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 chosen Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor of the Exchequer, as a lawmaker in five consecutive elections.
But even he admits that he may be out of Parliament after July 4.
“I’m very well known locally, I’m knocking on doors, I’m talking to people and I’ve got a certain following from my 19 years as a member of Parliament,” Mr. Hunt told The New York Times last week as he prepared to appeal for votes in Chiddingfold, 50 miles southwest of London. “But this is definitely the toughest it’s ever been.”
The fact that the second most powerful man in the government now sees himself as the underdog is testament to the scale of the threat facing the Conservatives at 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 deserting the party in the prosperous English districts that have long provided its most reliable support.
Several opinion polls predict a landslide victory for the opposition Labour Party that would sweep many longstanding Conservative lawmakers from Parliament. Although Mr. Hunt, who was raised in the area and still lives there, may yet beat the odds, analysts say he is vulnerable.
“I would be really surprised if Jeremy Hunt survives, frankly,” said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, adding that even if Mr. Hunt’s local connections, moderate politics and high profile won him a strong personal vote, “it’s not much of a life raft when you are facing a tsunami.”
In leafy places like Chiddingfold, where the village pub dates from the 14th century, the most potent threat comes not from Labour but from the centrist Liberal Democrats, or Lib Dems, whose poll ratings have risen recently. The party’s more moderate brand of politics is more palatable to conservative-leaning voters unwilling to switch to Labour.
Godalming and Ash, which Mr. Hunt hopes to win, is a new constituency created after local boundaries were redrawn, but it includes much of the area he has represented since 2005. And this part of Surrey has many commuters who work in high-paying finance jobs in London, as well as those who moved out of the capital to raise families.
In areas where they are best placed to beat the Conservatives, the Lib Dems also hope to persuade centrist or left-wing voters who might usually favor Labour 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 stands outside the home of Bob Jarrett, who worked for the European Commission before retiring to the village more than two decades ago. “I am a member of the Labour Party,” admitted Mr. Jarrett with a grin, “but voting Labour here is a waste of a vote, so I vote Liberal Democrat.”
Critics say the Conservatives have only themselves to blame for the mutiny in their backyard. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss sacrificed the party’s reputation for economic competence by spooking financial markets with a plan for unfunded tax cuts. Her scandal-prone predecessor, Boris Johnson, alienated moderate college-educated Conservatives in the South with his bombastic pro-Brexit rhetoric, disdain for business and breaking of lockdown rules during the Covid pandemic.
Many Tories stuck with the party at the last election because Labour was then led by Jeremy Corbyn, a hard-left lawmaker. But his successor, Keir Starmer, has moved the party firmly into the center and is a much less scary prospect.
“These are voters who don’t share the worldview of the post-Brexit Conservative Party — on Brexit, on immigration, on social values, on the nationalist drum-banging stuff,” Professor Ford said.
The beneficiary here could be the Liberal Democrat candidate Paul Follows.
“I don’t think there has been some paradigm shift away from the Conservatives, I think the Conservatives have shifted away from people,” Mr. Follows said as he sipped 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 little astray in the world.”
As Mr. Hunt headed into Chiddingfold’s village hall in jeans, jacket and an open neck shirt, he blamed global headwinds for the troubles facing his party and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
“I think it’s similar to the way that President Biden is struggling in the U.S. after a period where voters have been really bruised by the pandemic and inflation,” he told The Times. “Incumbent governments have suffered.” But, he conceded, “We haven’t done everything right ourselves.”
Inside, the questioning for Mr. Hunt from about 40 villagers was polite but often critical. The ice broke early when the chancellor’s cellphone rang and he killed the call, declaring, “It’s not Rishi.” Then it was onto questions about tax, the economy, health care, lockdown-breaking parties 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 U.K., the populist successor to the Brexit Party. Reform’s candidate in the area, Graham Drage, said that the decision of the Trump ally Nigel Farage to lead the party had increased his support, albeit in an area which voted to stay in the European Union.
A proponent of deregulation and tax cuts, Mr. Drage, a self-employed consultant, is unperturbed when asked if, by taking votes from the Conservatives, he will be helping the Lib Dems oust Mr. Hunt.
“I would have absolutely no concern about that at all,” said Mr. Drage. “There is no point in re-electing the Tories so they can betray everyone for another four or five years.”
Jane Austin, who works in Mr. Hunt’s parliamentary team, said that he had always treated the area like a marginal seat but that this time, “There are probably one thousand, two thousand votes in it — that’s where I genuinely think we are.”
Were he to lose, Mr. Hunt could be the most high-profile Tory election casualty since Michael Portillo, a former cabinet minister, in 1997, the year Tony Blair brought Labour to power in a landslide. But Mr. Hunt, 57, is popular in this area and particularly in Shere, the village where he was raised and where his younger brother, Charlie, lived until his death last year from cancer at 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 getting into politics, so it was never a money thing,” said Mr. Burke. “He went into it with the right intentions.”
So strong is the tide running against the Conservatives, however, that even friends are thinking carefully how to vote.
“If I didn’t know Jeremy, I would be in the mind-set of the country,” said Mr. Burke. “To have a change.”