UK election: Conservatives stare at defeat even in stronghold Surrey amid high inflation
- ‘I feel like they don’t know what the everyday person has to go through in life,’ a voter squeezed by cost-of-living crisis says
Even in Surrey, a historic stronghold of UK Conservatives, voters are tempted to give opposition parties a chance at the July 4 general election, saying successive governments have “made a mess of it”.
With its pretty stone houses, window boxes and main street lined with small shops, Godalming is a typical country town in affluent southeast England, about an hour’s train ride from London.
Many of the town’s 20,000 residents are retirees and from wealthy backgrounds, and have always sent a Conservative MP to the UK parliament at Westminster.
Jeremy Hunt, the current finance minister, has served the constituency since 2005 but is now one of the most prominent Tories threatened with losing their seat, with polls suggesting the centrist Liberal Democrat party could come out on top.
Defeat for Hunt would be a political earthquake for the Tories, who have had five prime ministers during a tumultuous period in UK history that has encompassed Brexit, the Covid pandemic and more recently the cost-of-living crisis caused by high inflation.
“I’m normally quite right-wing, but this time around I have no idea to be quite honest,” Claudette Forrester, a 61-year-old former finance employee, said on the town’s main street.