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Will Boris lose the Blue Wall? The Tory majority is vast, but the Liberal Democrats sense an opportunity

The PM dropped in to help the Tory Candidate, Peter Fleet. Credit: Andrew Parsons CCHQ / Parsons Media

The PM dropped in to help the Tory Candidate, Peter Fleet. Credit: Andrew Parsons CCHQ / Parsons Media


June 16, 2021   7 mins

Amersham Old Town is calmly beautiful: a tourist’s imagining of an English town, not a venue for something as vulgar as politics. On the Saturday before the by-election it sags under heat as residents sit outside independent coffee shops in their uniform of blue shirt and ironed shorts (men) and pale linen dresses (women).

This is the land of plenty at the end of the Metropolitan Line. The charity shop has a wedding hat section. There is a bespoke gentleman’s tailor and a town museum, so you can investigate Amersham’s plenty of yore. The Britain in Bloom awards are stacked vertically on a post by the Old Market. These golden discs, and the pride in the physical perfection of Old Amersham that they convey, are an indication that Boris Johnson’s luck might sag there this year. Is the Prime Minister conservative enough for Amersham Old Town? They doubt his dedication to their bloom. These are visual lands: you see it in the costumes, the cars, the homes, and the rage against HS2, currently being hewn into the hill beyond their paradise. They hate HS2 with the fervour of children because they usually have their way in everything, and in that is the possibility of rebellion.

If Amersham Old Town is in denial about it being 2021 — it is largely medieval with fiercely repointed Georgian frontage — so are most of its voters. I wonder if the residents consider the Chiltern Hills to be an extension of their gardens; they are enraged about HS2 because it will benefit the Midlands and the North and leave them and their excellent transport connections with a glut they did not seek.  Benjamin Disraeli similarly courted the working classes from nearby Hughenden Manor, but perhaps the descendants of his voters have forgotten this happy coalition of manor and slum. HS2 is the only teardrop spilling onto their plate, and this, not pandemic, is the story here. Pandemic was unfortunate, but they are vaccinated now, and the shops are open.

There is jeopardy for the Prime Minister, then: when Dame Cheryl Gillan, Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham, died in April, a by-election was called, scheduled for Thursday. Gillan’s majority was immense, a blue hill in a land of hills: 16,223 in 2019, or 55.4% of the vote. If you listen to constituents the result was barely conscious. As a pub landlord says from behind his tidy bar: “I vote Conservative. If you ask me why I vote Conservative I couldn’t give you an answer.” He makes it sound like an existential question singular to Tory Buckinghamshire: “Why do I vote Conservative? I think the majority of people don’t really look into that much – of why they vote.” He tells me he was born to a working-class family in Wales — his Welsh-based family have “nothing” — lives in a £1 million house in Chesham Bois, drives a new Range Rover and educated his children at private schools. Then two elderly ladies come in for lunch, and we must stop talking, because he is busy spoiling them with a professionalism that looks like rapture. He has been working since 5am — he works hard — and he is almost the most analytical voter I meet, but this election is about flowers and potholes.

The Tory majority is vast, but the Liberal Democrats sense an opportunity to beat the new Conservative candidate, one Peter Fleet, formerly of the Ford motor company. His centre of operations is a flat above an award-winning iron mongery in Amersham; from here he rides out to promise mitigation of the impact of HS2, a national park in the Chiltern Hills and a crack-down on anti-social behaviour (he is against it).

To combat him, there are 500 Liberal Democrat activists in Chesham and Amersham, placing banks of posters near notorious potholes. It is uncanny, and I wonder if they are consulting psychologists. Hit a pothole and you see a Liberal Democrat poster or, more likely, four Liberal Democrat posts. “The roads,” I am told by an upper-middle-class woman, “are shit”. I fantasise their slogan changed to: “Potholes winning here.”

Opposition parties do well in by-elections, and there is rage with the liberalisation of the planning laws, which I think is the equivalent of Total War in Nimby-land.

