It's raining in England.
Nothing changes.
This house is like a Labour nerve centre,
all other such cliches, ground zero, HQ …
Wow, out already.
Good morning.
I got a message a few days ago on various WhatsApp groups being like,
'Milton Keynes need people, come on guys, get out of London',
and now just seen like, reams of people that were on the train and at the station,
it's just amazing.
I took the last 10 days off work to fight for our future.
So the Labour vote, historically, is not the best turning out
to vote,
despite the best of intentions.
So that's why we go and knock on their doors.
We started election day in Milton Keynes,
somewhere we've been before.
Its two constituencies were narrowly held in 2017 with the Tories,
and this time, loads of Labour activists have come to help get the votes out.
Remind them that it's polling day.
This is quite something, isn't it? – Yeah.
This is quite something.
God, more! Wow!
Tell me how you feel.
And in that sense, why you have come?
No matter what the result is, today or tomorrow,
the movement can only grow from this and this is such an inspiration
to be around, like, such positivity and hope.
What kind of of country do you want to have?
I fairer one!
Fairer, more distribution of wealth, equality …
No, like, exploitation and marketisation of people
at the expense of our humanity.
Everybody has something beautiful to offer, and I don't think it's been allowed to flourish,
and thrive at the moment …
And people putting community about individualism.
Yeah, totally.
Go, you got to do some work!
This is really impressive.
It really is impressive.
There are people who say, look, there's just going to be a breach here,
sooner or later
and there are aspects of the sort of conservative with a small c working class,
that just don't want to be part of the Labour family anymore.
And that's just the way it going to have to be.
And the new working class is like, self-employed, young precarious people
in cities,
and people in former coal towns, will just have to vote Tory and be left alone.
Then we can't take the country back.
Then, that's not a good movement, you got to make it bigger.
We have to find a way to talk to those people.
We have to find out why they want Brexit, why they think …
Like, the fundamental things that would be driving them to do that,
are the fundamental things that are driving this group of people.
Go on, that's interesting.
The reasons people want Brexit, as far as I have ever encountered,
are because they are scared about the NHS,
and they believe they will fix it.
They believe that the things … it's somehow they are going to change all
of these things
that actually Labour are campaigning for.
They've got work to do, man.
Sam, will you go to number nine, please, Christine and John.
Something about canvassing in the rain, though, that kind of gives you a bit of a push.
So hopefully people are like, OK, they're out in the rain, clearly it matters.
Clearly it's important.
How are your spirits now?
Feeling bedraggled and wet?
I'm ready for more, I'm ready for more.
Because the victory is going to feel so much sweeter
amongst all this adversity.
See you later! Thank you.
Bye.
Thanks very much.
It's easy to be cynical about politics.
But they're people who believe in the good society and will go out
and fight and be active for it.
It's quite a thing to see.
It's all the same spirit we've seen in the last five or six weeks
going to these community projects and initiatives, and meeting people trying to turn where they live around.
You know, the two things are sort of comparable,
but I still want to know how do you sort of join them up.
Do you get a sense of what the Conservative party is all about, who they are?
I feel like they are, the party that you want to keep
the wealth that you have, accumulated over a lifetime.
Yeah …
And that your parents have accumulated.
And how are you doing on the wealth front?
Lack thereof.
We went to another polling station.
Is almost kind of 'none of the above' at the moment.
Yeah.
But obviously, you have to vote.
So, who did you end up voting for?
Labour.
When did you finally make up your mind?
This morning.
Even walking up here.
We are both traditionally Labour supporters,
but just don't really agree with how the party is being run at the moment,
certainly I don't think the manifesto was relevant.
What did you want to see that wasn't in it?
Realism.
They've made a fantastic manifesto in the sense of,
everything is for free, I mean, it's crazy.
Do you always vote Conservative?
No.
Really?
No.
Who did you vote for … say, four or five years ago?
Labour.
Really?
During the Blair years.
It's always complicated.
Used to vote Labour in the Blair years, voted leave, now voting Conservative.
Wither England, eh.
A family with the wrong people in charge.
We left Milton Keynes and drove somewhere else we've returned to time and again.
Stoke-on-Trent.
We arranged to see the last burst of getting vote out with Ruth Smeeth.
The most high-profile Jewish woman Labour MP
who supports a Brexit deal and has suffered abuse from almost all sides
of politics.
Hello!
How are you?
It's close.
Yeah.
I'm still in it.
So, I don't know.
All right, let's go.
Hello, darling, sorry to disturb you, it's Ruth Smeeth
from the Labour party.
It's late and she can't see me and that it's a stupid thing to have an election in December.
People here are, local, your local members?
No, we've got some local, some amazing local …
Who's not local?
So where do you come from?
Leyton.
London.
Why did you choose Stoke-on-Trent North to come to?
Because she's my hero.
I mean, for a Jewish member of the party, there isn't much to stay for anymore.
If Ruth got elected, again, tonight, despite everything,
I think that would be very important.
I think we need her.
Just because all of the problems, it doesn't mean people can't have hope.
I mean, I spoken to my friends about it,
I think at the same time, there's something powerful happening.
I mean, I'm not very optimistic about the national picture tonight.
But something very powerful is happening, I think, with my generation now.
I think we are the generation that isn't really going to take any crap any more.
Hi, darling, sorry, I'm Ruth, I'm the local Labour candidate.
Ruth Smeeth?
I am, yeah.
Have you been to vote today?
I have been voting.
And any chance that was for me?
No.
OK.
I've always voted Labour.
And that's it.
How did you vote for today?
I voted for Conservative.
For the first time in your life, probably.
Yes.
How did that feel?
Not good, really.
It's tough, it's genuinely tough.
There's Brexit but honestly, I get Jeremy raised much much more …
No, stop!
