Across Britain, the impact of austerity has reached breaking point, but few believe Labour will turn things around

There were about 30 people standing outside Birmingham Central Mosque, and they formed as diverse a crowd as the city’s population. It was food bank day: inside a portable building in the car park, a team of four spirited women were efficiently sorting through crates of groceries and handing those who had finally reached the front of the line what they needed.

As they did their work, we had a snatched conversation. “The queues are getting longer,” one of them said.

Extreme class privilege informed the Tories’ worst decisions. This Labour cabinet would represent something very different

However airless and dull this election campaign has been, one thing remains incontestable: that, unless something very strange happens, we are about to reach the end of a long political era. The years between 2010 and 2024 will be seen as a clearly defined time – of austerity, Brexit, the post-2016 collapse of the Tory party into internal strife … and, underneath it all, a United Kingdom that will end its latest blue period in an immeasurably worse state than when the whole mess started.

One crucial part of the story, however, might be underplayed. Partly because so many powerful British people come from backgrounds characterised by wealth, privilege and private education, emphasising the importance of such things is still often seen as impolite. But if we are going to understand what has happened to us, how can that subject be avoided?

In the third episode of a new series of Anywhere but Westminster, John Harris and John Domokos travel around the West Midlands, and find a fascinating political mixture: hesitant Labour voters, a new crop of independents focused on Palestine and local cuts  – and, amid deep social problems, lots of people who think the election hardly matters. Here, it seems, is the reality that all those opinion polls get nowhere near

• Why are the Tories collapsing? These true-blue towns know the answers - video

• This Labour city backed Brexit and went Tory: what did it get in return? - video

In the latest episode of Anywhere but Westminster, John Harris and John Domokos go to Woking, Guildford and Aldershot. Most of England's south-east used to be loyally Conservative - now, however, people in the "blue wall" are struggling, cuts are biting, and Toryism today is leaving younger voters behind.

In the first video of a new series of Anywhere but Westminster, John Harris and John Domokos revisit Stoke-on-Trent, the once-loyal Labour city that went totally Tory in 2019. Has 'levelling up' money made up for swingeing local cuts? Will Labour win again? And what do people working hard to turn the place around think  about the future?