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Colchester Pre 2 fg V.1

THE QUALITATIVE ELECTION STUDY OF BRITAIN 2017

Colchester Pre-election Group 2

Transcribed Focus Groups Dataset

Version 0.5

Date of release: 21 September 2017

Principal InvestigatorDr. Edzia Carvalho, University of Dundee

International Co-InvestigatorDr. Kristi Winters, GESIS, Cologne

Co-InvestigatorDr. Thom Oliver, UE Bristol

Funded by: GESIS-Leibniz InstituteUniversity of Dundee

UE BristolThe UK Data Archive

QESB Contacts

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Website: qesb.info

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Early Release of Transcribed Focus Groups Dataset Version 0.5

On copyright and attribution

Copyright of this transcript belongs to Drs. Edzia Carvalho, Kristi Winters and Thom Oliver. Individuals may re-use this document/publication free of charge in any format for research, private study or internal circulation within an organisation. You must re-use it accurately and not present it in a misleading context. You must acknowledge the authors, the QES Britain project title, and the source document/publication.

Recommended citation: Carvalho, E. , K. Winters and T. Oliver. 2017. 'The Qualitative Election Study of Britain 2017 Dataset', version 0.5. Last accessed Date of website visit. Available at: www.qesb.info

On the transcription

All participants’ names have been changed and any direct or indirect identifiers removed to protect their anonymity

The transcripts in this version also do not include extensive instructions given to participants at the beginning of the groups, introductions by participants, and some exchanges between participants and moderators during exercises.

Initial Transcription by: Just Write Secretarial Services, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Contact: [email protected]

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I: So I’ll start with casting our minds back to a few weeks ago, four or five weeks ago when we first heard about the snap election. One of the first things we wanted to find out is what are your thoughts on the Prime Minister calling the snap election.

What I’ll do is I’ll start around the table, to begin with. If I could start with you, Carter.

MR: I had a mixture of emotions, because I quite quickly thought "hang on, is this sensible, because of what it costs ??. But if the Prime Minister asks, and presumably the Monarch has agreed as well, then I’m not going to change it. So I was surprised. If I can go back a bit further as well, when a Remainer became Prime Minister I was kind of disappointed. Maybe still having some confidence in Theresa May but I would have been happier if it had been a Leaver as Prime Minister. If you follow conspiracy thoughts and theories, a little bit of me says could there be a wrecking action going on? Somebody thinks it’s so important to stay with Europe so they'll wreck their own career. Those are the thoughts that I had.

I: Obviously, by the time the snap election was called, you didn’t have those thoughts, or did you?

MR: I had kind of finished having those thoughts. But, I just had a weariness and then I thought, "well, anyway, what else can you do?"

I: Thank you. Kaleigh?

FR: She said she was calling it because she couldn’t get very far with any kind of decisions about BREXIT and the negotiations, because she was getting so many arguments and didn’t have a big enough majority. So I could quite see her point that it would have gone on forever. It would have been really difficult to get definite decisions. What Carter just said about ‘she was a Remainer’, because I was for coming out as well, but I always thought she was sitting on the fence, because she said very little pro-staying in Europe, so I felt she was a good choice because she would see the point of view of both sides without upsetting anybody particularly. But in the beginning, when she took over from David Cameron, all the other parties were saying "oh, she hasn’t got any kind of mandate from the public. She should call an election." But then when she did call an election they were all saying "oh, she’s going back on what she said. She’s just lying." And I thought that was so two-faced, because at that point we thought we were going to lose. And with the local elections everybody then thought that she would win the election. But now everything has changed, so I don’t know what’s going on.

I: We’ll come to that. Taylor?

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FR: I find her quite dishonest. I don’t actually particularly like her. I don’t dislike her but I don’t particularly like her. I think the reason she called the election became quite clear when the manifesto was released, and I think her idea was "I’m so far ahead in the polls I can more or less do as I please." I think that was quite arrogant. And she thought "yeah, if I've got a few unpopular things in my manifesto", which she most certainly did have, "then it’s not going to matter. I’m still way ahead so I can afford to do this." And it has backfired on her, quite spectacularly, actually.

I: What’s really interesting is the range of opinions. It’s precisely what I was saying earlier, it is this kind of range of opinions that we are looking for, so thank you very much.

MR: I agree that slipping in the stuff about the social care-

FR: She didn't even have to do that!

MR: -there was no need.

FR: No, no need whatsoever.

MR: I mean, I know the Tory party had been talking to itself about social care, and probably every political party has been, but it was a dreadful risk.

FR: It was a huge bombshell and it alienated core voters, and you just can’t make it up.

FR: Then why put it in the manifesto?

FR: I don’t know. I think your point was quite a good one, that there is a conspiracy thing, which I’ve heard from all walks of life, is that it’s almost does she want to win this election? Does she want to go through with BREXIT? It’s easier not to win the election and then somebody else can take it through. It probably sounds a bit daft, but when you look at some of the things that she introduced, which, as I say, alienated her against her core voters, then what would you do about it? It doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

FR: It doesn’t. And then another thing she said, apparently, is that you won’t be able to cash in your pension, your private pension, and some people were relying on that to pay off their mortgage. So that’s alienated people too.

