Undecided voters: Focus group from Hitchin

This op-ed was originally published in The Guardian.

"Hopefully we can get on with it, because what we’ve got happening at the moment isn’t really working, is it?” That was how Gemma, a construction manager, reacted to last week’s general election announcement. She was one of nine undecided voters in the new parliamentary seat of Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, who More in Common spoke to as part of a focus group on Wednesday evening.

The participants were certainly not natural Labour voters. More than any other group we’ve spoken to this year, they were frustrated at high taxes and in particular the impact of fiscal drag and benefit cutoffs. Matt, an account manager, told us that rules around benefits thresholds and child benefit had “rankled him for years”. Ben, a facilities manager, said he had cut down the amount he worked to avoid hitting new thresholds, saying: “If everything goes up and the thresholds don’t increase then you just start getting penalised more.”

They felt keeping taxes low was supposed to be the Conservatives’ selling point but tax rises over this parliament had shown that wasn’t the case. Beth, a commercial manager, said: “I always thought that the Conservatives would be the better party in terms of how they would tax me, and Labour would tax me way more to support people that need it. But the trends seem to say that the Conservatives actually tax you more.”

If rising taxes had undermined confidence in the Conservatives’ economic prowess, it was the Liz Truss 2022 mini-budget and its aftermath that had trashed it. In many focus groups, the Truss administration barely registers, with people more likely to bring up Partygate, the cost of living, the NHS or Rishi Sunak as reasons for abandoning the Conservatives.

This group was the opposite, with many of the participants blaming “Truss and [her chancellor, Kwasi] Kwarteng” directly for their current financial woes and citing the mini-budget as the main reason they were now undecided. Given that the Hitchin seat is in the 94th percentile for those who own their home with a mortgage, it is perhaps unsurprising that the impact of rising interest rates was so keenly felt.

On the current prime minister, the group was more split. Lee, a small business owner, said: “I don’t think it’s necessarily Rishi’s fault. I just feel that he’s taken the reins over what was arguably the worst period of government.” And some pointed to the fact that inflation was now coming down as Sunak had promised.

Others, however, felt he hadn’t grown into the job and – as we hear time and time again across the country – their biggest concern was that Sunak’s wealth made him too rich to relate to the public’s everyday struggles. Matt said: “He seems to lack that little bit of empathy and humanity for me.” Sher, a social worker, said: “I don’t really think he’s got it, he can’t really relate.” Ben, an aircraft technician, said that every time Sunak tried to seem relatable, he made it worse.

While the group had strong opinions on the prime minister, the opposite was true of the leader of the opposition. For this group, Keir Starmer was a total unknown quantity. Beth summed up the group’s view, saying: “I don’t know if I think he’ll be a good prime minister. I don’t really know enough” – though they did agree that he was more acceptable than Jeremy Corbyn and that Labour seemed more united than the Tories. However, they also had a key question, as posed by Lee: “Where are Labour going to get the money from?”

The bright spot for the government from this focus group was the national service announcement, which it was felt would do young people good and prepare them for adulthood. Aircraft technician Ben said: “I think it could have done me and a few of my mates pretty good to be honest.”

The downside for the Conservatives was that many didn’t trust them to do it well. While they supported the scheme in general, a few such as Sher had concerns about what it would mean for their own children. “My boys are going nowhere. But there are some young people that could do with having those lessons.”

The group were less positive about other Conservative policies. Most thought the Rwanda scheme had proved to be a waste of money, they dismissed Conservative attacks on “Mickey Mouse” degrees as a gimmick, and blamed the government for the parlous state of the NHS.

Whether that will be enough to make them put their cross in the Labour box on 4 July is another question. This group were almost unanimous in thinking it was time for change and used words such as “bleak”, “disaster” and “mess” to describe the state of the UK, but they still worried about taking a bet on Labour.

The task for both parties as they play a tug of war with these voters is clear. The Conservatives have to convince those in seats such as Hitchin that the next parliament will see a return to stability that Labour would put at risk, and a return to traditional Conservative economic policies on tax. The Labour party needs to reintroduce Starmer to the electorate in a way that convinces them that he can bring about the change the country needs, and will do so in a way that doesn’t scare the horses. From what we heard this week, both campaigns have their work cut out.