The Mancunian Way: 'I’m not giving them 30 seconds of my time’

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Change. It’s Sir Keir Starmer’s favourite word as he bids to become the first Labour Prime Minister in 14 years. But in Greater Manchester’s most politically disillusioned area plenty of voters couldn’t care less about next month’s General Election.

Or perhaps more pointedly, regardless of the result they don’t believe anything will actually change. “I wouldn’t give politicians 30 seconds of my time to queue up and vote,” says Paul, a stall-holder on Harpurhey market. “They don’t want us at the bottom getting anywhere near them at the top.” At the last election Blackley and Broughton, the constituency of which Harpurhey is a part, had a turn-out of just 52.2 per cent - the lowest in Greater Manchester and the fifth lowest in the country.

And if fellow market trader Jacqueline Davies is anything to go by, it looks unlikely to be much higher this time around. “I don’t vote, they don’t come up with anything for the people that need their help the most,” she said when asked whether the election could change the fortunes of the area. “You see the people here begging for things to be cheaper when it’s already pretty cheap. "They have such expensive rents that they have nothing left for anything else.

Housing needs to be sorted as these rents are ridiculous.” It is easy to see why voters here may feel nothing will change, because change in politics is something they’ve not seen here since 1964, when Labour were voted in.