FR: It was just unbelievable, and if we’re going to just skirt on it, the fox hunting thing. I mean, that was the only thing that I would ever put a tick against Tony Blair, because I can’t abide the man, but that was the one good thing he did, and it was obvious, by the vast majority in the country, we don’t want fox hunting. It’s barbaric. It’s not even a sport. It belongs in a century ago; it doesn’t belong in the 20th century.

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MR: I never understood how that came about. Was it because she volunteered that, or did some reporter say to her "what’s happening about fox hunting?"

FR: It depended, of course, as with everything, who you listened to on the radio, what newspaper you read. If you read what I call an upmarket newspaper, they would say that she’d come out with it more or less tacked on in the manifesto somewhere. If you read perhaps one of the other papers, they might have more…

MR: It hit the news before the manifesto came out, so I don’t know what the manifesto said. I don’t know whether she went into some interview with the intention of saying that about fox hunting and about a free vote in Parliament.

FR: But then again, she didn’t need to mention that, did she?

MR: No, but on the other hand, did she get asked and then say "well, our position is to take it to another vote."

FR: It's another car crash, I think.

I: This kind of segues into what I want to do next, which is [over talking] So we have the responses that you gave to the various leaders in front of you, just to refresh your memory. And what we’ll do is just go through your responses for Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron, otherwise we’ll be here for a long time if we go through all the eight. So we’ll go through each leader in turn and then we’ll talk about the positives, neutrals and negatives for each of them. So if you could maybe tell us what you wrote and if you want to explain any particular phrase or any word that you had, that would be great as well.

I’ll give you a couple of minutes to refresh your memory.

I: So, shall we start with Theresa May, any positives for Theresa May?

FR: Not from me.

MR: Well, in what I wrote down, I know it’s going to look rather different to all the suspicious stuff I’ve been talking about just now. But, my responses to you before were honest, sincere and focused.

FR: Oh dear!

MR: It’s not as if I’ve exactly dropped those just in a few days, or whatever it is, it’s just that I always just have conspiracy stuff as an option, as a possibility, because anyone can be fooled. So I still suspect she’s honest, sincere and focused, but it doesn’t surprisingly contradict my little suspicion that this is so got into people’s skins, Brexit has been something that has so threatened relationships of people, including my own, and you’ve had to stop talking to some people about it 9:55

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and you had an agreement not to talk about it. So I find myself quite cross with two friends of mine, in particular. One was Lib Dem and one was Labour, and they both, with me, have agreed not to talk about Brexit. But it never quite goes away.

I: Any other positives?

FR: That was really interesting, actually, because two of the words I’ve got is "honest and focused", and I’ve also put "fair, truthful, calm, strong-minded and determined". But that was based on when she first became leader, because she gave the most wonderful speeches where she said that she really cared about the ordinary, working person, which I’ve always said they're the people who are struggling the hardest, because they are doing everything right, they’ve got jobs, they’ve got mortgages, they’ve got children, they’re married, and they are really, really struggling. She said that she cared very much about those people and she wanted to help them. And, of course, she’s a vicar’s daughter. I think that’s possibly why she was that way. But since the election’s been called, she’s coming across as a slightly different kind of person, but whether that’s because she's trying to do all the ordinary politics at the same time. She’s rushing off to G8 Summits and seeing world leaders, and then we’ve had the trouble in Manchester. So, it’s slightly a different picture of herself which she’s shown. But, I think she’s a wonderful person.

I: Any neutrals? No? Okay negatives?

FR: Right, I started off with dishonest and that still stands. I don’t believe the reason, as I’ve already covered, why she called the election, I don’t think it was to do with Brexit, I think she still could have carried on with the remaining Parliament. She would have, I think, got Brexit through. I just think, as I’ve previously said, that she called the election because she thought "I’m going to win this and I can put what I like in my manifesto, even if it’s going to be unpopular and it’s going to get through." So, I don’t see her like Kaleigh, I don’t see her at all like that. And I think she keeps changing her mind, so I find that quite weak. You know, there’s differences in policies that come up, and they're obviously unpopular, she goes back on them and, to me, that is not the strength of what I call a good leader. You either believe in your convictions or you don’t.

And I’ve put here "typical Tory". To me, she is. She’s got, I think, quite a patronising tone, and this is my big thing about a lot of politicians, particularly, well, I wouldn’t say even the Tory party, but the majority of them. I often wonder if they go to some sort of finishing school where you’re taught to be patronising to people, because they have this very patronising tone, which I really, really resent. Why can’t they just talk normally, like we are, but they don’t do that. It’s almost like patting on the head, or with Theresa May, it reminds me, years ago you used to have a programme called Listen with Mother, and the presenters

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there used to... because you were all children, you were listening to it, and it always takes me back to that. So that’s what I think.

And I’ve put "not interested in working people". I think if one more Tory says that they’re interested in the ordinary person I swear I shall have a heart attack or jump out of a window or do something. I honestly don’t believe them. They are so far removed from what I call an average working person that I see them as far apart as A to Z. I think they say it because I think their advisors and their speech writers think "oh yeah, that’s a good phrase to get in, everybody’s going to listen to us then". No, sorry, don’t believe it.