There is a theory that for each brick he removes from the Red Wall, Boris Johnson loses a third of a brick, or maybe more, from the Blue Wall, as businessmen voters fantasise about which lie they would fire him for, and liberal-leaning voters flee London for the Home Counties, taking their Remain politics and rustic fantasies with them. These fantasies are helpful to Liberal Democrats, if irritating: what is the point of living in a village where everyone looks like Philip Green? Where be the cows?

I hear that after a bad poll the previous week, Johnson made a surprise visit to the constituency. The Liberal Democrats were second in 91 seats in 2019 and took Amersham Town Council in May. They wonder if this by-election is the beginning of a recovery; of a Conservative rebellion against itself. Amersham Old Town is quite the place to stick it to the man, his optics — last week he was gambolling in the Cornish surf  and toasting Peter Fleet with a pint — and his national polling average of 44%.

I meet the Liberal Democrat candidate Sarah Green in a coffee shop in Amersham. Amersham is not Amersham Old Town. It does not have a bespoke gentleman’s tailor, or a personal museum. I watch an attempted burglary of a post office, just opposite the Conservative campaign office. The postmaster chases the villain with a baseball bat. No one is injured.

Green is young, open, emphatic. “People feel ignored,” she says, “people feel taken for granted.” I heard that in Hartlepool, from Labour voters; here, I struggle not to laugh, which is slightly unfair because pain is pain. “It’s been true blue for decades – council, local, national. It’s like, ‘it’s always going to be blue so why should they listen to us?’ The idea that if you live in Tory area you get investment is manifestly not true. All the issues feed into that underlying theme of being taken for granted”. No one is exempt from self-pity nowadays; and so, a Liberal Democrat activist tells me, excited former Tories are stopping her to say, “I’m voting for Sarah!” Another says she heard a group of “dyed-in-the-wool Tories” were surprised, on meeting in the pub, to discover they are all Liberal Democrats now, from a combination of, “planning changes, the way you just have to ring Bojo, bung him some money and you’ve won the business”. I wonder if Chesham and Amersham will surprise itself with its audacity tomorrow. It’s a by-election. The stakes are low. Even if they do elect a Liberal Democrat MP, their taxes will not rise. It will be a murder without blood.

Estate agents are too busy to talk — though one shouts over his shoulder that the Prime Minister wore the same tie to Amersham as he wore at the G7, and he has dandruff too, which matters in a village in bloom — but the man in the art gallery says: “There are an awful lot of people moving out [to here]. Every one of the flats here,” he points upwards “has gone on the market, with the exception of one. Every weekend I see people coming into the shop saying, ‘it’s fantastic round here, we want to move, we want a garden, we’ve been living in the city’”.

I meet such women in Chesham, which is a sadder Amersham Old Town; there is a foodbank with a request for sponge pudding and tinned chicken taped in the window. They are an NCT group; they sit by their babies’ prams, drinking large cocktails. They are from London, and vote Liberal Democrat here, though one voted Labour formerly — “I don’t think Labour know who they are [now]”. They are not angry about the Government’s response to pandemic: “I’m not sure how anyone would have handled it,” says one. But they are worried about child poverty, the future of the NHS, and the lack of affordable housing.

There is almost no Labour presence in this constituency, and the voters know it. Labour say they are campaigning, but the evidence is flimsy. (They are speaking to the press via email). Labour took 12.9% of the vote in 2019. I meet a Labour voter smoking on a bench. “They don’t bother round here,” she says, “it’s a shame. It’s [the political dialogue] all about Boris Johnson, and what he’s doing. It makes you laugh. It’s always about Boris”.

I don’t find the candidate Natasa Pantelic, a councillor in Slough, but I am sent a statement which includes the words: “This is an opportunity for change — a fresh start — for Chesham and Amersham. They [the Liberal Democrats] don’t care about progressive politics; they just care about power.” There is a Chilterns4ProgressiveAlliance group standing in the centre of Chesham “campaigning for opposition party cooperation in Chesham & Amersham, Batley & Spen and the next general election”. They are genial but they do not have the support of the opposition parties themselves, which is a maddening for them and pleasing to Boris Johnson.

