'I've always been disappointed': Apathy and despair on the leafy streets of south Manchester

“I have always been disappointed in everything I have voted for. I have either lost or it's not been what I expected,” Ed Knowles says.

He’s stopped to chat about the upcoming general election on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury, one of the four town centres in his Manchester Withington constituency. But the 31-year-old optician is not explaining why he’s so apathetic that he can no longer bear to head to the ballot box.

He’s explaining why, as usual, he’ll vote Labour in July.

READ MORE: Bizarre moment people began DANCING on top of cars on busy Manchester road

“I think I have always voted Labour and as much as I don’t agree with what they are saying, I think we need some stability that’s not the Tories,” he says. But he’s not enamoured with Keir Starmer, because Ed believes he’s ‘gone back on things he’s said’.

That means he’s now in a wait-and-see position. For Ed, ideally Labour will win the election and shift leftwards from the campaign rhetoric, but that’s a hope rather than an expectation.

And after a pause, he explains: “I have always been disappointed in everything I have voted for. I have either lost or it’s not been what I expected.”

This week, the Manchester Evening News spoke to more than a dozen voters in the area to see where the feeling is at five weeks from polling day. And Ed isn’t alone in his firm support for a Labour Party he’s not convinced by in the Withington constituency.

This constituency — which also includes Chorlton and West Didsbury — was the last Manchester seat the Conservatives won, holding it until 1987. Since then, it’s flipped between Labour and the Lib Dems.

But the Lib Dems last had the MP here in 2015, when current Councillor John Leech lost out to Labour’s Jeff Smith, the current MP