I: Great range of views.

FR: You can see how [thorough 14:34] I am, about the Tories in general.

I: I think what’s great is: we’ve been up in Scotland, we’ve been over to Bristol and been here, there are more Conservative voters in this area. It’s a different kind of mix, so it’s really good to hear everybody’s different views. There are a lot of people with your views and a lot of people who have similar views to you and that’s why it’s really great to hear.

FR: Can I ask you a question? With the areas that you’ve mentioned, what would you say has been the strongest stronghold perhaps for the Tories? Or are you not allowed to say?

I: So far, here. Because Scotland, obviously, Dundee was a big-

FR: SNP

I: and Glasgow too, and you’re going to Edinburgh. We were in Birmingham but it was more of a Labour seat there, so that’s why we’re spending quite a lot of time in Colchester, because it’s actually a great place to get the full range.

We'll have a couple of Conservative voters in Dundee actually. They do exist. [laughter]

We will be doing quite a few online groups as well. Wales too; we've had a few more Conservative voters in Wales.

FR: Wales? That does surprise me. That really surprises me.

FR: They voted Brexit, didn’t they?

FR: Yes, so maybe it’s linked to Brexit; yes, you're probably right.

I: Jeremy Corbyn, so we’ll do the same thing. Positive, negative, neutral. So with Mr Corbyn, anyone have any positives?

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FR: I did, I said that he’s honest to his convictions. I mean, I’m not, I hasten to add, I’m not a Labour voter either. But I think out of the three main parties, I think he does just speak his mind, as such. I think he is honest to his convictions; whether I agree with them would be another thing. But I don’t think he…how can I put this…he’s not trying to put across an image. I don’t think he cares, particularly, what people think of him and if he wants to say something, he’ll say it.

FR: I wouldn’t disagree with that. But I would disagree with what he’s thinking.

I: Last call for positives, otherwise neutral.

FR: I said "he still behaves like a back-bench MP". I think he was one for years and years and years, and in a lot of ways I don’t think he’s particularly stepped out of that role, he’s just got a different title.

MR: I think my comments that I’ve got written down here are neutral. I said "I think he has an agenda that I don’t understand, and is he led or is he leading?" I think there was a time particularly when it wasn’t clear whether the main party was being led by him or by people within it. What was that organisation called? Momentum or something. Was he in charge of that or was it leading him? I still don’t know. So I suppose those are neutral comments.

I: Negatives.

FR: Yeah, they’re all negative. Weak, because I don’t particularly think that he stands his ground, he dithers. He’s deluded, because northern traditional Labour voters were so anti-immigration and yet he’s still saying, more or less, that we’re going to open the gates and let all these people in. So that’s alienating his own voters. He’s illogical. He makes unwarranted personal attacks. When I’m watching parliamentary Question Time on television I’m disgusted by the way he personalises… I mean, he should be talking about politics and not be talking about people’s personalities.

FR: They all do that.

FR: I know, but it’s absolutely dreadful. But he does it more than other people do. And he really doesn’t understand the economy. He says we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that and it’s costing so much. It isn’t a good priority with the little bit of money that we have got. Like, the latest thing was giving free school meals to all these children, which apparently is going to cost billions. But, it’s better to spend those billions, if we’ve actually got them, which we haven’t, on things like education and hospitals.

Then he’s pro-IRA, and he wants to get rid of Trident, and he wouldn’t ban Al-Qaeda, and I think, oh my goodness. It’s quite frightening, really.

I: Thank you. Other negatives?

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MR: Yes, I’m completely bemused as to his history of entertaining all sorts of people who, in various parts of the world, were engaged in active, hostile, violent activity. And ones who haven’t even got any of the traditional excuses, if that's the right word, or just issues. Many people accept that Mandela was a good guy, despite being a… 20:39 and so on.

FR: A terrorist.

MR: But there are other characters that just don’t even have that universal excuse for their behaviour. And Corbyn and some others are going to court, if that's the right word, entertain and support those people. I think there are some lessons to be learned about human beings, because he’s getting an awful lot of tolerance from many, many people for having that history, which is bang up-to-date, it’s not just historical, because he’s not unequivocal in condemning the IRA, Al Qaeda, whoever, ISIS even. He’s always somewhere as if just down the line. He said all bombing is wrong, and in a sense, you can’t argue with that.

I've deliberately gone to Warton on occasions and fired guns and dropped bombs, flown aircraft, gone under water in order to get the enemy, well, we’ve all done that when we thought we had 21:47. He’s talked more about people just going at it as a pastime, and it doesn’t seem to be affecting how some people will vote.

FR: They choose to ignore it.

FR: It’s pretty much what you were saying as well, I think he's out of touch with the population as a whole. And I suppose I would draw a parallel with Theresa May, because his core voters, as you rightly said, were always the North of England, and with a lot of his policies he’s done nothing to actually call them back into the fold and he’s still alienating them. And I think his votes, and he does seem to be picking up quite a few votes now, seem to be a lot with the young people, because the young like what he’s saying.

