How Britain’s Conservatives lost their heart and soul

AYLESBURY, ENGLAND — “Even the trees out here vote Conservative,” says Mark, a small, wiry man in his 60s, discussing the town where he grew up.

Mark is standing in the English sunshine, behind him the familiar rows of small, symmetrical houses which line Lambourne Avenue and countless other streets in the suburbs of Aylesbury.

Mark is chair of the local branch of the Labour Party, and he and a group of fellow activists are fanning out across neatly clipped front gardens and driveways laden with family cars to try to persuade residents that their candidate is really, genuinely in with a chance of winning this solidly Conservative seat.

Aylesbury, a market town in Buckinghamshire tucked inside the green belt of land surrounding London, is one of 94 constituencies in the U.K. which, for a century or more, have only ever returned a Conservative MP. 

These places have long been political deadzones: a world apart from the bellwether Midlands towns which frequently reflect the mood of the nation by changing hands in line with each electoral swing. These are places which have never voted any other way, resolutely ignoring even Tony Blair’s record-breaking Labour advances in 1997. 

But at this general election, here in the heart and soul of Tory England, something is changing. 

A succession of MRPs — mega-polls of tens of thousands of voters which project outcomes at a local level — suggest that once ultra-safe Conservative seats are suddenly in play. Some areas are seeing upswells in support for the centrist Liberal Democrats. Others, such as Aylesbury, could actually fall to Labour at the general election on July 4. 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak provided a clue as to the magnitude of the coming political earthquake when, early in the campaign, he visited Henley, a deeply conservative chocolate-box town perched on the River Thames.

Eyebrows were raised. Decisions over where to deploy the PM during an election campaign are indicative of where a party thinks the vote is closely fought. The outgoing Conservative MP for Henley — a seat once held by Tory giants Michael Heseltine and Boris Johnson — had a majority of 14,000 votes at the last election. The Red Wall this is not.

Sunak has since traveled to Torridge in Devon, another ultra-safe seat where the Tories won an enormous majority of almost 25,000 in 2019. Reports suggest he is even facing a battle in his own seat, Richmond, in Yorkshire, where he won by more than 27,000 votes last time. No serving prime minister has ever lost their own seat at a general election.

Such trends point to an historic collapse of the Conservative vote in rural, semi-rural and suburban seats, the like of which England has maybe never seen before in its history. What, exactly, is going on?

The long march

For the handful of veteran left-wingers in these parts of England, such seismic shifts have surely come as a surprise.

Alex Crawford, now aged 80, first moved to the garrison town of Aldershot in Hampshire back in the 1970s. He has served on and off as one of the area’s few Labour councillors ever since. 

Aldershot is 40 miles south of Aylesbury along the commuter belt spanning greater London. Its politics, too, are staunchly conservative, a military seat with a well-heeled population.

Campaigning for Labour in Aldershot has been a lonely experience at times, Crawford says — often downright punishing, in fact. He stood for Labour here at the 1983 general election, battling Margaret Thatcher in her pomp against the backdrop of the Falklands War. He received just 10.8 percent of the vote.

That pro-Tory current still runs deep at times. Crawford’s handsome redbrick house, built in the 1880s as officers’ accommodation, is adorned with Labour Party posters and placards. “Last weekend someone came along and ripped off the bottom half,” he says. “They tore that one down and they tore down two others on the road.”

Yet Crawford sees a shift in Aldershot, where resentment has festered about the impact of spending cuts upon the size of Britain’s armed forces. “What we certainly detect on the doorstep going round the garrison is a huge surge against the Conservatives and austerity over the last 15 years, which has seen significant cuts to the army.” 

A short walk away, at The George pub on the high street, the Labour candidate, Alex Baker, describes a sense that “people feel they have a choice for the first time.” 

Baker is an unlikely vanguard of the revolution: a slight, smiling woman wearing pearls and a pink blazer. She says her conversations with voters are mainly focused on the poor state of accommodation for army veterans and the underfunding of local schools. 