Under these gentle currents is the possibility of future anguish. There is a Cassandra here: Brendan Donnelly, a former Conservative MEP who is standing for Rejoin EU. He sits outside a coffee shop in Chesham and tells me that Brexit will hit us like a thunderstorm soon enough; then the tarmac drives of the mighty Chalfonts will tremble. I watch a pro-Rejoin band perform with a toy cat (a “catidate” and member of Cats Against Brexit Mayhem) that stood in an election “and won more than 200 votes”. The vocalist sings: “Boris Johnson he said he swore he’d never leave me /and Boris Johnson said he swore he’d always love me.” Did he?

Donnelly and the ladies with cocktails aside, I meet few people who are prepared to voice anger about anything other than HS2 or potholes, and I am slightly stunned. So: the worst thing that might happen to Boris Johnson this summer is that he loses a by-election over potholes, and to the Liberal Democrats, with their 11 parliamentary seats and national polling average of 7%. Or that he nearly does. That does not sound like a crumbling blue wall. The political map is not that simple or beautiful.

As I prepare to leave Amersham Old Town, I go into a shop and look at a rack of clothes decorated with embroidered flowers. There is a live bee lurking at the hem of the dresses, disorientated by the flowers that are not real, and, I imagine, increasingly bereft and frightened. I wonder if the voters of Amersham Old Town will ever have a similar awakening.


Tanya Gold is a freelance journalist.

TanyaGold1

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Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago

“…There is a Cassandra here: Brendan Donnelly, a former Conservative MEP who is standing for Rejoin EU. He sits outside a coffee shop in Chesham and tells me that Brexit will hit us like a thunderstorm soon enough…”

Yes, Brendan, we should ‘Rejoin EU’, and the best way to achieve this is to introduce primary statute that anyone with the surname ‘Donnelly’ and the christian name ‘Brendan’ should automatically be made an MEP so they can rightfully keep feeding at the trough that keeps on giving.

Last edited 3 years ago by Prashant Kotak
mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago

What an amazing article! you sure as hell would not recognise Amersham if the name were removed, Heronswood or Virginia Water maybe. Amersham has a high percent of social housing and even old council stock compared to most of the home counties. It has many Traveller families, mostly settled after WW2 but still carrying on the feuds and alliances of yesteryear as well as new ones with the many incoming Urdu speakers and East Europeans. As with many London satellite towns the large houses and council’s tendency to prioritise flower pots over schools and housing give a veneer of wealth. The majority don’t get to share this or enjoy London wages and are stuck in local jobs from minimum wage to a little over living wage. Back to the Guardian, Tanya where this sort of fantasy is their reality.

Al M
Al M
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

Congratulations if you made it to the end. I gave up here:

‘They hate HS2 with the fervour of children because they usually have their way in everything’

Alan Osband
Alan Osband
3 years ago
Reply to  mike otter

Give the girl a break .She did council houses to death last week in Mousehole (or perhaps it was Penzance) Tanya would rather slag off her social equals than patronise the proles

Last edited 3 years ago by Alan Osband
Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago

The voters of Amersham vote Conservative because Labour is profoundly evil and the Lib Dems profoundly irrelevant.
Potholes are the responsibility of the local council, not Westminster. I can’t think why a pothole would make anyone vote Lib Dem.

Last edited 3 years ago by Jon Redman
michael stanwick
michael stanwick
3 years ago

The 1st few paragraphs speak to me of an undisguised but subtle condescension toward the inhabitants of Amersham old town with their ‘uniforms’ and their ‘hatred of HS2 with the the fervour of children because they usually have their way in everything’ and ‘is in denial about it being 2021’. Such identity politics writ large?

