This election is about the city – not Brexit

“Issues? Issues? We don’t want any issues, we’re ahead in the polls. We want to stir up the apathy!” That was Paul Flynn’s jokey response to my question to him about the key challenges facing Newport West ahead of the 2001 General Election.

As a young volunteer on the campaign I had been asked by the Labour Party to phone MPs to ask about hot topics locally, so we could brief visiting Cabinet members and suchlike.

It was typical of Paul that he took the time to give me the information I needed, but also to crack a few jokes along the way. Not all politicians take that trouble with young volunteers.

As it transpired, he was right on all counts.

Labour stayed ahead in the polls and romped home to very straightforward victory, in Newport and in the UK. And all the issues he mentioned in Newport West – most notably about jobs and the steelworks – were the things people wanted to talk about.

It is difficult to believe that a time of relative political normality, such as the 2001 election, ever really existed. But, looking forward to the Newport West by-election later this week, I’d contend there are some things that have not changed when it comes to our politics. For example, no matter how often the Westminster commentariat tries to explain by-election campaigns through the prism of national politics, it rarely works like that. My experience has always been that by-elections follow their own particular rhythm, quite far away from the agenda being set in London.

When I asked Professor Roger Awan-Scully of Cardiff University whether these political instincts are borne out by research into historic by-election results he said that whilst findings did show a familiar pattern, they generally don’t give you much of an idea of what to expect in a General Election. It is mostly about swings against governing parties, which do get bigger when the party in Government is struggling. Though he added:

Those findings apply to normal politics, which appears now to only exist in an alternative, parallel universe.

Quite.

It is the singular and very particular world of a by-election campaign that explains why the result on Thursday won’t tell us much, or anything at all, about what people think about our increasingly bizarre attempts to leave the EU.

A recent well-informed piece in the Economist seemed to grasp this, but Politics Home gave the majority press-pack opinion when they confidently predicted that the election would be dominated by Brexit.

They’re missing the point.

Brexit is the backdrop, and the daily confusion, cacophony and calamity surrounding that debate might depress turnout (already a big concern) – as people think “a plague on all their houses”. But, Brexit isn’t a doorstep issue for most voters.

It is with good reason that local issues dominate the pitch from both Welsh Labour and the Tories – the only two parties with any realistic chance of winning. Welsh Labour is emphasising messages on jobs and crime, and will benefit from the years of dedicated constituency work by the late Paul Flynn. The Tories are going uber-local with their campaign, targeting the council record, shrinking bins and limited car parking.

There’s another part to a by-election story though, and that is the unparalleled opportunity for the voters of Newport to get their voices heard on a national platform – and to make their demands clear through the representative they choose. For example, it seems that whoever wins on Thursday, you will have a vocal supporter of the M4 relief road being built.

“Build the road and make Cardiff pay for it.”

That is an understandable battle cry for people living at the sharp end of a crumbling infrastructure, who can feel that their lived experiences are sometimes secondary to political debate.

You can argue that as a devolved matter, the debate about the M4 has no place in this campaign, but that is to ignore the simple truth of every election. Voters decide what the issues are. Not the media, or the political parties. That Welsh Labour and the Tories know they have to talk about the road, and homelessness, and city centre regeneration – but not Brexit – reflects the nature of the conversations campaigners are having on the doorstep.

There is nothing quite like a by-election, for voters and for the political parties too. You are focusing a huge level of staffing, spend and other resource just on one seat, and that takes a massive amount of skill to get right. For the people working on the campaigns, by-elections are all-consuming. Staffers and volunteers will be working around the clock. New friendships will be made, new skills and techniques learned and honed.

Voters find themselves in the epicentre of a political wrestling match, with Michael Crick often spotted stalking down a terrace after some unsuspecting local candidate. There are a thousand and one things that make these campaigns interesting and different and worthy of much more attention.

But rarely, so very rarely, do the results tell us anything at all about the national mood.