In defence of Carrie Johnson

One is not usually surprised by opinions volunteered to parliamentary hopefuls by voters on whose doors the candidate has knocked; but last week, dropping in on the Tiverton and Honiton by-election, I was taken aback by a subject that came up a number of times. It seemed so relatively unimportant.

The door-knocker in this case was Richard Foord, the Liberal Democrat candidate in a safe Conservative seat that looked in imminent danger of falling to his party. I was following him around as he canvassed in the Devon town of Honiton. You may know by the time you read this whether the Conservatives clung on, but you don’t need reminding that they were up against it.

I should say at once that my sample of opinion was minuscule: I had perhaps an hour with Mr Foord. And I mostly heard what one would expect. Almost everyone was out of love with Boris Johnson but – despite him – there were still some who were thinking of voting Conservative. So far, so predictable, though (predictably too) Mr Johnson’s stance on Ukraine was generally approved of. Cost of living came up, of course; Brexit no longer seemed a big issue; Keir Starmer was never mentioned; and the thought was expressed that ‘levelling up’ ought to be applied to the West Country, not just the Midlands and the north of England.

None of this was surprising. What was, was that the Prime Minister’s wife seemed to be an issue. Who did she think she was? Should an unelected person wield the influence she did? How much power did she have over government policy? Oughtn’t we to be told? That sort of thing.

It’s perhaps to Carrie Johnson’s credit that she has already carved herself a name as an influencer, and voters do have some sense of what she thinks important – green policies, the plight of endangered species, environmental threats.