FR: He’s just promised that they’re going to get free university places, which is what Tony Blair did with drinking hours and got loads of 18 year olds to vote, or a mix of that. So that’s really cynical, I think. And how can you win an election because 18 year olds don’t want to pay their university fees? That’s way down on the list of priorities.

FR: It is, although I do have some sympathy with the sheer scale of debt that they come out of university with. But then I suppose, if you traced it back, I think Mr Blair wanted everybody to go to university, and so you could go to university, and I don’t want this to be disrespectful, but just on any sort of topic or subject which wasn’t needed by the country, whereas I think if it had been streamlined and they had looked at the courses where we did need people, so for instance, your doctors and scientists, engineers etc. and then they had the education paid

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for them, I think that would have been a lot better way of doing things. But I just think, to me, the whole education system now, I think it's a mess.

FR: It is, a complete mess.

FR: Look, you know, the youngsters, how can you come out of university and you’ve got, what was it, fees £9,000 now a year, so that's £27,000, and that’s then on top of perhaps your living expenses. I mean, it’s just huge. And then they're supposed to come out, and they're not going to be earning very good salaries if they haven’t got a very good degree in a subject that we need, and then you’re supposed to save for a pension and supposed to buy a house. I mean, it’s just impossible.

FR: It is, I absolutely agree.

FR: The whole thing is impossible.

MR: Can I briefly say, I think Mr Corbyn and many senior Labour people don’t actually understand 25:05 their core voters. Those core voters, those working class people, have been quietly seething for a long time because they believe that people migrating to the country dropped the wages.

FR: I think it has, absolutely.

MR: And I think a lot of people don’t like the fact that we will simply go and reach across the channel to get people to pick our fruit for us whilst we make no effort to habilitate some of our own 16 to 20 year olds that are having a job getting a work ethic together, and we dispose of them and reach out to someone else who does have a work ethic. It doesn’t matter where they come from.

FR: That has to do with the university education as well, because they come out of university expecting a really good job, a well paid job, and they’re not prepared to have lower-paid jobs. But they're not actually capable of doing the kind of job that they think they're entitled to have.

MR: And so we’ve got generations of people living on benefits and whose kind of hunter/gatherer activity in their lives is just going to get their benefits and then 26:34 the benefits. And that’s something that Labour is more responsible for than the other parties.

FR: But also I think it is once you’ve got into that system it’s extremely difficult to get out of, because if you’ve gone for a job and somebody looks at a job application and you’ve got nothing on it for 15 years, who’s going to interview you? I think sometimes some people genuinely do want to step out of it but nobody will give them a break. And then they see a lot of the Eastern Europeans, who actually have a splendid work ethic, they are coming into Britain, they’re hoovering up a lot of the jobs that maybe some of them could do and, you know, taking whatever anybody…

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MR: And if I were them I would do the same thing, because I can come through the UK and get a better wage.

FR: For them it’s a good wage, because they send a lot of it back home. £1 here is probably worth the equivalent of £4 back home. So, although it’s a poor wage to us, it’s a really good wage to them.

FR: Yeah, but it’s creating a huge gap and resentment. We just talked about the working person, well, I think these are the people that feel enormously resentful. It’s okay for, you know, I’m sorry for Theresa May and her party, to talk about these sorts of glowing terms of people coming into our country but they are not at the receiving end of what happens. They're living in nice houses, their children are well educated, their families are going to go on to buy houses, they’re going to have good jobs. It doesn’t affect them, it doesn’t hit them. How do they know? Do you know what? I’d like to pluck every single politician out of the Houses of Parliament and put them with a family somewhere as they live and say "okay, this is you for a month, now you’ll see what the reality is". And then see if they want to come out with these ridiculous phrases like, you know, "I’m for the working people." No, they’re not, they’ve got no idea what working is. It’s almost alien to some people.

FR: I think Theresa May probably does, because she was brought up as a vicar’s daughter. She must have mixed with ordinary people.

FR: I think she's forgotten that, to be honest.

I: I know that that’s your perspective. You see that and that’s important, it’s a part of who she is and her value system.

MR: Can I say one more thing, but I want to say that it applies to all three of them, but I suspect it’s more with Corbyn. They do not grasp yet, the dangerous impact that is coming our way because of our own numbers, human numbers.

FR: I agree with you.

MR: The planet stays the same size, and in some ways it’s gets smaller, because the land mass essentially is getting smaller, although there is some evidence to the contrary, which I don't understand. But the soil is getting increasingly poor, and there's nice jargon for it, which I've forgotten, and our ability to grow more food each year, which we still have, is plateauing, and meanwhile the population of the world is 10,000 more every hour. We're getting thousands more every hour on this planet.

FR: I didn’t know that fact.

