It is the day after Jeremy Corbyn unveiled Labour’s election manifesto with its £83bn of spending pledges, and his party’s activists are energised in the target seat of Norwich North.
A large group of students has arrived from the south of the city (Norwich South is already solidly Labour) to lend a hand. This seat is in the top dozen Labour targets, and if it doesn’t win here then Boris Johnson almost certainly stays in No 10.
That prospect helps swell the number of activists knocking on doors. “The idea of not having Johnson as prime minister is what gets us out of bed in the morning,” says Kate Hicks, who heads the University of East Anglia’s Labour group. “It’s mostly because we are bloody angry.”
Before fanning out across a housing estate, Hicks and her student friends grab piles of leaflets promoting Karen Davis, the Labour candidate, which make no mention at all of Jeremy Corbyn.
Norwich North has been held by the Conservative Chloe Smith since a byelection ousted Labour in 2009. But in 2017 Smith’s majority was cut to a slender 507 over Labour. The constituency is a mixture of middle-class affluence and poorer estates such as Mile Cross, where Davis is out with her team in force on a cold Friday afternoon. This area should provide rich pickings for her – but instead proves very hard going.
Sandra Grix, a mother who is on benefits, answers the door and has a problem with Corbyn. “He’s a twat,” she says. Davis is prepared, and tries to depersonalise the conversation. Labour, she tells Grix, is the only party with a manifesto that will help less well-off families like hers. She asks if she still thinks she will vote Labour. “For lower-income people, Labour is the only one, as you will always fight for us,” Grix admits, suggesting she will still be on side on 12 December.
As Davis moves on, there is more backing for Labour’s policies than for its leader. John Thompson, a retired teacher, says he does not like Corbyn “personally” but prefers him to “Boris the unspeakable”. As for the high-spending manifesto with its promise of pay rises for 5 million public sector workers, Thompson likes it. “The point is that it is not just spending, it’s about investment in the future. It is about a new ethics of work.”
Norwich as a whole voted Remain in 2016, but in the north of the city the Leave vote was higher. An elderly lady with a union flag in her garden questions Corbyn’s commitment to leaving the EU. Others are simply too busy to think about politics. A young lady answers another door and shouts inside to her family, asking if any of them have concerns to raise with the Labour candidate. “No, none, sorry,” is the answer.
Davis, who is the cabinet member in charge of social inclusion on the city council, leaves without further ado, saying there is a lot of real poverty in these parts. “These people, you know, they have not got the luxury to think about politics when all they are trying to do is survive.”
Around the corner Rob White, a self-employed decorator, tells Davis he has been a lifelong Labour supporter but for the first time ever won’t vote for the party. “I can’t stand him. I can’t vote for him,” he says of Corbyn.
But White agrees with all Labour’s policies, prompting Davis to deploy a football analogy that she has up her sleeve. “If you are lifelong supporter of one team you don’t just switch to support another just because you don’t like the manager,” she says, asking him to think of the leadership issue as just a “management blip”.
“It is up to all of us to stay together and ensure we have the right policies that really help people,” she says. White pauses, agrees that she has a good point, and seems ready to reconsider.
At the 2017 election there was a similar antipathy to Corbyn, even in many traditional Labour areas, at this mid-stage of the campaign. Labour then turned it around to deprive the Conservatives of an overall majority, perhaps in part because of Theresa May’s poor performances on the stump and Corbyn’s far better ones. The Tories’ policy on care for the elderly also backfired badly. In constituencies such as Norwich North it certainly does not feel as if another Labour surge is imminent, but hope lives on before the Tory manifesto launchon Sunday.
Davis insists the seat is winnable and that it will all be decided late on. But if she faces an uphill struggle in the less prosperous parts of the constituency, in the better-off areas it will be more difficult still. Leafy Thorpe Saint Andrew, which borders the River Yare, is full of middle-class voters and business people who own their homes, and in many cases more than one. But there no one was particularly enamoured of Boris Johnson.
Alan Coates, a plumber, described him as “a bit of a blundering idiot”. But he far preferred Johnson to Corbyn, who he said seemed to want to “hit people who want to get on”.
Businessmen Tim Bishop and Peter Giles said Johnson had his faults but agreed that “at least he wants to get things done”. Ian Tims, managing director of Credo Asset Finance, which helps local small businesses, said he was fed up with all politicians. But he despaired most of Labour. “If Corbyn gets in, then God help us,” he said, reinforcing the impression that for Labour the enthusiasm of its activists and candidates may not be enough in target seats like this.
