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Nicola Hornsby and Crispin Hoult with their goats on Achray farm. ‘Broadband is the first step to rebuilding the community, he says. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Stirling voters: ‘Local jobs and housing are what matter to us’

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Nicola Hornsby and Crispin Hoult with their goats on Achray farm. ‘Broadband is the first step to rebuilding the community, he says. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

In this key marginal seat, voters are frustrated by parties focusing on Brexit and Scottish independence

On a blustery hillside above Achray farm in Brig o’Turk, a goat nibbles at the incongruous paraphernalia of microwave discs and masts that will finally deliver superfast broadband to the village.

After three years leading a campaign to install this link site, which was switched on last week, Crispin Hoult was understandably evangelical. “Broadband is the first step to rebuilding the community. And on a personal level, I can finally watch Netflix.”

The significance of this leap into the 21st century – a result of Stirling council’s rural connectivity drive and some local fundraising - cannot be overestimated. That sort of impact was clearly a factor in Labour’s ambitious manifesto pledge to offer universal free broadband by 2030.

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Over the years Brig o’Turk has lost successively its petrol station, post office, cafe and school, and young families in particular have moved away to larger settlements, tempted by more affordable housing and decent internet access for children’s studies.

It is a 14-mile round trip to buy a pint of milk, and the only cash service is in the kitchen of a resident who hosts post office facilities a couple mornings a week. “There’s a danger of this becoming a place for middle-class retirees,” said Hoult.

The advent of broadband has ushered in fresh optimism. There is a plan to buy the school building and repurpose it as a tea room and shop. Another idea is to buy an electric vehicle for the village to share in the same way as a city car club. Hoult said rural public transport was “appalling”.

But for Tim Tindle, the chair of the Trossachs Community Trust, which put together the tea room plan, the optimism does not extend to the election or even Labour’s broadband offer, which he believes would still leave remote areas at the back of the queue.

“Politicians are talking about the things that matter to politicians,” said Tindle. “Social enterprises, local jobs, affordable housing – that’s what matters to us.”

When viewed on a map, Brig o’Turk is the belly button of the sprawling Stirling constituency, which has 93,750 residents, receives 4.5 million tourists a year and covers an area the size of Luxembourg.

It spans from the Campsie Fells in the south to the farming communities around Killin to the north, taking in historic Bannockburn, the university city of Stirling, as well as affluent commuter towns such as Dunblane, struggling former mining villages to the east and the Loch Lomond and Trossachs national park, the location of some of Scotland’s most glorious scenery.

Stirling is a key marginal, pitting the Conservative incumbent, Stephen Kerr, who has revealed himself to be a solid Brexiter since his election in 2017, against Alyn Smith, a leading SNP MEP and standard bearer for an independent Scotland’s re-entry into the EU.

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Previously a safe Labour seat since 1997, Stirling swung to the nationalists in the 2015 SNP landslide and then to Kerr in 2017 with a majority of just 148. Come December, the vote here will inevitably be regarded as a test of how voters are prioritising support for Brexit and the union or independence and the EU.

Travelling around the constituency, certain themes emerge. There’s palpable frustration among constituents at the idea that their votes will be interpreted through a constitution-or-Brexit prism, when many are as immediately concerned with the climate crisis and how crumbling rural infrastructure can work against sustainable living.

There is a lively seam of pro-independence activism, almost universal disdain for recent antics at Westminster, but also hearty approval for “getting Brexit done”.

It is perhaps a legacy of the 2014 independence referendum that even those who declare themselves disgusted by politics are remarkably well-informed about it.

Standing behind the bar at the Byre Inn, just down the road from Hoult’s smallholding, Sharon Vint laughed as she said: “I like to know what I’m complaining about!”

Vint, who manages the pub with her partner, Jason, said she did not believe the election would happen on 12 December. “There’s been so much with Brexit – it’s happening now, then it’s delayed – I’m 100% convinced that something’s going to go wrong with this election.”

Vint backed independence (although “I just don’t believe that now’s the time when there’s so much else to focus on”) and Brexit (“you can’t avoid the fact that we spoke and the government did their own thing”). The local council area voted by 60% to remain in the UK in 2014 and 67% to remain in the EU in 2016.

Vint has voted for the Liberal Democrats, Labour and SNP at various points and now has as little time for Nicola Sturgeon as for Boris Johnson. “Nobody is really addressing the things that concern us. We’re a family of six, living together and working, and we’re not doing well,” she said.

Sharon Vint and her partner Jason. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Many residents highlighted the huge disparities in wealth across Stirlingshire. The Start Up Stirling food bank said the more remote areas of the constituency have seen the steepest growth in crisis food deliveries over the past year.

In the pretty conservation village of Ashfield, north of Dunblane, the relevance of the Westminster election campaign was interrogated over homemade soup and scones as Transition Stirling, an environmental charity, held a repair cafe in the village hall.

“People are more and more willing to speak about the environment,” said Chris Steedman as he wrestled with a recalcitrant desk lamp, “but this election is all about Brexit. It’s about rhetoric, not issues.”

At Babes in the Wood, a children’s clothing shop in Stirling with the dual purpose of reducing waste and poverty, director Linda Barrack said referrals had increased “massively” since the rollout of universal credit across the area.

“We see people who are living with the effects of political decisions in Westminster every day,” she said. “Some people come with environmental concerns, because they don’t want to waste plastic toys, and others are not able to provide what they want to for their children, even though both parents are working.”

Emily St Denny was on the lookout for second-hand bath toys for her eight-month-old daughter. One of a significant minority of EU students and staff around the university, French-born St Denny said she had lived in Stirling for 15 years. Although she cannot vote in this election, she is a former co-chair of the local Scottish Greens and considers electoral behaviour in depth through her job as lecturer in politics.

Emily St Denny in Stirling. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

St Denny said constituents were only beginning to recognise how marginal the seat had become. “The constitutional question has a distorting effect, so that people who might be more aligned with the Conservatives, for example, might decide to vote SNP,” she said.

“Research shows that the first independence referendum and all those subsequent votes did improve people’s political literacy, but there are also concerns about how divided the country is. There’s also the effect of Brexit after a decade of austerity. A new normal is emerging of food banks, stretched services and communities under pressure.”

The SNP hopes that sort of sentiment will benefit it come election day. Emily Bryce, 68, a pro-independence activist who has been canvassing for the party, said the most visible faces of the Conservative party only worked in her favour on the campaign trail.

“I’ve met a lot of elderly ladies who are frankly horrified at the behaviour of the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson,” she said. “These women are watching on in disbelief and are losing faith in politicians.”

Bryce, a retired administrator, had spent an afternoon helping out at the inaugural meeting of Stirling & Clacks Pensioners 4 Indy.

“People assume that my generation is anti-independence, and it’s certainly the case that during the 2014 campaign there were a lot of scare tactics used, especially when it came to pensions. But we believe that independence is normal. It’s a reasonable expectation to want self-determination.”

More on this story

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  • Scottish independence vote a 'democratic right', says Sturgeon

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  • East Dunbartonshire weighs up its future after Jo Swinson defeat

  • Corbyn and Sturgeon trade blows before battle for Scottish marginals

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  • Scottish Labour is free to campaign against Brexit, says Corbyn

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