“Shambles, absolute shambles,” one Barbican estate voter told City Matters after casting her ballot for last Thursday’s general election.
“I’m not young any longer and I have never known such an inconclusive election.”
As City residents fronted up to polling stations around the Square Mile to decide the country’s fate, many were less than pleased with the run of events since the snap election was called in mid-April, with a variety of issues dominating discussion.
“I had great difficulty in deciding who to vote for and I finally decided to vote Labour, partly because I’m a member of the Labour party,” said Sheila Hiller, 72.
“It was really the situation about the cuts, schools, the NHS that was more important to me now than worrying about Brexit.”
The remain stronghold, which voted 75% in favour of staying in the European Union last June, returned to the ballot boxes less than a year later to re-elect longstanding Conservative Mark Field though with a far narrower margin than in 2015.
The Tory remainer may have campaigned on a pro-EU platform but some voters questioned his decision to trigger Article 50.
UCL researcher Kell Jones, 47, said: “He makes a big thing about representing his constituents but when it comes to something really important he didn’t, so you can probably guess I didn’t vote for him.”
One disgruntled civil servant described Brexit as a “complete own goal” and registered her frustration by voting Liberal Democrats as her only option on the matter.
Labour voter Philip Jeremy, 56, said he’d rather have put none of the above on his ballot paper but there was no room, and in the end tackling terrorism played a part in his decision-making.
The IT contractor said: “We have an incompetent PM who was home secretary and let us down on security matters on three of the last four, five attacks when they should have been on the watch.
“I wish we didn’t have any of them,” he said, followed by an eerily astute prediction:
“Hopefully May won’t get the majority she wants and it may change her — but then I’m scared it could be Boris Johnson.”
On the other side of the coin, anti-terrorism for Fin Gray was exactly the reason he decided to give his vote to Theresa May, in light of the increasing number of attacks in the UK.
Mr Gray, 57, said: “I couldn’t in all conscience even dream of Jeremy Corbyn leading this country; I’d be so scared because he’s got such a poor view of defence and anti-terrorism.
“I want to see anti-terrorism really bumped up, see more presence, more arrests made, I’m in favour of the shoot to kill policy, I know Jeremy Corbyn isn’t.
“I’ve got no respect for any of the leaders but it had to come down to one.”
