Watford is a perfect microcosm of modern Britain. It has nice suburbs, ethnic-minority ghettos, gentrified houses and tower blocks. It has youths skulking in clouds of cigarette smoke on street corners, pedestrianised high streets sucked souless by chain stores – and it has apathy.

Apathy despite the fact that people in Watford, one of the tightest marginal constituencies in the country, are among the few whose vote could decide the outcome of a general election, if one was called next month. In 2005, Claire Ward, the Watford Labour MP, beat her Liberal Democrat opponent, Sal Brinton, by 1,148 votes and the Conservative candidate Ali Miraj wasn’t far behind. For more than 30 years the party that has captured Watford has captured Britain.

It is not that the people of Watford don’t care about politics. They care desperately, in fact. Their worries – housing, education, healthcare and their children – are the bread and butter of any government.

But they see nothing being done and, as a result, they have grown cynical. Susan Harwood, 43, is a mother of two and grandmother of three. Her young, extended family is are prime targets for a raft of government initiatives, but for her, politics has lost its relevance.

Ms Ward was thrilled about the introduction of the Sure Start programme, providing care and support to families with children aged under five, to the constituency. But Mrs Harwood’s son, 21, and daughter, 25, both parents of young children, hadn’t heard of it. “To me they’re all the same, these politicians. They say one thing and they do another,” Mrs Harwood said.

Sitting in the high street, Rose Derring, 80, said: “When they first start, they’re smashing. But they never do what they’re going to say. And they don’t want to know us elderlies.”

In the Badger pub near the Meridan estate tower blocks, a group of 21-year-old plumbers and carpenters said: “They don’t live in estates. They don’t know what it’s like. They don’t have immigrants taking away their jobs.”

Times Recommends

• An officer and a gentle woman
• Dame Helen Mirren is worthy of the Epidaurus
• Foods that can help to prevent swine flu