The view from the Clapham omnibus

Views from the Clapham omnibus
10 April 2012
WEST END FINAL

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On an auspicious weekday afternoon in London, it seemed the moment to find out what the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus thought about the looming election: except that I wasn't interested in proverbial men - or women - but actual ones.

After all, the expression may be a lawyerly adaptation of the great constitutional theorist Walter Bagehot's contention: "Public opinion is the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus"; while in the 1900s - when it was coined - Clapham was viewed as the quintessence of dull commuter suburbia, but nowadays the 88 route runs the gamut of the city.

From chi-chi Clapham Old Town, through the rough and tumble of Stockwell, then Vauxhall, next, over the bridge and through the MPs' second-home ghetto along Marsham Street, the 88 passes by Downing Street, rumbles up Regent Street, and eventually reaches the stretchy-black Lycra pastures of Camden Town, where pan-European face-metallists gurn on meow-meow.

So, I decided to accost 10 representative Londoners along the route and see if this empirical sample could tell me more about which way the political wind was blowing than the legions of pollsters.

First up was Jorge Gallego, 39, a bus driver from Colombia, whom I collared behind the Stockwell bus garage. Jorge has lived in Britain for 15 years. He was late for his meal break but happily paused to tell me that he was "keeping an open mind but basically I've no complaints about Gordon Brown".

No complaints about Gordon Brown! I thought Jorge must be the Rip Van Winkle of the London electorate, and wanted to question him further, but he scampered off with his takeaway.

My next subject was an authentic cockney costermonger, a white woman in her fifties, who now lives in the deep south of London, but commutes to sell fruit and veg.

"I'm going to vote for the BNP or the Tories," she told me, "definitely not Labour. I used to vote Liberal - but I think this time the Tories have the edge."

"Immigration is my top priority," she continued. "We've a little island here and we can't let any more in, you've got to draw the line when the hospitals and schools are getting overcrowded."

She was perfectly happy to vouchsafe these views, but when I asked her for her name she said: "Oh no, I think I'd better remain anonymous."

Less shy about expressing anti-immigration views was my next interviewee, Chris Jefferies, 30, a tall white man with a crew cut, who was waiting beside the memorial at Stockwell Tube station to Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian mistakenly shot by police marksmen.

Whippet-thin Jefferies was restraining a black collie with one foot as he told me: "I've never voted, mate. To tell you the truth, I haven't got a clue about how it works."

Ignorant of the political process he may have been but Jefferies still had strong opinions: "What I believe is sort out the country first - I'm not a racist but foreigners've got more stuff than what we do. Don't get me wrong," he warmed to his theme, "I live on the Stockwell Park Estate and there's lots of 'em there, they've been in shit countries and they want to make a better life, but we're getting lost in all this."

Jefferies told me he worked in construction but had been unemployed for the past two months - I would've said he was a fertile convert for Nick Griffin, were it not that I believed him when he said he wasn't a racist.

All the main parties are confused about how to address concerns about immigration without resorting to racist rhetoric -but they won't get focus groups full of men like Jefferies, precisely because they're so alienated from the political process.

I boarded the 88 and sat down on the top deck behind Hayden Spektor, a 19-year-old student at the über-hip ACM (Academy of Contemporary Music) in Guildford. With his sagittal crest of hair and riveted top lip, Spektor was every inch the coming rock star, and this first-time voter's concerns were in line with his style: "I come from a Labour family," he said, "but I haven't completely decided.

I thought those Cameron posters were a bit well, pretentious. I'm interested in a government that's really committed to helping people below the poverty line - I liked the pieces the Standard ran on this recently, I think they showed that when people are given the opportunity to earn decent money they do work harder."

On the bottom deck I found Nathan Kibuuku, a softly-spoken African man in his mid-fifties. "That's not an easy question to answer," he said when I asked him about his voting intentions.

"With Labour I'm not so sure they're committed to change. I'm also concerned because they don't fulfil their promises. I also think that tax is too high." Kibuuku, who works in the hotel industry, described himself to me as a medium-level earner, but what mostly exercised him was: "The bus pass, it went up to £3.90 - and that's too much."

Descending from the 88 beneath the giant tuning fork of Vauxhall Cross I was accosted by Stuart Scott, 42, who was demob happy in a smart windcheater and green baseball cap. "I'm taking a sabbatical from my work in marketing," he told me, "and going travelling."

A Battersea resident, Scott told me: "I've always gone blue, but I saw Michael Gove" [the Tory education spokesman] "on the TV the other night and I thought the policies he was outlining were just bizarre. Far too radical - I come from a family of educators, and it seems to me they're proposing change just for the sake of it."

Serendipitously my next subject, Paula Hudspith, 47, whom I encountered on the approaches to Vauxhall Bridge immediately below the uglification of MI6, had just come from Millbank, where Labour masterminded its 1997 election victory and the Conservatives now have their command centre.

An IT consultant, Hudspith was undecided as yet, but she was committed to taking an interest in the election: "I'll read the manifestos," she said "and watch the TV debates. I'm concerned about the economy, obviously, and also public services - the schools and health policy. I'm not sure the Tories have much of a better angle."

Hudspith, a trim, efficient-looking woman who has spent the past 15 years abroad, was another political Rip Van Winkle who's "awoken" to discover the Labour regime had come in her absence and was now possibly ... going.

She struck me as very much the quintessential floating voter: currently living in Labour MP Martin Salter's Reading West constituency, from a traditional Labour family, but willing to consider alternatives: "I saw Nick Clegg on the television the other night," she said, "and I liked his enthusiasm."

Passing over Vauxhall Bridge, that span of London pride with its monumental cast iron statues personifying such civic virtues as "Local Government", "Education" and "Fine Arts", I gained the more salubrious backwaters of Pimlico, and advanced behind Tate Britain towards Westminster.

Beside the Celebrity Dry Cleaners on Marsham Street, I encountered a slightly harassed middle-aged white woman. She was stolid and well-dressed with a handsome careworn face, and while willing to admit that she worked for NOMS (the National Offender Management Service), she didn't - for obvious reasons - want to be named.

"I shan't be voting," she told me, "they really are all as bad as each other, they say one thing, then do another. They won't admit to the scale of cut-backs that are going to be necessary - but anyone who works in the bureaucracy can tell you these will have to be massive. I feel I should vote, because otherwise in some way I'm not entitled to my opinion, but I just feel so fed up."

The last two people I spoke to were both women and both black British. They were both happy to talk - but again, both wished to remain anonymous. The first was at the bus stop opposite Westminster Abbey, together with her mother and daughter.

In her mid-thirties, in a woolly hat and glasses, she told me: "It might be Brown, but I'm still looking - the Conservatives look stronger now, although I don't like the way they've accused Labour over letting criminals out of jail early: that's just politicking."

And then, just past the gates of Downing Street, I did my last vox pop, with a busy catering manager - again in her thirties - who didn't stop texting but did tell me she was "good old Labour" and wholeheartedly supported the union side in the current disputes.

Nonetheless, "I'm still undecided, maybe we do need someone new - someone who puts family, and people's ability to look after their own, as top priority."

What did my tiny trawl through the great sea of London opinion teach me? Well, that the range and manner of thinking about political choice, even when questioned very superficially, seems far deeper and more subtle than opinion polls ever manage to convey.

But then again, my micro-survey also confirmed what all the big ones tell us: that floating voters tend overwhelmingly to be female, and that they make their minds up late in the day. So, everything to play for, boys - let the games begin.

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