yep.
Wow, that's a big journey.
I didn't think I was going to walk into a halal butcher and find a Ukip voter, I've
got to tell you.
The benefits are so high they don't want to go to work. I mean, I work and I don't earn
a great wage but I'd rather work. It's pride I think...
Why are all these people going to food banks then? Why are all these people going to food banks?
Well, it depends what they spend their benefits on.
Absolutely.
Doesn't it?
This is the sort of place where people aren't doing that badly but they're not doing fantastically
well either.
It's the sort of place you get a sort of politics of low-level grievance, which tends to be
aimed at particular groups of people. You can probably guess who they are: benefit claimants;
immigrants and there's a new entry in this particular chart:
Scottish people.
David Cameron has reiterated his warning about what he called the threat of a Labour government
propped up by the Scottish nationalists.
Shows you what a messed up election campaign this is really. By far the biggest political
hoarding in Nuneaton, in the English midlands features the SNP's candidate for the constituency
of Gordon, in Scotland.
Good old ALex Salmond in a burglar's black roll neck jumper.
Don't get me started on Scotland.
Go on, what are you... that's good. What have you got to say about Scotland?
I think we should give it back to them. Give Scotland back to them. Let them fend for themselves.
Let them get on with it.
If they want control for all for their own country, why do they want to poke their bloody
nose in our country then if that's how they want it? Same as the Welsh nationalists.
Well, it wouldn't be good if they were in cahoots with Labour, would it? Controlling
the country, no. You know, that's not good, is it?
I think Westminster should have an influence on Scotland. I don't think Scotland should
have an influence on Westminster.
If the Scottish get in with the Labour party we're done for.
They get everything buckshee as it is, don't they? They get free prescriptions, university fees.
They get underground heating and everything in the winter, I believe.
Ha ha.
They do, yeah. They all drive Rolls Royces. It's true and they live in great big condos
in the highlands. It's amazing up there, you want to go.
See, never let it be said the election's not intruding on everyday life. Check out this guy.
Has that been on there for a while, your poster?
Er, a week. I've been coming down here for a week.
Have you been getting any grief?
No because I'd punch them on the nose if they did.
Let that be a warning.
I don't take no shit of nobody.
Good attitude.
Bye world, I won't survive if Cameron gets in again. Ha ha ha!
It's been a long journey this. When we started it we met a lot of people who felt there were
drastic changes happening to their lives and where they live and they wanted the rest of
the country to wake up to all that and do something about it.
Now we're getting very near the end and it doesn't really feel like that's happened.
Partly, that's the Labour party's fault but also, predictably enough, the Tories have
done a very good job at distracting people's attention.
This election could have been about Sure Start Centres, cuts in general and food banks but
that hasn't happened. We've reached the point where we've arrived in Middle England and
what seems to rile people the most is the idea that Scotland's getting one over on them.
Some elections feel like change moments. In England, at least, it doesn't really feel
like this election's going to be like that but at the same time something very, very
serious is bubbling away under this.
You can really feel the UK starting to pull apart like never before.
To use a phrase we
talked about a lot at the time of the Scottish referendum:
Britain's in trouble.