MR: One more every minute in this country. And we’re simply heading towards in two fresh generations you're going to look up a tree, the historical tree, and ask

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what were those people doing? Because now there's seven and a half billion, by then there’ll be something like nine and a half billion or 10, or whatever it’s projected to be, and it could be even worse…I say worse, but more, and they will be scratching around for a living. And if you’re a politician wanting to be Prime Minister or run as a senior member of a government in this country, then you could at least start looking at this country that already imports lots of its food, not just luxury food but essential food. If the people abroad who are sending it to us say "no thanks; we’ll have it ourselves", which they would be entitled to, we’d be in an awful mess.

FR: You’re right

MR: And we will be, even if you're distributing food uniformly, which you can’t do anyway because it's impractical, but there's a real nightmare coming and that’s a major train crash.

FR: I can remember reading years ago, there was this study with rats and they showed that when you got overcrowding of rats they started getting violent. Well, I think we’re seeing that in the world. You don’t just think of your own country now, the whole world is packed full, as you say, of people. You can get to the other side of the world in just hours, so we feel more and more crowded and trapped and people are becoming more violent. And then, part of this increasing population is the fact that we’re all living longer and we all have to be looked after. So this is to do with social care. It’s no good saying the Government should pay for it. The Government has no money, it’s all taxpayers' money and most of that tax comes from the working people. So the young are expected to pay their student debts, are then supposed to pay for mortgages, they’re supposed to pay for their pensions and they’re supposed to pay for social care. And it’s getting to the stage where in some countries it’s almost one to one, you know, one working person to one who needs some kind of support.

FR: But they’ve known about this. The only thing I would say about this is this is poor planning. They’ve known about it for decades.

FR: Yeah, but nobody will do anything about it.

FR: Well, they should have done.

FR: And they won’t face up to it. They won’t tell the population, look, this can’t go on, we have to do something different about it. They just hope that nobody is going to notice.

FR: Not take your house, though. I’ve worked for nearly 50 years. I entered into a contract when I was 16, I paid my tax, my national insurance for all that time. Okay, I knew it wasn’t my own personal little pot, but what I thought, because that was the contract I entered into, was when I got to retirement age I would get

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some kind of pension. And if, at some stage in the future, I needed some care or help I would be looked after. I do understand what you’re saying, but I bitterly, I do bitterly resent this, the system that has been suggested is not a fair system. I can deal with fair play but I can’t deal with what’s been suggested now, because it will mean that you could have a person in the next road who is renting a house, perhaps they’ve always rented, that’s up to them, they will still get it free. To me, it feels like a punishment, you know. If you’ve grafted hard for nearly 50 years and you’ve got a house, and not a big house, by any means, and they want to take it all. No, I don't think so. I’d rather put myself down; that’s how strongly I feel about it.

FR: One of the problems is when they first brought in pensions and whatever a lot of men died after a year. They retired then one year later they were dead. Now we’re living like 30 even 40 years beyond.

FR: But they are gradually adjusting by putting the pension age up. I mean, that has sort of started.

I: Shall we get back to Time Farron? [34:14 laughter, chatting]

MR: If I don’t say something now I will burst. Can I say it now? We’ve been warned about the population, even as long ago as Aristotle. He literally said something about it. Ben Mathis said it, he got lots of stick just because he got the timing wrong, because he was right. Martin Luther King said it and got an award for it from the National Planned Parenthood Association in America, and then his speech, which was done by his wife, because he was somewhere else, probably with a girlfriend, he said "you have got to match your resources; your family are your have resources," and that we had the means then to 34:57. He said "they must tell it", and of course David Attenborough and Christopher Packard and so on have said it since. And very important, I think, is that a huge amount of our human effort, our human resources, our labour, goes into building houses and the rest of infrastructure and then we pay mortgages. If we had a level population we wouldn’t need mortgages. We wouldn’t need to be saying how many houses do we need to build because we'd have a steady population. It’s not generating and good for the economy to build houses, and yet everybody believes that it is. It’s actually a negative drain on everybody.

FR: So, we want to get round to Tim Farron! You probably want the three of us to shut up so we can talk about Tim Farron.

I: Not at all. These are things that we were going to ask you anyway, and there may be a little bit of repetition because you already covered it, which is why I didn’t interrupt, because I was going, "yeah, they’re answering the questions." But just to cover Tim Farron. Any positives? No? Any neutrals?

MR: Is daft a neutral? [laughing]

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FR: I would treat that as a negative.

I: Negatives then?

MR: Well, daft.

FR: I just put "boring" and "little personality", to the point where if he says something you take no notice because you think it’s not worth listening to.

FR: I put "irrelevant and out of touch with a lot of the general population." I mean, some of their policies you just…

FR: And they want another referendum!

FR: Yeah, I’ve put here "obsessional about certain topics" and that is the one I distinctly about. I think Tim Farron and his party have not accepted at all the outcome of that referendum. They just see it as some sort of irrelevance and at some point they can just steer us back into where they want to be. And he wonders why they have haemorrhaged seats. And that’s the other thing about Tim, wouldn’t you think that if, after all that’s happened, say, with Jeremy Corbyn, they should have been the benefactors of what’s happened. But they haven’t been, have they? They’ve lost even more seats.

I: In a week to 10 days you guys will be casting your vote in your constituency, you’re going to be heading to the polling place. What’s going to be on your mind when you put your tick down to select the party that you’re going to be supporting?