Reports suggest Rishi Sunak is even facing a battle in his own seat, Richmond, in Yorkshire, where he won by more than 27,000 votes last time. | Benjamin Cremel – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Despair at the state of Britain’s public services dominates the discussion too in a focus group of Aldershot voters, convened by polling firm More in Common. 

“Unfortunately everything has been reduced to the bare bones,” says Debs, a mental health support worker. “Our education system, our economy, our NHS. If I could possibly emigrate tomorrow, I wouldn’t be here tonight. I just wouldn’t. I’d be packing my bag.”

Dan, a veteran and education manager, reckons “everyone knows the NHS is on its backside.”

No drama Starmer

Perceived Conservative mismanagement of public services is not the only factor at work. There is a change, too, in the way people see the Labour Party.

Perceived Conservative mismanagement of public services is not the only factor at work. There is a change, too, in the way people see the Labour Party. | Leon Neal/Getty Images

Crawford acknowledges that in Aldershot, Labour’s hard left ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn was kryptonite to many voters. “You would get a lot of people on the doorstep being anti-Corbyn. There’s no doubt about that.”

Tommy, a PE teacher and another participant of the More In Common focus group, characterizes the party under new leader Keir Starmer as “safer” and “less controversial” than before.

Leo Docherty, the Conservative candidate who has been the MP here since 2017, is not so sure. 

Docherty is a lean, vigorous former officer in the Scots Guards, with sharp grey sideburns and an office bedecked with military memorabilia. He is joined by a small band of young volunteers including members of the town’s large Nepalese community, and his agent Dick, a fellow army veteran. 

In a letter sent by Docherty to constituents, he warns of Starmer’s “damaging socialist policies.” In conversation he speaks repeatedly about a lack of enthusiasm for the Labour leader on the doorstep.

Looming large over the contest in this part of the country is another politician hoping to make unprecedented gains on July 4 — Nigel Farage. Asked if he encounters many people who say they are voting for Farage’s upstart party, Reform UK, Docherty barks: “Yes! Loads of them.” 

Docherty now fears “a split on the right” that “fundamentally” alters our national politics as a result of Reform’s resurgence, and posits that Starmer must be “high-fiving Farage in his mind.” 

Another factor in the Conservatives’ heartland decline, cited repeatedly, is demographic change. 

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the make-up of the constituency has changed,” says Gerald Howarth, the former Tory MP for Aldershot, “largely because of the increase in population. You’ve got lots of people coming from [Labour-supporting] London.”

This dynamic, together with redrawn constituency boundaries, affects many of the hitherto safe Tory seats around the capital which now seem to be pointing toward Labour.

Yet pinning the entire shift on an influx of liberal, left-wing voters seems like wishful thinking. There is no doubt people are turning away from the Tories in their droves. 

The Truss effect

The theme of access to public services recurs again and again back in Aylesbury, where Labour candidate Laura Kyrke-Smith — a blonde, shyly upbeat charity director — is out knocking on doors. “It’s the first thing we hear from everyone — that they can’t get a GP appointment.”

But from watching voters’ responses on the doorstep, there is clearly concern about a wider economic malaise. 

“The Tories thought they owned the economy, didn’t they?” says Anwar, a retired civil servant who once served as Britain’s ambassador to Peru. “Well, they don’t now.” 

Kyrke-Smith says that what comes up most often from Tory voters thinking of switching to Labour is “the instability and incoherence of the last few years — and [former PM] Liz Truss’ role in particular. She’s … not popular.”

Kyrke-Smith says that what comes up most often from Tory voters thinking of switching to Labour is “the instability and incoherence of the last few years — and [former PM] Liz Truss’ role in particular. She’s … not popular. | Leon Neal/Getty Images

Just how unpopular is brought to life that evening, when 150 people cram into Aylesbury’s Holy Trinity Church for an election hustings with representatives of Labour, the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Greens. 

