An ordinary hope? How everyday life is shaping the general election

Michael Parkinson was once asked to appear on the genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are, but to his great disappointment (it turns out the late great master of the chat was quite the fan), he got a late-night call from the producers.  

“They phoned to apologise,” he recalled. "My family story was so boring they had to cancel the entire project. I was gutted.” The late great Yorkshireman’s ancestors were just too ordinary. Generation after generation had been born, lived, and died in the same patch of god’s own country. They had almost entirely, been coal miners, their nights spent scrubbing muck from day in the pit, with occasional evenings in the local pub.  

And yet, these ordinary lives had no lesser impact on Parkinson. They were what shaped him and his work and made him into the man he became.  

This week, we’ve heard political leaders seek to tell their own stories through the lives of those they have known and those they have loved. Each, in their way, has sought to define their life not as exceptional but as ordinary.   

This is, of course, the case for most Brits; our ancestors grew up in the neighbourhoods or small towns we’ve grown up in, with their lives only paused or altered by the call of history. The week's D-Day commemorations a reminder of those very ordinary men and women who for a moment were called to extraordinary acts of service. 

 We should perhaps not be surprised that Keir Starmer’s invocation of his father, the toolmaker, was shown to resonate with the public. We saw this in our report The Respect Agenda with More in Common. The public are clear that respect for ordinary people and their lives was central to the perceptions of political leaders.  

And we should view it as more than simply a rhetorical device or a clever campaigning tool. It is a signal of the political thinking behind the project. After all, governing strategies emerge from the chapters of political campaigns.  

 In the opening chapters of his book on Keir Starmer, Tom Baldwin notes that so many previous political leaders have been marked by their extraordinary heritage or background. But as Baldwin makes clear Keir Starmer’s background is marked by its ordinariness.

“Keir Starmer's immediate ancestors, by contrast [to previous political leaders], generally worked with their hands for other people. They were farm labourers, millers, servants and laundresses in a slightly ramshackle and chaotic extended family, most of whom seemed to live close to where he grew up on the Surrey-Kent border. And, far from obsessing about his genealogy or trying to trace his pedigree back through the generations, he squints with the mental effort of remembering the names of people who left few written records behind.” 

It’s not just Keir Starmer. Ed Davey has released a striking video in which he speaks of the everyday challenges of caring for his severely disabled son. Davey stresses that his experience as a carer is shared by millions of families. And yet, what we can see from his campaign words is a sense that in the act of care, we find an extraordinary possibility in the ordinary.  

And in this week’s leaders' debates, we heard Rishi Sunak - who often seems to avoid references to his business career - invoke his parent’s story of migration and hard work in the community pharmacy. With faint echoes of an earlier Conservative leader, that grocer’s daughter, today’s Prime Minister spoke of the inspiration from his parent's ordinary tale of hard work. 

In their ways, each leader is tapping into a feeling that runs through us all—an oh-so-ordinary feeling that has too often been ignored for the flashy and grand. The chance to take a summer trip to the Lake District or spend time with those we care for. The knowledge that no matter your job, you’ll be respected – be it a toolmaker or lawyer.  

This is a theme we’ve picked up in our work here at the UCL Policy Lab, which we will continue to explore with More in Common over the election in weekly polling and analysis. It will be built on the idea of ordinary hope, previously explored in a joint publication by the UCL Policy Lab and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for the Ordinary Hope Project. A selection of essays from prominent figures set out how politics can tackle Britain’s biggest challenges by respecting ordinary people and drawing on the untapped strengths of communities across the country. 

These ideas go beyond politics; they go to who we are as communities and individuals and have the potential to shape the world around us.