Local election fever grips the UK … er, really?
A Dutch anthropologist and former war reporter discovers what – if anything – Britons think of the local elections This mission is 10 minutes old when things stop looking good. I have just arrived in the northern Scottish town of Wick en route to John O'Groats. It's cold with rain on the way, and a uniformed woman in her 20s confirms the airline has lost my bag, with my coat in it.
What am I doing here? Born and raised in the Netherlands, I worked as a Middle East correspondent before moving to London last summer to interview bankers about their lives. I had hardly been out of the London bubble, so why not send the Dutch guy across Great Britain to sample opinions about the forthcoming local elections?
Speaking of which, as we fill out the forms, what does the uniformed woman think of them? She giggles politely. "Are there elections? I am not interested. I don't understand. Nothing much will change, either way."
That's the first opinion, freshly sampled, and the second comes from the cab driver on our way to Tesco for a new coat: "This is like Syria, Afghanistan. Scottish people are fighting for their freedom, democracy. If the English keep taking from us, there'll be a rebellion."
He says this without irony. It's a quiet Sunday evening and Wick seems deserted. This used to be a thriving fishing port with yearly Herring Queen pageants and even a nickname for its staple fish: "silver darling". It's still a sizeable town of about 8,000 but the central Haldanes supermarket is boarded up, and one church has a "for sale" sign on the door.
A cautious hypothesis is forming: people don't seem to care a great deal about the elections. There are only a handful of signs, all from the Scottish National party. "Release our potential", one says, which seems a clever slogan; essentially a promise to promise something. Meanwhile, the weekly John O'Groat Journal opens with "Far North superbug cases on the rise", plus a "Banksy-style work" appearing in neighbouring Thurso and "health budget overspending of £780k".
The waiter in the local Indian restaurant is an Englishman from Manchester, of Bangladeshi heritage. Trained as a designer, he has just taken a job here, unable to find anything back home. "This place is so different," he says. "It's calm, it's clean. People leave their doors open. Their cars ... You do that in Manchester, five minutes, your car's gone." He will vote online – Labour, as he believes they are better for education.
The door to my bed and breakfast is indeed unlocked. The elderly landlady thinks the elections are not on people's minds yet. Her biggest issue is jobs for younger people, land and houses gobbled up by rich English retirees being another. She "kind of likes Campbell, or Cameron, what's his name? You see they're trying to trip him up, and sometimes he says good things. Then again, I listen to a politician and think, yes, that makes sense. I listen to the next one, again I think, yes, he is right."
The next morning my driver to John O'Groats explains why there are so few signs. Supporters for Labour, SNP and independents are taking down each other's signs as soon as they go up. He chuckles, then talks about fishermen working as cleaners on oil rigs. That's a "young man's job". He chuckles again.
John O'Groats is the furthest northern settlement on the mainland, and there is a tourism office run by a kind man called Walter Mowat. If he is in any way surprised I did not know John O'Groats was named after the Dutchman Jan de Groot five centuries ago, he hides it well.
His brother Bill is standing as an independent. Over the phone he says "the lifeblood is seeping out of the rural areas". He expects a low turnout. Local and parliamentary elections are "decoupled" this year, and the voting system is "so complex you need a specialist computer programme to find the winners".
The Highlands used to have several councils, each with a few seats. Today there is one Highland council, elected through proportional representation and covering a huge area. "Before the changes you'd have about 3,000 houses to canvass," says Bill. "That was doable, and you got a good sense of people's minds. Now, there are 11,000 houses spread over long distances. You end up sending leaflets." It seems that while power has been devolved from London to Edinburgh, on the hyper-local level power is becoming more centralised.
Walter's son runs the local hotel, inevitably called Seaview. He seems a good-humoured chap. It's 11.30am and his guests are drinking pints. "I always vote, even in European elections. Most people don't. It doesn't come up in the pub. Except when there's a candidate here we can wind up, like my uncle Bill." He remembers how in the 80s he used to get a day off school: "They needed the building for the elections, as the only public place in the area."
Walter says: "This used to be a Tory-free zone. With proportional representation they may now get a seat."
And so I head south. My Dutch brain is used to small countries with fast trains, but this is a big country with slow trains.
Follow Joris at #ukelectiontrail on Twitter with @GdnPolitics, and at guardian.co.uk/politics
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