'We want an extension!'
'This is what democracy looks like.'
(Cheers)
I don't understand why everyone's so overjoyed.
(Cheering) 'Give us! Give us!'
It's a momentary detour.
''Oh, get ready for a people's vote.'
This is a matter of national interest.
I'm feeling very ... sort of, um, like, it's pretty that all these people here ...
but it might be the end of something.
You make me feel better.
What, til Monday?
Well, it's one day at the time, at the moment.
Has all of this made you feel differently about Britain, do you think?
In what way?
Hmmm. No. I don't know. Not so much.
Even amid all this noise and passion of this demo,
for us it had a feeling of sadness.
In its own small way, our mission has been to get people on
various sides of national divides to listen to each other.
Three years on from 2016, that often feels like a vain hope.
One of the most insidious pieces of media are vox pops.
That's what I do all day.
It's important that you and me hear from people that we
didn't hear from really for 50 years.
And that is the BBC vox pops, isn't it?
No, I think they're crap, vox pops.
A lot of people are sick of vox pops,
especially it seems, vox pops from Stoke-on-Trent.
And yet that's where we are on the morning of so-called Super Saturday
waiting for the city to wake up.
To be honest we're full of doubt about doing this as well.
I say, let Brexit happen.
Let's see the difference.
Or it will make things even worse, though? I mean–
No, how can it?
Well, because all the forecasts are the economy will tank.
It'll come back.
8% of GDP that we're gonna lose over 10 years.
It'll come back.
What we're doing is chasing the Brexit shaggy dog, here again.
It's not good.
The story of Stoke is woven through our experience
of the last few years.
It was doing vox pops talking to people right here,
that first told us that leave might win.
So out this side of the clock ...
and we've got in on that side of the clock.
But they can't propose law. You're lying, you're lying, that's what you do.
The only people who can propose laws ...
Did you know about the EU referendum coming up on … ?
Yeah, everyone's voting out, is what someone told me.
You're definitely voting out then?
Without a shadow of doubt.
If British Asian people like him are voting to leave,
the remain campaign or the Labour MP is really in trouble.
We followed local MP Ruth Smeeth. She campaigned passionately for Remain.
Off we go.
To make the case for Europe.
How you gonna vote?
Out.
Really?
Out.
Probably leave.
I tried.
We also accompany them to a pottery factory where again, most people were voting for Brexit.
Apart from the management.
How are you voting?
Out.
How are you voting?
Out.
Both of you?
15% of what you make here is sold directly into the EU.
We still want to trade with them. We're still going to have to have the immigration.
It's not that we haven't got legitimate worries,
it just isn't the way that we're going to fix it.
You do that like you've been doing it for 42 years.
(Laughs)
I don't want to over-dramatise this too much, but God some people are angry.
That's the truth.
This year that pottery factory closed.
with the loss of nearly 400 jobs.
There's a big dog in a van.
I have very powerful memories of coming here.
I actually do.
And Brexit is not directly related to why it closed
but it kind of helped.
The MP we were with that day has found herself on the wrong end
of all of the divisiveness and nastiness that have become part of politics.
Ruth Smeeth is Jewish, a Labour MP, pro-Brexit, anti-no-deal and female.
Blimey, hello. – Come on in, hello.
What's it been like being you in the last two years?
It's going really well.
Tea for both, yeah?
Well, you're still here.
I am still here.
– 1040 tea bags.
It's a December election, there's going to be a lot of tea drunk to get through it.
A lot of women well before retirement age have decided to leave politics.
Yeah. – Why are you still here?
I'm still here because I won't be bullied by anybody, ever.
I've been blessed – as much as the abuse and stuff that I get, I've never
had it at home.
So up here, it's always been my safe space.
But something is changing …
I mean there was some graffiti that was by some,
I mean, like a 20-foot piece of graffiti that was parked just by a school,
there's been some screaming in the streets that has never happened up here before.
What did the graffiti at the school say?
Boris for England, Smeeth is a nazi.
Wow.
Something flipped in the last couple of years about politics generally.
That day in 2016 …
I knew from the beginning it was gonna be a tough sell.
We were about 10 years too late to have
some of those conversations, I think.
Because that day in the footage you say
'I'm very passionate about this', right?
Yeah.
And now you're associated, albeit crassly, with what some people say is the opposite position.
We had 73% Leave I represent …
In this constituency?
In my constituency.
My turnout during the referendum was higher
than it ever is during a general election.
So as far as I was concerned,
there were lots of people who don't usually participate in the democratic process at all
who were seeing if there was any point in engaging or participating.
So I felt like I'd been set a test for how well I was listening or not.
I've probably gone up to everybody by the end of this.
So it's a position of compromise, as you see it, is it?
A position of compromise that people still
feel like they participate, that they're heard, that they're relevant.