Very close seat, as close as they come, right?
Have Momentum been here?
No, no one.
Have they offered to come here?
No. They haven't contacted me at all.
I think I got added to their list …
I got added to their list, I think, on Tuesday.
But no, I have not had any support from anyone …
No mass canvasses, no high-profile activists coming here?
No.
Hiya, sorry to disturb you, I'm Ruth,
have you been to vote today?
Yes, we have.
Voted for me?
Yeah.
You are my last knock that I'm doing today, so this is my last door.
Because I was the last one to vote.
Thank you so much.
Hello!
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.
Have a lovely evening and sorry for disturbing you.
Alright, last one voted Labour.
Yay!
It's sort of this is family, it's sort of just kind of been,
the people that have come down from Ruth.
We've had a lot of support but not really from the main party nationally,
so it's sort of we have become this little family.
And we are going to go back off to where we were.
OK.
The left has to be sort of indivisible, doesn't it?
Everybody has to got to be involved, otherwise you've lost something vital.
But also, if part of what we've seen is that the country is in a messed up state
in all sorts of ways,
it's not a surprise necessarily that the left has its own messed-upness to deal with, right?
And it's in a bad place in certain ways as well.
Because that's the nature of the moment, maybe.
We've all got to be better than this somehow,
we all got to realise what unites us.
But I came out of Milton Keynes with this
and I've arrived here and I suddenly feel much more mixed about it and sad.
Over the last 10 years, these films have explored people's disconnection
from party politics.
But we've returned again and again to the decline of Labour's bond with people and places
who were once considered its absolute core.
We've met all sorts of people who symbolised that split.
I did vote Labour in the past only because my grandfather did.
What did you use to do for a living?
Underground fitter.
The pits? – Yeah.
Now, with all that, voted Labour?
Yeah.
Has that changed?
Yeah.
I don't think the Conservatives have any opposition in this country no more.
And you voted Labour in the past?
I have done and I've always voted Labour.
Tony Blair, the war in Iraq.
Gordon Brown.
Do you know who you are going to vote for?
Conservatives, mate.
I've always voted Labour.
But it's no accident that this change is indelibly associated
with people like the man we met in Jaywick in Essex, in 2014.
Who'd voted Labour all his life but he simply had enough.
Can I ask you a question?
What's that?
Who did you use to vote for in the past?
Labour.
Did you?
Yeah.
I've always voted Labour.
If you think all of this is reducible to racism and Brexit,
or stupidity, just listen.
Look at the state of it, the …
You think are a bit forgotten about here?
Well, yeah.
We're a backwater, aren't we?
That nobody gives a shit about.
Time was Labour was the party of the working man, eh?
Of course it was.
What happened?
Bloody Thatcher got in and fucking destroyed it, didn't she?
Done the working classes, didn't she?
Piss the miners off, done the railways, you name it.
She pissed us all off.
Big time.
But UKIP is full of people who thinks Mrs Thatcher was the bees knees.
He isn't a fan of trade unions and the working man.
Well, I don't suppose he is. Nobody is, are they?
But your politics should be voting for him?
Yeah, of course they should.
This isn't really a story about UKIP is the cause of anything.
They're are symptoms of a colossal, political failure
and the extent to which people in charge have left millions of people behind.
Towards the end of this election campaign, we went back to Jaywick to find him.
We didn't have his name, we had only the vaguest memory of where exactly he lived.
That's the sea there.
I have relied on your allegedly photographic memory.
This is his house, it's here, I recognise the pebbledash.
You reckon this is his house?
That is the step.
Hello.
I don't know whether you remember us, five years ago,
we were making a film in Jaywick,
and we spoke to you on that bench there.
How are you doing?
Have you?
Thing was it was quite important for us, that conversation.
Because just sitting on that bench talking to you,
sort of showed us that the world
is changing in all sorts of ways, do you know what I mean?
That politics was changing.
Go on.
Nobody seems to know what they're doing?
Are you going to vote in four weeks time?
Tell me why not.
Right.
If not him, who are you going to vote for?
Are you?
God you are a lifelong Labour voter voting for Boris though.
But what's he going to do with the country?
Yeah.
But, an educated, very wealthy …
You've noticed the NHS is in a state when you've been in hospital?
But, you know of all, if you vote for Tory governments,
most of that gets no better.
And you had that experience?
God.
And the future of the country?
How do you feel about that?
Very good.
Keep well, man.
It's moving apart to revisit someone you met five years ago and he's in pretty seriously ill.
And their experience of the illness has been made even worst by what a state the NHS is in.
And where they live has not changed in any significant way.
But he wants Brexit, doesn't he?
'How long has this been going on?'
We are now on our way on some ridiculous hour of the night
to what I hope is our final stop.
This is the count for all three seats in Stoke-on-Trent.
Which until 2017 were all Labour, now one is Tory
and as I far as I understand it,
they are all under treat now.
How are you feeling?
It's fucking shit, isn't it?
I'm not sure whether the Labour party, unless something significantly changes,
I don't know what the point of the Labour party is.
We don't represent the people that we were created to represent
and if you look at the swathes of seats that we've lost this evening,
then what is the point of the Labour party.
I want to be part of answering that question and fixing it,
but if we can't fix it, there's no point of us.
Where do you find hope now?
The answer is you get up tomorrow morning and you go back to the grassroots.
The Labour party and the Labour movement came out of friendly societies
and miner's welfares and embryonic trade unions, and all that.
And the sort of modern equivalents of all those and we've been visiting them for the last five six weeks.
All those amazing community projects and initiatives, self-help organisations,
right?
That's where it starts.
– And the people we met this morning.
And the people we met this morning.
Because the Labour party might have been led into a ditch
but there's a lot of people who have joined in the last few years who are its future.
And you can tell when you meet them.