Surrey once made up the core Tory vote. But like the rest of Britain, voters have seen enough
As the election draws near, once-big Tory players might look to their own backyard before they venture elsewhere across the country.
The story of the 2019 general election is one of major political realignment. The Labour Party, having represented the post-industrial areas of the North of England, the Midlands and parts of Wales for decades (if not, for near a century), fell out of touch with the people for whom it claimed to represent. With a legislature dominated by the Brexit process, as was then the case, it was these traditionally loyal Labour voters in the so-called Red Wall who did the unthinkable: they voted for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, many of them for the first time in their lives.
It is peculiar in many ways to now recall the events of that Christmas election more than four years ago. For how far the Conservatives have fallen. For how different Labour appears. For how Britain has changed over this relatively short period of time. But recall we must, especially as the country heads to the polls sometime this year.
Despite the major realignment in Brexit-voting areas of the country in 2019, which saw typically older Labour voters swing to the Tories, there were long-term trends that remained the same: older voters tended to opt for the Tories, while the majority of young people and those in cities preferred Labour, according to a report on the election by the House of Commons Library.
But I know one part of the country where, despite the evolution of time, our parties and their leaders, loyalty used to come in bucket loads. But just as the Red Wall fell in 2019, so too can the Blue Wall. I refer here to Surrey whose 11 parliamentary constituencies are all held by the Conservatives (they are at the moment, anyway). But underneath the surface, the party, much like the rest of Britain, ought to be worried — and here’s why.
First, for a party that has won all of Surrey’s 11 seats in 12 of the past 13 general elections ranging back half a century to the February 1974 vote, you might ask why they should be worried. Even in the election where they did not win all 11 seats — in 2001, they lost Guildford to the Liberal Democrats — they nonetheless won 10.
But as the general election approaches this year, the county is under the spotlight, in particular for possible upsets and dramatic episodes regarding some big cheeses of British politics. With boundary changes coming into force across Britain, constituencies are changing — in terms of their names, their wards, and their MPs and candidates too.
Take Jeremy Hunt. Say what you like about him — and I have done so on these pages on many occasions — the current Chancellor of the Exchequer is a big player in Tory politics. He has served in four government departments, notably as Health Secretary for nearly six years, and also in two of the Great Offices of State — as Foreign Secretary and now Chancellor. Yet it is one of the more delightful aspects of the British political system that such a big figure in government is under threat not from the Prime Minister, or from colleagues, but from their own local electors.
Hunt has served as MP for South West Surrey, which includes Farnham and Godalming, since 2005; the boundary changes have split his constituency in two, so he has opted to stand for the newly-named Godalming and Ash constituency.
The parliamentary arithmetic in his current seat is most fascinating: when he was elected in 2005, Hunt had a majority of just under 6,000 over his Liberal Democrat opponent. A decade later in 2015, with the Tories now in government and Hunt as Health Secretary, he took his seat by a margin of more than 28,000 votes over second place UKIP. In the snap election of 2017, more than 21,000 votes separated him from second place — a strong result nonetheless; but in 2019, Hunt’s majority fell steeply to just under 9,000 votes between him and the Lib Dems. And now, the man who’s Chancellor — is it not a sign of how far the Tories have fallen that Hunt looks increasingly likely to lose his seat? The proof, they say, will be in the pudding.
Not too far away, the towns of Camberley and Lightwater in the Surrey Heath constituency, represented since 2005 by Michael Gove, now the Levelling Up and Housing Secretary, might not be about to turn Lib Dem quite yet, according to individual opinion polls, but it would be foolish to rule out such a prospect when the Conservative minority administration lost control of Surrey Heath council to the Lib Dems in May of last year.
In the district of Elmbridge, where the former Tory Cabinet minister Dominic Raab represents Esher and Walton (but is standing down at the forthcoming election), the same opinion poll I read predicts the Lib Dems will win the seat considerably. Raab says he is standing down to spend more time with his family — a wholly legitimate reason, of course — but I wonder to what extent his wafer-thin majority of 2,743 also played a part in his decision to leave Westminster this year.
The newly-named, newly-formed seat of Dorking and Horley — which combines parts of four different constituencies in the county — is up for grabs also. Nearby, in Guildford, a place I know rather well, another slim Tory majority in 2019 of just above 3,000 will undoubtedly produce a key battleground in the Blue Wall.
In local government, the trend is similar: the Tories have been gradually losing council after council in this county over time, and, only a fortnight ago, the party lost control of Reigate and Banstead, the final Tory majority council they held. Last May’s local elections were torrid for the party — and there looks set to be worse to come.
As polling day comes closer (whenever that is), once-entrenched Tory areas — places where affluence and wealth exist much more than in other parts of Britain — are deserting the party they once loyally supported. The incompetence and chaos of Boris Johnson and the recklessness of Liz Truss have left question marks in the minds of once-loyal Tory voters in Surrey and elsewhere — to the extent that the current Chancellor is on course for defeat in his own patch. But it will only become clear after polling day about the scale of the Tory wreckage, once voters here in Surrey and across Britain have made their mark and had their say.