In the latest in a series on the local elections, we visit the Devon city gripped by a mood of anti-politics

Dave, a 72-year-old bus driver living in the Ham area of Plymouth, is no party loyalist. He has voted both Conservative and Labour before and is proud to be a swing voter.

“I swing for common sense,” he says. “I’ve voted for both parties when different scenarios have come up at different times.” In this week’s local elections he will vote for his Labour councillor, Gareth Derrick, because, he says, he’s one of the few politicians who will stop for a chat.

Plymouth is the biggest city in Devon with a population of about 260,000. A garrison town and home to western Europe’s largest naval base, it is a classic bellwether seat, with areas of high deprivation and areas of wealth. The council fell to Labour last year, the sixth time it had changed hands since 2000.

Other than the Tory safe seat of South West Devon, only part of which falls within the city limits, the two parliamentary constituencies in Plymouth are marginals. The Conservative Johnny Mercer took Plymouth Moor View from Labour in 2015, while Labour’s Luke Pollard won Plymouth Sutton and Devonport from the Conservatives in 2017 – helped by a growing population of students in the city centre.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labour’s Charlotte Holloway on the doorstep in Plymouth. Photograph: Neil Hope/SWNS

“There are a lot of sensible people in Plymouth,” says Dave. “They go for what’s best for them and best for Plymouth at that time.”

A third of the council’s seats are up for grabs on 2 May. There are currently only Conservative and Labour councillors in Plymouth (26 and 31 respectively), meaning the Tories would need to gain three seats to steal Labour’s majority. Neither party thinks that is likely to happen.

“I think it will be tough,” says the council’s Conservative group leader, Ian Bowyer. “There are no two ways about that.” Plymouth voted to leave the European Union by 60% to 40% and Bowyer is open about the fact that the Brexit stalemate in Westminster has damaged his party’s chances. “Without the raging Brexit arguments and the lack of performance that people see in Westminster, I think we would have had a better chance,” he says.

Mercer puts it rather more strongly. “I think the electorate are in no mood to vote Conservative,” he says. “Because we have signally failed to deliver our primary policy. The prime minister has said for two and a half years that if we don’t get a good deal we will be leaving anyway. I and thousands of others believed her and it was not the case.”

He says the mood shifted on the doorstep when 29 March came and went with the UK’s EU membership still intact. “It’s an odd situation because you go to the doors and you want to talk about why you should vote Conservative generally, but in reality you are having to say: ‘This is nothing to do with central government, this is about who empties your bins and who runs local services,’” says Mercer.

Quick guide Local elections 2019 Show Hide Which seats are up for grabs? More than 8,200 seats are up for grabs – and half of them are Conservative seats – so the elections will be a key test for Theresa May. Candidates are contesting 248 English local councils and all 11 local councils in Northern Ireland.



There are also elections for six directly elected mayors – in Bedford, Copeland, Leicester, Mansfield, Middlesbrough and North of Tyne. No elections are taking place in London, Scotland or Wales.



More than half the councils – 134 – are controlled by the Tories, 67 by Labour. Seven are held by the Lib Dems and 35 have no overall control. The remaining five are new councils, owing to local authority mergers. When will we get the results? About half of councils’ votes are being counted overnight, with results expected from midnight. The other half will start being counted on Friday morning. Turnout is expected to be low – multiple party sources have said there is a general feeling of apathy and anger with politicians from across the spectrum. What are the key battlegrounds for the Tories? The Tories have quietly briefed that they are expecting a drubbing, which could mean council gains for both Labour and the Lib Dems. The Tories are hoping to make some gains in places where they are just a few seats from winning control – just one seat is needed to gain Scarborough or two to gain Thurrock. Dudley and Walsall are also councils that will be a narrow fight between Labour and the Tories. What are the key battlegrounds for Labour? Key targets for Labour are Calderdale, Redcar and Cleveland and Trafford, all Labour minority councils, as well as Stoke-on-Trent and Derby, two councils controlled by a coalition of Tories, independents and smaller parties. Ukip is putting up a big fight in Derby, however. Labour could also snatch Peterborough back from the Tories by forming a coalition with the Lib Dems if both parties have a good night. They also have high hopes of increasing their narrow majority in Plymouth. Jessica Elgot, chief political correspondent Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images Europe

Both sides say privately that they expect turnout to be low, but that the numbers of Tory voters staying at home will probably be higher. While the Brexit crisis appears to be causing more damage to the Conservatives than Labour in Plymouth, neither side thinks it is an asset to be brought up on the doorstep.

Labour's battle for Brighton: 'Brexit could split our vote' Read more

The Labour council leader, Tudor Evans, says there is a palpable “anti-politics mood” and that his party, like their opposition, is trying to steer conversation away from Brexit and on to local issues.

“The European election is on 23 May and if people want to make a point about [Brexit] then that’s the place to do it,” says Evans. “We keep saying that we spend half a billion pounds of public money every year in Plymouth as a council. This is an opportunity to adjudicate about how that is being done.”

Charlotte Holloway, Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Plymouth Moor View, is canvassing in an estate of social housing with dramatic views down to the warships sitting in the dock. She says a topic that comes up a lot on the doorstep is education, with attainment in the city’s schools below the national average at all key stages.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Large waves crash against the seawall during Storm Erik as a train passes through Dawlish on Plymouth’s main railway line. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Another common complaint is Plymouth’s transport infrastructure – the city isn’t connected to a motorway, the main railway line is regularly suspended due to flooding, and the airport closed in 2011.

Holloway knocks on David Collings’s door. The 76-year-old former railway and dockyard worker has strong feelings about the council’s decision to remove some public toilets on the waterfront and he doesn’t think enough is being done to maintain the city’s green spaces.

But he has fierce opinions about Brexit too. “I think it’s the biggest letdown in history,” he says. “We must be the laughing stock of the world. 17.4 million wanted to get out and we’ve dithered and dathered and I don’t think we’ll ever come out now, to be honest, and it’s cost us millions of pounds.”

Collings lives in the Ham ward of the city, which was one of three areas to elect a Ukip councillor in 2014. He will not vote in the local election and says that he will never vote again if Britain doesn’t leave the EU. “Once you’ve won it, you should get it,” he says.

Plymouth’s south-west location means its politics are often misunderstood by the capital’s media, says Pollard. “Plymouth is effectively a northern industrial town on the south coast. We are surrounded by beautiful countryside and lovely beaches, but if you look at our demographics, our skills, our health inequalities, levels of poverty and wages, you’ll find we have much more in common with northern post-industrial towns than we do with most of the other places in the country.

“People are unhappy with the deal that we get from Westminster at the moment,” says Pollard. “It’s a narrative that is frequently used about small towns in the north that went for Brexit, but it’s exactly true of Plymouth.”

Plymouth at a glance