MR: For me, the most important thing is which vote is most likely to bring about Brexit without it being scuppered by those so and sos that want to scupper it and who don’t care about democracy, but preach democracy every day of their lives, but don’t respect that referendum.

I: Who is leading…is anyone leading in your vote? Who do you intend to vote for?

MR: It will be Tory, it will be [name not clear]. I think we owe a lot to UKip for bringing us to this state. I’m sure it’s the right thing and it's the right thing for every other European country to 38:42 the EU. So much so that my car is sporting the registration UK 04 BRX. Yes, UK for BREXIT. That’s my registration number.

FR: Did you get that especially?

MR: Yeah.

FR: Gosh!

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I: So right now May, for whatever else, she’s the person you have the most confidence in, in terms of getting a good negotiation?

MR: Yes

FR: Well, I’ve already voted, because I had a postal vote.

I: Oh excellent. Do you mind sharing?

FR: Well, it was Theresa May because, as Carter said, she’s the best person to get us through Brexit with the best deal. I think she’s the person who is going to keep us safe, because she was a jolly good home secretary. And I think Conservatives traditionally have always been best at getting the economy into a good state, instead of just spending it all.

I: How about you Taylor, what’s on your mind this time around?

FR: I’m going to find it quite difficult actually. I don’t really like any of the three main parties. I’ve struggled with this, because I always believe that you should vote, particularly as a female, because I think Emily Pankhurst and all that happened to ensure that we do have a vote. I don’t really want to spoil my ballot paper, I think that’s a bit of a waste of time.

So, I want to leave Europe, passionately, so I suppose, if I’m not going to vote for any of the big three, it’s probably going to have to be UKip, simply because they are a Brexit party. But, I would add that I don’t particularly like any of their manifesto, so I’m not voting for them because I'm staunchly in favour of them, it’s just that I don’t like the three main parties.

I: So you feel that by voting for UKip it’s going to be putting a harder Brexit pressure?

FR: Yes, hopefully; yes it will, hopefully, although I think their job is done. I think Nigel Farage, I know some people hate him, he will obviously go down in history, and, for me, it was just a landmark moment last year. I just couldn’t tell you how happy I was. I’d come downstairs and thought... I didn’t stay up all night, can’t be bothered with that sort of stuff, switched on the radio and I thought “what? We're leaving?”

FR: I couldn’t believe it.

FR: No, I couldn’t, and I thought “wow, we’re leaving”, because I honestly thought it was going to be more of the same. And I think we owe it to Nigel Farage. But I don’t think UKip has been the party it was with him in charge, because he was UKip, really

FR: Yeah

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FR: And since he’s gone it’s just a bit flat.

MR: It's not quite gone, there's still an MEP in 42:02; but otherwise it's gone.

FR: It’s just a pity that, I don’t know what it is, but no one will offer him a role. And yet I think he could be really good, pretty useful.

FR: He's rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way.

FR: But sometimes you have to be big enough to reach your hand out and say "do you know what? I think this person could be really useful for us. Why don’t we use him?" I mean, he’s been over there for goodness knows how many years. He knows the workings of that Parliament inside out. He’s not frightened to speak his mind. Yep, could have been very useful.

FR: He’s a bit of a maverick.

FR: Yes, he is.

FR: He was on Piers Morgan and he was great, much better than I ever thought he was.

FR: I find he’s got a…although we shouldn’t be talking about Nigel Farage… he’s got something that a lot of politicians lack, and that’s a personality

FR: Yes.

FR: So many of them, they don’t seem to have a personality.

FR: And you know exactly what he believes, and he fights for it.

FR: And he says it and he doesn’t care if anybody like it or doesn’t. So maybe it won’t be such a bad thing.

MR: He's putting himself at quite a lot of risk. He could have taken the nuts off his wheel of his car to try and keep…[group talking]

I: And that plane he got in a couple of years ago, he nearly killed himself. He survived that as well.

FR: He has a bit of Teflon about him, doesn’t he, really. He’s indestructible.

I: Can I just ask a follow up question, Taylor, because you said that you were thinking about voting for UKip and the reasons, but you weren’t quite happy with the manifesto. I was waiting for a break in the conversation to try and probe you about what exactly is it about the manifesto that has worried you or concerned you?

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FR: Parts of it were just too extreme. If you want to pull out a single thing, things like banning the burka. I hate the burqa with a passion. I don't think it belongs on the streets of England. If people choose to wear it in their own home or when they are out visiting family and friends, that’s fine, but not on the streets. But I still can’t think to myself that the correct way to go about this is to ban it. If you look at the countries that have banned it and they still have terrorist threats, terrorist attacks. I mean France I’m thinking of, there.

And this ridiculous thing about the immigration policy, one in, one out. I mean, what’s he talking about? How can he do that? It’s just nonsense isn’t it, really; you can’t do it.

FR: You can’t control it.

FR: You can’t control that, and say, look, there’s somebody standing here. We’ll we’ve had somebody just come into England so this person got to… To me, it wasn’t sensible, it wasn’t a sensible policy.