Last edited 3 years ago by michael stanwick
Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago

Tanya contemplating Boris is experiencing what it felt like to be a Conservative contemplating Tony Blair in about 1996 or 1997. Why was it not as obvious to everyone as it was to Conservatives that this individual was thoroughly dishonest, mercenary, evil, morally incompetent and narcissistic to the bone? Why didn’t people get it? Why were they determined to overlook that he was a transparently crooked, venal, treacherous wrecker?
I still don’t know. Any sensible person today would agree that the Conservative ‘demon eyes’ Blair poster was a wholly fair and accurate characterisation. The thing is, it was also obvious at the time to some of us, but nobody wanted to hear it. They still voted for him, human slick of vomit that he was and is.
It’s the same today with Boris. The haters are adamant that he’s a liar, and they think that shrieking this should win every argument, and should have by rights propelled Khorbiyn to power. How baffling that it doesn’t work!
All I can think is that people perceive Johnson as a decent bloke genuinely doing his best for a country he is proud of; and that the people shrieking the hate are repellent ghastlies who are themselves the slicks of vomit, fit only to be ignored.
This might explain Johnson, but it doesn’t explain Blair.

Last edited 3 years ago by Jon Redman
JR Stoker
JR Stoker
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

Your Blair analysis is nonsense and the reason the poster backfired was because the electorate knew Blair was not a demon, but a decent man of moral standards who wanted to modernise Labour and to some extent, Britain. He certainly did not get everything right (and I never voted for his party) but he did much better than any of his successors so far.

Sam McLean
Sam McLean
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

this individual was thoroughly dishonest, mercenary, evil, morally incompetent and narcissistic to the bone? Why didn’t people get it? Why were they determined to overlook that he was a transparently crooked, venal, treacherous wrecker? It’s the same today with Boris.

Fixed it for you.

Last edited 3 years ago by Sam McLean
Dr Stephen Nightingale
Dr Stephen Nightingale
3 years ago

Seems to be Labour with its shoot-itself-in-the-foot policy again, here. They should withdraw their candidate, and actively support the best ABC candidate (Anything But Conservative), to give the best chance of precipitating a change..

(I lived in Amersham once. It’s nice, but it’s not Yorkshire …. )

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago

The trouble with the left is that each little smithereen of it believes itself to be “the best ABC candidate” and hates all the others. So, other than relying on a fundamental lack of appreciation of the importance of hate to the left, a great suggestion.

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago

True its not Yorkshire or even Derbyshire but has hills and dales and some good local fishing and breweries. Plus they are currently #1 in the Home Counties cricket league, and their Rugby team gave us Josh Lewsey. When HS2 is finished the trains will be quieter than the local moped kids…Its so different to Slough, Guildford, Bromley or other near M25 satelites. I’m sure you agree its got to be Tory win by a country mile with reduced majority to show our contempt for BJ and his covid antics.

Last edited 3 years ago by mike otter
ralph bell
ralph bell
3 years ago

Potholes et al are an indication of whether government really gives a S***.
The disaster pf covid-19 has really left many of us deeply disappointed in front line politicians and Ministers.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
3 years ago
Reply to  ralph bell

Pot holes are a matter for your local council. Go report them on the potholes report forms online, then the council are financially liable for damage done thereafter. Seems to sharpen their minds

Richard Lord
Richard Lord
3 years ago

Amersham is easily explained. HS2. Simples

Charles Lawton
Charles Lawton
3 years ago
Reply to  Richard Lord

Plus the loosening of planning policy which is perceived to be very damaging.

Howard Gleave
Howard Gleave
3 years ago

Opportunity, doubtless. But voters nationally see unprincipled opportunism in a party whose candidate in Chesham and Amersham opposes HS2 and housebuilding, because that is a vote winner in that constituency,but with the party supporting HS2 in Parliament together with a more liberal immigration policy, immigration being the key driver of population growth which, in turn, is the key driver of housebuilding. Yes, the LibDems are great at winning tactical elections, or where the demographic favours them, namely constituencies with a strong middle class, liberal vote. But if they get into government, then pushmipullyu politics doesn’t make for coherent government.