On a street in Camberley, Surrey, a pensioner stands in the doorway, rollers in her hair, staring with some bemusement at the Liberal Democrat canvasser in front of her. Her preparations for Ascot have been interrupted. ‘I definitely won’t be voting Conservative. I used to be a member, but you look around now and, no!’ she explains. Not that she thinks her vote will count for much: ‘My husband used to say you could put a blue rosette on a monkey and they would win round here. It is a very affluent area – there is a lethargic habit of voting Tory.’
The party may end up with dozens of MPs, slaying several Tory big beasts in the process
It wasn’t a monkey but Michael Gove who stood in this true blue constituency of Surrey Heath last time. Ed Davey’s party is now behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in the national polls but its support is concentrated in a relatively small number of seats. So the Lib Dems may end up with dozens of MPs, slaying several Tory big beasts in the process. They may even claim the scalp of Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, who is defending the neighbouring seat of Godalming and Ash.
If Farage inflicts enough damage on the Conservatives, there’s talk that the Lib Dems will end up as the second largest party in the Commons, thereby crowning Davey the official leader of the opposition. On an election preparation awayday last year, aides scenario-planned how to deal with a bout of ‘Ed-mania’ in a campaign, similar to the Clegg-mania of 2010. But few anticipated a Farage-induced Tory implosion that helps the Lib Dems as surely as it does Labour. ‘It’s going better than we expected,’ says one staffer. ‘Horizons are broadening in terms of where we could win – but we’re not getting ahead of ourselves.’
Aides are keen not to repeat the mistakes of the party in 2019 when the then leader Jo Swinson declared that she could be prime minister, only to lose her own seat on polling day. This time around, the Lib Dem campaign is not making any such big declarations and, instead, is focusing on Davey’s character.
Davey is certainly having more fun than usual for a politician on an election campaign. That’s his strategy. While Sunak has looked haunted and Starmer hesitant, Davey looks like he’s on a never-ending stag do. He has been sent out on attention-grabbing activities – from paddleboarding to rollercoaster rides – in the hope that broadcasters won’t be able to resist using him in their clips.
Surrey Heath is in play because Gove is not. ‘Who dares wins!’ he declared in cabinet when Sunak delivered the news of a snap election. Days later, Gove decided that he didn’t dare. His departure was met with cheers in the Surrey Heath Liberal Democrat office: his last-minute decision left little time for a successor Tory candidate to make an impression.
In contrast, Al Pinkerton, a geographer who’s spent much of his career abroad, has been pursuing Surrey Heath for the Lib Dems for five years. ‘I knew it would be a near-impossible task in 2019, we were a million miles away,’ he tells me. Now his team believe they have a chance, thanks to his local links – ‘I’ve never gone away’ – and recent council gains. Also, fewer voters are afraid of a Labour government. ‘It means people feel like they can vote Lib Dem whereas in 2019 a lot of voters in areas like this were backing Boris just to stop Corbyn,’ explains a party figure.
Defending the Tory majority of 18,349 is Ed McGuinness, a former soldier from Northern Ireland, who admits he has his work cut out. ‘It’s been mixed,’ he says of the response so far. ‘I feel like when I talk to people who are wavering, I’m able to bring them round – I think my service background, my time in business, my real-world experience versus some of my opponents really plays well with them. They like that. This is a seat that deserves hard work.’
McGuinness ran into trouble early on when he proudly published a picture on social media of him holding the keys to a new property in the constituency – only for eagle-eyed users to point out that the property had been listed on Airbnb. He explains he is renting it through a landlord. ‘Tell me anybody who has bought a house here in 14 days,’ he says of the furore. He is trying to warn voters about what a Labour government might mean for them. A vote for the Lib Dems, he says, is a vote for Labour.
When I follow Pinkerton on the doorstep, we come across a few Tory switchers. One blames the lockdown partygate debacle – ‘all that stuff in the back garden’. Others are undecided. They often say their worries about tax will play the biggest part in determining how they will vote. This wavering is the only comfort the Tories have left. ‘We’re not finding many switchers to Lib Dems,’ says one Conservative who has been campaigning in southern seats. ‘But we are fighting apathy – and Tory voters who want to protest by voting Reform.’ All the Lib Dems need to win Surrey Heath is for Tory voters either to stay at home or back Nigel Farage.
Is this all just a backlash to 14 years of Tory rule? The Lib Dems believe that demographic changes mean any successes in the Blue Wall could be more long-lasting. Davey’s campaign team have a name for their target voters: ‘the M&S movers’. These are young couples who have come to Surrey or the Home Counties since the pandemic to start a family and find a better work-life balance. They voted Labour when they lived in London but now find themselves in Lib Dem/Tory battlegrounds.
According to a presentation to Lib Dem staffers on the new voter profile, they don’t buy their supermarket basics from Marks & Spencer but go there around once a week for high-priced treats. They also like ‘Gary Lineker and his causes’ and put ‘tackling climate change top of their mind’. If enough of them make the move – physically and politically – the Blue Wall could be out of the Tories’ reach for years to come.
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