‘We would not put in this effort if we weren’t the challengers, and we clearly are.’ Liberal Democrat candidate Paul Kohler is sitting on a park bench on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Wimbledon, South West London. In 2019, this was the tightest Tory-Lib Dem marginal seat in the country: Kohler lost out to the Conservative incumbent Stephen Hammond by a mere 628 votes.
Last time may have been painfully close (‘You’re telling me!’) but now Kohler fancies his chances – and the polls suggest he’s right to be confident. With just four days to go until polling day, the latest surveys suggest that he could win the seat with as much as 50 per cent of the vote.
Both Labour and the Lib Dems are more focussed on fighting the Tories rather than one another
Known the world over for tennis and strawberries and cream, the affluent Wimbledon constituency forms part of the ‘Blue Wall’, the belt of mainly southern English constituencies that have voted Conservative for generations. If Kohler wins here, this will be the first time in its 139–year history that a Lib Dem will take the seat. It’s one of a host of seats the party hopes to take next week – from Wokingham and Surrey Heath to Godalming and Ash.
Over the last month, the Lib Dems have surged in the polls, predicted currently to win as many as 71 seats, a gain of 60 from 2019. On a really good night, some polls suggest Ed Davey could even become the official leader of the opposition. He has successfully kept the party’s campaign in the media thanks to a succession of light-hearted stunts, including falling off a paddle board in Lake Windermere, racing wheelbarrows in Yeovil and tackling an assault course in Tunbridge Wells.
But a more important part of the party’s strategy is the idea of the ‘local champion’. This approach appears to be working. Walking through the town’s streets, Kohler, who has lived in Wimbledon for 35 years and served on the council since 2018, is recognised by several people who come up to pledge their support. ‘No constituency is easy for the Lib Dems,’ he says. ‘We have to fight hard to get it and to keep it because we don’t have the sound from the media always echoing the Lib Dem message.’
Many locals are worried about the same issues: GP waiting times and the crumbling NHS. Immigration, the environment, and the economy are also big concerns. Voters are worried about education too – including Labour’s plans to end the VAT exemption of private schools. Davey’s decision to focus the party’s campaign on social care is also cutting through on the doorstep.
And the stunts Davey has become known for? Over in the leafy Berkshire constituency of Wokingham, the Lib Dem candidate Clive Jones insists they’re drawing in voters rather than pushing them away: ‘Every time he does a stunt, he talks about a very serious issue. When he came here, he talked about social care. And following the stunt, we went to a care home with a therapy dog.’
Jones – another of Davey’s ‘local champions’ – has lived in the constituency for nearly 50 years and led the borough council for a year. His website reads: ‘Back Clive – he’s on your side.’
Central to the Lib Dems’ efforts in the Blue Wall to convince reluctant voters to back them is the message that, here, Labour simply won’t get a look in. If voters want to punish the Tories and boot them out, their best chance is to vote Lib Dem. Both Labour and the Lib Dems are more focussed on fighting the Tories rather than one another.
Helping their efforts is Reform. Nigel Farage’s declaration twelve days into the campaign that he would, after all, stand as an MP, and the subsequent surge in support for his Reform party, is enticing some Tory voters. ‘There is definitely a bit of drift from Conservative to Reform,’ says Jones. And does he think it will help his chances of beating the Conservative candidate Lucy Demery come polling day? With a cheeky grin he replies, ‘Yeah it will.’
If Jones wins here – as again polls suggest he might – Wokingham will be another constituency to turn yellow for the first time ever. But the seat has had two Tory MPs over the last 70 years, including the former minister John Redwood; it won’t be easy to shake up the status quo.
Demery, parachuted into the seat shortly after the election was called, insists that being a fresh face will play to her advantage. Acknowledging that it has been a ‘tough’ election so far, she claims she has what it takes to ease voters’ multiple frustrations with the Conservatives.
That the Lib Dems will sweep to victory across the Blue Wall is far from an inevitability. With the exception of a few who fell to Labour in the Blair years, many of these seats have never voted for anything but Conservative; those habits die hard.
The Tory party is certainly hoping this is the case and has been bringing out the big guns on the campaign trail. Rishi Sunak, as well as the former prime ministers Theresa May and David Cameron have all been out with the Conservative hopeful in Wimbledon, Danielle Dunfield-Prayero. May has also made trips to Wokingham and Surrey Heath. Dunfield-Prayero calls the attention ‘exciting’ and says she was proud to have them visit. ‘[Sunak] knocked on doors. He met a baby. People stopped in the street and they wanted to have their photographs taken with him.’
Some voters do seem willing to give the Conservatives another chance, despite the scandals that have plagued them over the past five years. In Wimbledon town centre, Sharron is collecting food bank donations outside Morrisons. Having voted Tory before, she’s leaning towards backing them again. ‘They made loads of mistakes but I just don’t see that there’s anyone better.’
Many of these seats have never voted for anything but Conservative; those habits die hard
Down in Surrey Heath, both the Conservatives and Lib Dems have recruited small armies to help them door-knock, hand out leaflets and drum up support. This was Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove’s seat until he announced at the end of last month that he, too, was standing down.
The Lib Dem candidate Al Pinkerton had thousands of campaign leaflets printed and ready to go weeks before the election was called. He was handed a gift when the new Tory candidate Ed McGuinness posted a picture on social media of himself posing outside his new property announcing that he was ‘now a resident’ of the constituency. A quick search by online sleuths revealed it was, however, listed on Airbnb, acquiring McGuinness the unfortunate nickname of ‘Airbnb guy’ among his opponents.
McGuiness, a veteran of Afghanistan, seems unperturbed by the storm his post created though. ‘I’ve been mortared by the Taliban. So someone in their pants on their keyboard in Camberley shouting at me through the computer screen does not touch the sides at all.’
McGuinness’s main opponent, Pinkerton, is another ‘local champion’. He has lived in the constituency for twelve years and many locals seem to know him well. One of Pilkerton’s team joyfully declares that one street they have just canvassed came back ‘100 per cent’ for the Lib Dems.
‘We have about 300 people actively volunteering for us across delivering letters, canvassing, doing the admin work in the office, 300 people,’ Pinkerton says. ‘That is extraordinary. We’ve never had that many people actively working for us.’
But not everyone in Surrey Heath is so easily won over. In the leafy ward of St Paul’s one elderly voter breaks away from her dinner to open the door to McGuinness. She’s ‘worried sick’ about the Lib Dem threat and the Reform party which has ‘cut right through’ Tory support.
McGuinness did his officer training just down the road at Sandhurst. But his hopes of endearing himself through this with voters took a knock when news broke of Rishi Sunak’s early departure from the D-day celebrations on 6 June. When I press him on it, McGuinness’s response is diplomatic: ‘I can’t repeat what I said when I first heard about it because it’s not good for polite company. But I don’t blame the Prime Minister.’
Come 4 July, the Conservatives are bracing themselves for an electoral bludgeoning. In the post-mortem that will inevitably come, Sunak’s D-Day error will be among the catalogue of mistakes blamed for the result. And, if the current predictions bear fruit, it will be Ed Davey laughing all the way to the polling booth at the Tories’ expense.
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