I: Thank you, I was just curious.

FR: Yeah, I don’t think he thought it through.

I: So, one of the things obviously that happened, that nobody expected, was the bombing in Manchester. And I don’t want to politicise the event but obviously there have been a lot of things that have come out since. And we were just wondering in terms of what’s happened subsequent to Manchester and if you guys think that’s had an effect on the campaign, the election. Any perceptions, is it something that's coming up in your mind as you’re following the news and paying attention to the debates. As it’s a terrorist attack right before an election it obviously is going to draw attention to certain issues at that time.

FR: My immediate feeling was that it would help Theresa May’s campaign, because you know, having been home secretary and dealt with all the terrorist problems. After the first few days everybody more or less to have ignored it. It doesn’t seem to be coming in to what’s going on with the campaigning at all.

FR: I don’t know. I’ve heard a bit. I mean, obviously we’re at extreme ends, because I know you’re in favour of Theresa May and I clearly don’t like her, but the only thing I would say, and I’ve heard this quite a bit, is that, if you like, on her watch, police numbers have been cut drastically, [border ??] force has been cut drastically, the army has been cut drastically, you could even go and say prisons, because a lot of radicalisation, so I understand, happens in prisons. And it all happened on what I call "her watch". So, when people say "oh the Tories are the people to keep you safe", I think "well how? To me, they haven’t demonstrated that in previous years."

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FR: Yeah, my grandson’s a policeman in the MET and he moans like anything about Theresa May, because they cut the numbers she's cut the overtime, she’s cut the pay, she's cut the pensions.

FR: And why would you want to do that?

FR: I don’t know.

FR: A lot of people have strong views about the police and some people don’t like them. But, whatever you think about them, good, bad or indifferent, I wouldn’t want to put that uniform on and go out on the streets now, because you don’t know whether you’re going to go back at night.

FR: You take your life in your hands all the time.

FR: There again, I would say the Tory party are not the party for the public sector. And I think there is a lot of waste in the public sector. I’m not saying it should be allowed to go rampant, as probably it did under the Labour party, but I think there has to be a good half way, and I don’t think we’ve had it. So for me, the terrorist attack, and I wouldn’t criticise MI5, because I think they’re brilliant, I don’t know how many people they’ve got working in it but when you look at the amount of attacks that they have actually prevented, we don’t know what pressure they were under. Okay, this guy slipped under the radar but, you know.

FR: They’ve got literally thousands of people to investigate all the time

FR: Exactly.

FR: They have to choose

FR: Yeah, of course they do.

FR: They can’t investigate all of them.

FR: But then, you see, what I heard was, and I’m sorry if I’m going on a bit. Talking about Moss Side in Manchester, which is a very rough part, I’ve been to Moss Side so I know what that’s like, as part of the police cuts, the community bobby that used to walk around has all but vanished. And I can’t remember the guy’s name who used to do the community beat there, but he’s written quite a good piece, evidently, about his role and about the fact that it no longer exists. And when he was actually up there and walking around, you know, he was the ears, if you like, of the place, not just him, obviously, there was somebody else working with him, and maybe if you had more bobbies on the beat some of these terrorists, like what happened recently, might not have happened. Because would he have picked up something? Would someone have felt able, because he was known, to come up to him and just have a quiet word with him?

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I: Thank you Taylor, I appreciate it.

MR: It triggers me to talk about austerity, because we talk more about austerity and the conversion from spending too much on 49:47. But arguably, all governments have been spending too much for too long. And families tend to try and spend what they can and try to save something, but if you actually spend less than your income then arguably that’s austerity. And ?? austerity since two elections ago

I: 2008, after the crisis.

MR: Well, we’ve been spending more than our income and yet we call it austerity, and I can’t get my head around that, because if that's austerity what would it be if we actually did spend less than our income? Double austerity? Or triple? What would you call it?

FR: Saving. Living within your income.

MR: I was disappointed that every government, including Tory governments, have spent more than the national income, and then when somebody said they were going to address it, I said “hang on a sec”. But then they said they were going to do it... I don't know, it seemed very wrong. This was a debt, an excess ...

FR: Oh, this was the George Osborne thing.

MR: Yeah, it was right to address it but it took a century perhaps to get to the financial state of deficit and debt that we had. Why did they think they were going to do it in five or ten years to sort it out? There’s no way.

FR: And you can’t stop people spending money. They’re allowed to borrow, and they borrow more and more, so we have all these imports coming in and then the country gets into debt. I mean, how can you stop them?

FR: But can I say something? Why do you think governments are committed to this foreign aid budget and the actual percentage? Do you think it’s because we truly do care about population around the world or do you think there is something else behind it? Because I don’t understand it. You’ve just said what you said, and I can understand that, but why do you keep on with something which, to my mind, isn’t necessary? I’m not saying don’t send anything but why do you have to have that 0.7%?

FR: It’s all to do with G8, isn’t it. They’ve agreed how much each country, what percentage everybody should give, but only Britain really sticks to it.

FR: But Theresa May didn’t have to commit to that, did she? I mean, this is something she’s committed to in her election manifesto. She could have changed it but she’s chosen not to. Why, when we’re still in austerity, as such.

