With picture-postcard villages, country pubs and an unmistakable air of affluence, there are few greater strongholds for Britain’s Conservative Party than Surrey, where voters have elected Jeremy Hunt, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, as an MP for five consecutive elections.
But he also admits that he may be out of Parliament after July 4.
“I’m well known locally, knocking on doors, talking to people and having some fans from my 19 years as a member of parliament,” Mr Hunt told The New York Times recently. week as he prepared to appeal for a vote in Chiddingfold, 50 miles southwest of London. “But this is definitely the hardest it’s ever been.”
That the second most powerful man in government now sees himself as an outsider is testament to the scale of the threat the Conservatives face in next month’s general election. Angry at economic stagnation, the impact of Brexit and a crisis in public services after years of government austerity, traditional Tory voters are abandoning the party in the prosperous English regions that have long provided their most reliable support.
Several opinion polls predict a landslide victory for the opposition Labor Party that will sweep many long-time conservative lawmakers from Parliament. While Mr Hunt, who grew up in the area and still lives there, may beat the odds, analysts say he is vulnerable.
“I would be really surprised if Jeremy Hunt survives, frankly,” said Robert Ford, a political science professor at the University of Manchester, adding that even if Mr Hunt’s local connections, modest politics and high profile won him a strong personal vote. , “It’s not much of a life raft when you’re facing a tsunami.”
In leafy places like Chiddingfold, where the village pub dates back to the 14th century, the strongest threat comes not from Labor but from the centrist Lib Dems, or Lib Dems, whose poll ratings have risen recently. The party’s more moderate policies are more palatable to Conservative voters who do not want to switch to Labour.
Godalming and Ash, which Mr Hunt hopes to win, is a new constituency created after the redraw of local boundaries, but includes much of the area he has represented since 2005. And that part of Surrey has many commuters who work in high-paying finance jobs in London, as well as those who have left the capital to raise families.
In areas where they are best placed to defeat the Conservatives, the Lib Dems also hope to persuade centrist or left-wing voters who normally favor Labor or the Green Party to switch their support, a process known as tactical voting.
In Shere, the village where Mr Hunt first went to school, a Lib Dem sign sits outside the home of Bob Jarrett, who worked for the European Commission before retiring to the village more than two decades ago. “I’m a member of the Labor Party,” Mr Jarrett admitted with a smile, “but a Labor vote here is a wasted vote, so I’m voting Lib Dems.”
Critics say the Conservatives have only themselves to blame for the rebellion in their own backyard. Former prime minister Liz Truss sacrificed the party’s reputation for economic prowess by spooking financial markets with a plan for unfunded tax cuts. Her scandal-prone predecessor, Boris Johnson, alienated moderate Tories in the South with his bombastic pro-Brexit rhetoric, disdain for business and flouting lockdown rules during the Covid pandemic.
Many Tories stayed with the party at the last election because Labor was then led by Jeremy Corbyn, a hard-left lawmaker. But his successor, Keir Starmer, has moved the party firmly to the center and is a much less daunting prospect.
“These are voters who don’t share the Conservative Party’s post-Brexit worldview – about Brexit, about immigration, about social values, about the nationalist stuff that’s banging the drums,” Professor Ford said.
The beneficiary here could be Lib Dem candidate Paul Follows.
“I don’t think there’s been a paradigm shift from the Conservatives, I think the Conservatives have moved away from the people,” Mr Follows said over coffee in a cafe in Godalming. As for Mr Hunt, he added, “He’s been a cabinet minister four times — if he’s here thinking he’s the underdog, I think things have gone a bit wrong in the world.”
As Mr Hunt headed to the village of Chiddingfold in jeans, a jacket and an open shirt, he blamed global headwinds for the problems facing his party and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
“I think it’s similar to the way President Biden is running in the US after a period where voters have been really bruised by the pandemic and inflation,” he told the Times. “Existing governments have suffered.” But, he admitted, “We haven’t done everything right on our own.”
Inside, the questioning of Mr. Hunt by about 40 villagers was polite but often critical. The ice was broken early when he rang the chancellor’s cell phone and killed the call, stating, “It’s not Rishi.” It then touched on questions about taxation, the economy, healthcare, parties breaking lockdowns in Downing Street and Brexit, which Mr Hunt opposed during a 2016 referendum but now supports.
Complicating matters, Mr Hunt faces a challenge on his right from Reform UK, the populist successor to the Brexit Party. The region’s reform candidate, Graham Dragg, said Trump ally Nigel Farage’s decision to lead the party had boosted his support, albeit in a region that voted to remain in the European Union.
An advocate of deregulation and tax cuts, Mr Dragg, a self-employed consultant, was unfazed when asked whether, by taking votes from the Conservatives, he would help the Lib Dems oust Mr Hunt.
“I wouldn’t worry about it at all,” Mr. Dragg said. “There’s no point in re-electing the Tories to betray everyone for another four or five years.”
Jane Austin, who works on Mr Hunt’s caucus, said she had always treated the area as a marginal seat, but this time, “There’s probably a thousand, two thousand votes in it — that’s where I really think we are. “
If he loses, Mr Hunt could be the most high-profile Tory election casualty since Michael Portillo, a former cabinet minister, in 1997, the year Tony Blair swept Labor to power in a landslide. But Mr Hunt, 57, is popular in this area and particularly in Shere, the village where he grew up and where his younger brother Charlie lived until his death last year from cancer aged 53.
Outside Hilly’s Tea Shop in Shere, Craig Burke, who owns a health software company, recalled how he recently ran a marathon with Mr Hunt to raise money for a cancer charity.
“The thing about Jeremy was that he made his money in business before he got into politics, so it was never about money,” Mr Burke said. “He went into it with the right intentions.”
However, so strong is the tide against the Conservatives that even friends are thinking carefully about how to vote.
“If I didn’t know Jeremy, I’d be in the country mindset,” Mr Burke said. “To have a change.”