I think that the challenge that this has posed to our democratic norm,
to the very fabric of who we are as a country, is something that most people aren't even recognising yet.
Immediately after the referendum, I thought that somehow some of the right people
might come to here, say, and say: 'Well, we haven't paid enough attention. What's happened here?'
And that seemed to last about two weeks …
– I am not sure we even got two weeks.
It never transpired really, did it?
No. There is a reason why Stoke-on-Trent should be
talked about all the time and it is because it embodies um, everything that
is brilliant about our country but also, where we've gone wrong.
This is made at Dudson's.
God, I am drinking out of a Dudson mug. Can you see that?
It's very poignant.
It's made me feel quite emotional to be here, actually.
That's maybe the issue of this election,
not Boris or Jezza, do you know what I mean?
The issue in this election is,
can you maintain even the merest basic kind of civility?
Or will we just go further down this bloody slope into God knows where?
Maybe something else has come to an end as well, which is the way that we make
films and cover politics
here and elsewhere. Because it's no use anymore
just focusing on boarded-up shops and empty factories in a general sense of
frustration and gloom or whatever.
That doesn't tell you anything about the future.
What you really got to do is look for hope and positive thinking and people trying to
make it different.
The way places help themselves.
it's what the sort of political debate in Britain completely lacks.
We are still hung up on the idea that we look to these distant men – it is usually men –
to pull the levers on our behalf and make everything great from two or three hundred miles away.
Well, in my opinion, that doesn't work anymore, if it ever did.
We're at the home of Port Vale FC.
We're about to meet the owner.
My scarf is iconic.
It's not official merch, is it? – No.
Carol Shanahan is a local tech entrepreneur and the new owner of Port Vale FC.
She's part of a network of businesses and volunteers
who are collaborating to address some of the city's problems.
It's not about judgment and it's not about pity, it's only about love.
Children's services are in crisis in Stoke and Carol and her partners have
decided to try and do something about it.
It is communities really saying:
'I'm not putting up with this. I'm going to go and do things ourselves.'
So there's ... and this is what we're beginning to tap into, is people that
want to make a difference but they need some confidence-building.
They've got help from a whole range of local companies to deliver 10,000 meals and
play activities to schools and community centres around the city.
It snowballs a bit, so we have got loads of different groups now,
this has opened the doors for all that kind of stuff happening as well.
Are they all ready to go out?
What does Stoke need that it hasn't got?
More collaboration. Partnerships actually coming together
and wanting to genuinely work with these youngsters and make a
difference with them opposed to being: 'OK, we're all competing against each other'.
Do you follow national politics at all?
It's an election in five weeks.
(Laughs)
Not something I'm looking to get into today.
We've just seen internal fighting not just politically but locally.
Are you Brexit, are you a remainer …
If you're Brexit how are you Brexit?
You know, whereas what we're talking about
are families and, you know, a city that actually just wants to get on,
it just wants to help itself to get better.
When you start to look, that spirit of working together to find local solutions
is everywhere.
YMCA has an innovative community-based approach to helping young people.
Everybody, welcome to the community meal, welcome to the YMCA.
(Applause)
Because we've got kids, jobs, work, and we help people thrive, don't we?
We can't do that on our own.
We need our partners like Ixion the chef.
(Applause)
Industry!
KMF make precision metal for the likes of Costa coffee and are
leaders in giving young people good quality work.
So how do you feel, as a successful business, an industrial business,
in a place which – and I'll do a mea culpa here –
which stupid idiots like me would say, sometimes is post-industrial?
Yeah, you drive me mad here.
Really?
The education system maybe is part of that?
Education system and then ... you know, we don't talk about manufacturing schools anymore.
Kids are pushed to university still, not apprenticeships.
That's why we start with young people.
That's why our whole focus on recruitment is young people.
Pretty much all the people we meet here agree that
austerity has failed Stoke and the city needs more money.
But they also think post-referendum politics is failing the city too.
Well, have a look down here.
That Halloween night, on the latest day that Britain didn't leave the EU,
what Stoke has to tell us now became clear.
What is it like living here?
It's OK, I like it.
This is quite good though, isn't it?
Yeah, it's fantastic, yeah. Really good for the families.
I like the city, I know it's got a lot of problems, but what city hasn't?
I'm really happy to be from Stoke and proud to be from Stoke, which is nice,
and events like this are great, so …
Is that part of what's happened in the last three years,
you've had more and more things like this?
Yeah, basically, I think people realised it was necessary.
For a decade these films have explored loss, disillusionment and anger.
At the start, we felt people's resentment wasn't being heard, but now anger seems to be at
the heart of mainstream politics.
Over the last few days, whether the people
we've met are leavers or remainers or who they might end up voting for in five weeks,
are things that have almost disappeared into irrelevance.
As the election grinds on, all of us have a lot to learn from them.