The Tory candidate, Rob Butler, is nothing out of the ordinary for his party. He was a news presenter and then a lobbyist before entering parliament as a new MP in 2019. He became a parliamentary aide to Truss and — like many of his colleagues — backed her for leader in 2022.

It quickly becomes clear the assembled crowd is not in the mood to hear Butler, their seventh consecutive Conservative MP since 1923, defend his party’s record. 

As Butler suggests that a recent fall in inflation represents “real progress” for the U.K. economy, a wave of bitter laughter ripples through the audience. When he talks about wage growth, people shout “rubbish.”  

Later, when Butler insists that Truss was right to champion economic growth, the cries from the audience get louder — “what growth?” and “I vote for the lettuce!” — and eventually dissolve into loud booing. 

Some at the meeting — presumably diehard Conservative voters — remain stony-faced in their seats, but the atmosphere is uncomfortable. Butler almost loses his cool at one point, snapping: “It’s funny that the people who shout loudest are usually wrong.”

There’s an air of slightly offended surprise around both Butler and Docherty, men who must feel they did everything right in pursuit of becoming a Tory MP in the heartlands — and are now on the brink of being gently flattened by Labour’s army of busy mums in ankleboots.

Revolution on the Thames

An hour away in the picture postcard town of Henley, the Tory candidate, Caroline Newton, campaigns against a backdrop which could hardly be more quintessentially English. Red, white and blue bunting is strung over the market square. Stalls sell fresh eggs and straw boater hats. 

Crews of young women in wraparound sunglasses move in formation down the high street wearing serious expressions. They are here in advance of Henley’s world-famous rowing regatta, a high-society event in the heart of the English countryside. 

Newton — a former BBC producer, diplomat and aide to Boris Johnson, the area’s former MP — alludes to the strangeness of the fight she finds herself in. She speaks of “a narrative which has taken hold” that “the country’s falling apart, even here in Henley.”

Along with a shortage of GP appointments and an excess of potholes in the roads, the issue exercising Henley’s well-heeled voters above all else is the state of the famous waterway sparkling just beyond the high street. 

The stretch of the River Thames used for the regatta, known as the “Henley mile,” is one of many waterways across the U.K. which has been severely impacted by sewage pollution. The issue has become a cause célèbre among England’s middle classes, and the Tories — who handed control of Britain’s water and sewage system to a network of widely-despised private firms in 1989 — are bearing the brunt of their rage.

“The rivers define the whole constituency,” says Newton, who admits the Conservatives have “failed” to communicate effectively with voters on the subject, opening themselves up to attacks from the Liberal Democrats and Greens. 

Freddie van Mierlo, a bearded Lib Dem councillor in his 30s who is now, incredibly, in touching distance of becoming Henley’s next MP, is focused almost completely on this issue. “We are the only ones who will be able to hold Labour to account on [sewage dumping] and push for reform of our waterways,” he declares, his message to voters already assuming a crushing Conservative defeat on July 4.

Like other Conservatives staring down the barrel of historic losses, Newton seems torn between skepticism about what the polls are showing, and an urgent need to sound the alarm. 

All three Tory candidates in these areas argue that the Conservative vote could yet hold up better than expected, suggesting many of their supporters are simply holding their cards to their chest — the so-called “shy Tory” effect. 

The final results in these seats are likely to be close, but it’s hard to escape the impression that impatience for change has taken hold, both gradually and completely.

Activists of all stripes in these areas report that one side effect of the historic shift is that public opinion has not quite caught up with itself. Because the local Conservative tradition is so deeply ingrained, one of their main jobs is letting people know these seats are even in contention. Voters here simply do not expect to find themselves in a battleground.

While Tory campaigners insist time and again that they have never taken votes for granted, Docherty is frank about what it will mean for his party if the polls are correct, and constituencies like his turn away from the Conservatives for the first time.

“If Aldershot was included in that casualty list, then a political revolution has happened,” he says — then pauses, and corrects himself. “An explosion.”

Stefan Boscia and Bethany Dawson contributed reporting.