Hatfield is one of those towns with an abundance of roundabouts and no shortage of signs directing you to its centre. The problem is there is no town centre, at least nothing that looks like it’s the centre of anything, so you can drive round a lot of gyratory systems before you realise that you’re going in circles.

It’s not a bad metaphor for the political state of the nation as it gears itself up for election season. Next month, on 2 May, with the political process seemingly running over and over the same old Brexit ground, local elections will take place in 270 English councils, along with 11 more in Northern Ireland, and six directly elected mayoralities. And three weeks later there will be the European elections.

The voters of Hatfield are among the lucky people who get to exercise their democratic rights twice in May. Though it has to be said that luck is not the sentiment that is most often expressed to me in the forlorn 1960s shopping precinct that turns out to be the town centre.

“Huh?” is a typical response. As is “What do you mean?” and “Nah, mate.” My personal favourite came from a woman in her 60s, pushing a trolley outside Asda. “Don’t be so rude,” she snapped.

Is that what people mean when they speak of the coarsening of public debate?

Emma is among that defiant minority prepared to share their thoughts with the fourth estate on the issue of the double vote.

We need a real leader, like Maggie Thatcher. She would have sorted it all out, wouldn’t she? John Cunningham, Hatfield resident

“I”m supposed to go online to register but I’ve been too busy at work,” she explains.

She works in a cafe.

“But I will vote,” she reassures me, with the deadline for registration only hours away. “My boyfriend will help me. I get confused.”

Don’t we all. These are confusing times. What does she think about the current deadlock and, while we’re at it, what’s her position on a second referendum?

“I listen to the news and I’m fed up with it all, to be honest,” she says quite jauntily.

I notice that she’s holding a newly purchased cocktail glass in her hand. It turns out it’s her birthday, and she’s going to have a celebration. I’m far from confident that she’s going to meet that registration deadline.

“I’m not going to vote,” Fran McMillan, a district nurse, tells me, though it will be the first time she’s abstained in her adult life. “I don’t want to put Corbyn in and I can’t vote Conservative or Liberal.”

She lays into Grant Shapps, the former co-chairman of the Conservative party and the local member of parliament. Shapps, of course, isn’t up for election, but the truth is people tend to see local and European elections through the prism of parliamentary politics.

Would she vote if there were a second referendum?

“Don’t know. Probably.”

Does she think there should be one.

“Yes! Definitely.”

Now I’m confused, so I ask her what she voted in the previous referendum.

“I’m going to get my doggy,” she replies enigmatically, and marches off smiling.

Grant Shapps, the former Tory party co-chairman, is Hatfield’s MP. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

I decide to relocate, and head for the Galleria, the vast shopping mall beneath which the A1(M) runs. Outside I run into a ruddy-faced John Cunningham, who tells me that he’s also not going to vote. He poses the same ontological question as McMillan: “What’s the point?”

He usually votes Conservative but he despairs of the leadership.

“We need a real leader, like Maggie Thatcher,” he says. “She would have sorted it all out, wouldn’t she?”

Judging by several people who echo the same disillusionment with our elected representatives, this is probably not the easiest time to run for public office, particularly in elections – local and European – that by tradition are met with dazed apathy.

But maybe the vibe will be more optimistic inside the sparkling edifice that is the Galleria, with its more upmarket shops – Waterstones and Jaeger – and carefully regulated atmosphere of mindless consumption.

The problem now is that all the customers I approach are not from Hatfield or Welwyn but far-flung places that are not part of the May electoral bonanza. Fortunately, there’s a customer service stand, and two friendly customer service people to quiz on their thoughts about our busy demos.

“Do you have permission to speak to our customers?” the woman asks.

From whom?

She tells me I have to contact the Galleria’s retail manager, and if I gain agreement, I must wear an identity badge. I ask her colleague what he thinks about the two elections.

“I can’t tell you,” he says.

Because you’re in state of uncertainty, held as we are in this endless limbo of discord and deferment?

“No, because you don’t have permission to ask.”

I don’t get an answer, which is, perhaps, fitting because in all likelihood, come the double elections of May, the nation is not going to get one either.

• This article was amended on 19 April 2019 to remove some personal information.