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MR: 0.7% of one's gross domestic product could be quite handy for paying off your debt.

FR: Exactly, it’s a few billion. I’ve always thought there has to be something behind all this that none of us are particularly privy to and we don’t understand. Because, otherwise, why would you do it? It’s such common sense not to do it.

MR: I know. And I think possibly the answer is that the outcry around the world about that nasty old country, first they colonised us and now they won’t give us .7 of a percent, or whatever. I’m not going to start talking about colonisation, because I think there’s another side to colonisation and it did a lot of good for the world, presumably. It helped people to exploit their resources and 53:27. But, there would be such an outcry if you took away that .7%.

FR: But the other countries aren’t bothered, are they?

FR: I think they’ve all agreed to that.

FR: But most of them don’t bother doing it.

.FR: I mean, Germany pay a very low percentage, France pay a low percentage. [all talking]

MR: But none of them actually say "we are not going to pay it!" because if they said we're not going to pay it, it would be bad news.

FR: And it’s the same with NATO, Donald Trump is moaning that most countries are not paying their contribution.

FR: And good for him. Why should the US pay for everything?

FR: And us.

FR: Yes, and us. I thought that was quite refreshing.

MR: And it’s my cue to say that the most humane thing, and many people would think this is a diabolical thing to say, but I believe really the most humane way to use foreign aid is to teach people, educate them and give them facilities and family planning. You’ve got about a billion people on this planet now that are hungry every day, another billion that are nearly hungry every day, and there’s one billion more every 12 years. How is that sensible?

FR: When we were young, in India, they used to give men transistor radios if they'd agree to get a vasectomy, didn’t they, to keep the population down.

MR: But people are still making 54:52, therefore we must increase the population.

FR: Apparently if you educate women, they don’t have so many children, so that’s another thing to do. But in so many underdeveloped countries women are

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considered such absolute second-class citizens that even if they’ve got the money and facilities they still wouldn’t educate the girls. Like the Taliban.

I: This has been amazing. Say more, say more. What else? [laughing]

FR: We didn’t just sort of rabbit on, didn’t we? [laughing].

I: That’s kind of what a focus group is for. The reason we get people to talk in turn is if we feel the conversation is not going anywhere or if we to get to things, but you have naturally covered the kinds of things that we were talking about, or were intending to talk about anyway.

FR: I think because we have such different views, that’s probably helped.

FR: That’s what I was going to say. We’ve got such different views and yet, amazingly, we agree about ever such a lot of things.

FR: Yes, we do. I think it’s down to personality, isn’t it?

I: Such lovely people, we can agree to disagree and then realise, oh, actually, we do agree. This has been fantastic. We hope, if you enjoyed this, you will come back for the post-election. I mean, you’ve already done your postal vote but once the election result is announced we would be very interested on your take on…do you think Brexit will be a harder thing? Do you feel confident in where the government is going? The other things that have come up since then.

I think the date is the Sunday after this one. I think it’s the 11th, but we’ll be in touch. And for whatever reason you can’t make it that day, you could do a telephone interview as well. We have the ability to do a recording. Basically it would be all the same, complete confidentiality but with a phone recording instead.

And just thank you, especially to our returners, for coming back from 2015, because hearing how your perception of politics changes from election to election is really interesting. And it was lovely to hear your perspective. It was really great.

FR: And we’re still all alive I suppose really! [laughing]

I: Every year, one more year.

FR: Despite the best efforts of the government! You’ll be surprised to hear there will be holding centres soon that we go in and disappear!

MR: Did you know there’s good news today? Well, some people will be calling it bad news. The good news is that the increase in life expectancy looks as if it’s stalled and it's going to plateau.

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FR: Thank god for that.

MR: Isn’t that a good thing, because I don’t want to live with dementia. [all talking]

FR: You know what they should have in the UK? They should have a living will. Whilst you’re of sound mind you should be able to make that decision, that if you get to that stage…I was in the healthcare profession so I saw a lot of dementia. It is dreadful.

FR: They should bring in euthanasia. Just about everybody who's old wants euthanasia, and I don’t know why they don’t do it.

MR: Or to have the option

I: I would certainly prefer to go out on my own terms and be able to say goodbye to people…

FR: When there’s no hope and you’re in pain and you’re totally incapacitated, what is the point? And, you know, when my husband was dying one of the nurses said you would have a cat put down out of kindness, so why can’t we do that with people?

I: If you’ve said your goodbyes and it’s just stretching things out because the doctors won’t take that next step… and sometimes, as you say, it’s knowing it’s professional and it’s going to happen safely and it’s going to go all right and you can say your goodbyes then just let go. [all talking]

FR: I don’t want to sell my house but also I wouldn’t want to be in a home and be dribbling and incontinent.

FR: And using up all the value of your home in care that you didn’t even want.

FR: I don’t want to do that.

MR: Well, a steady state population and we won’t have to have mortgages and we won’t have to bother having to pay for our own care.

FR: And we won’t have more cars on the road, because that will stabilise as well.

End of recording

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