Surely the Tories can't be in danger here, can they?
It's the seat that Churchill held during the war, and it's always voted Conservative in its modern incarnation; so where the hell are the Tory voters?
BY MICHAEL HAVIS
TO be clear, this vox-pop was not supposed to go like this.
The first vox-pop I did for this series, in Broxbourne — an ultra-safe Conservative seat — is a pretty good illustration of what I expected. There I encountered some voters who thought the Tories were too left wing, and were therefore withholding their votes. Others recognised the failings of the party, but were willing to vote with them one more time. There was zero appetite for a Labour government — at least amongst the people I spoke to.
I expected Epping Forest to be much the same. It’s a very safe Tory seat, and has only ever returned Conservatives to Parliament. The party had a majority here of over 20,000 at the last election, and even in the Labour landslide of 1997 they were still 5,000 votes clear of Tony Blair. This seat, in a previous incarnation, was once held by the most famous Tory PM in history, Winston Churchill. It’s about as Conservative as they come.
So I was braced for more of the same when I arrived in Waltham Abbey, and positioned myself on Sun Street to speak to the locals about the election that has finally been announced. I was expecting to see an attitude of grim resignation towards the election, with Tory-leaning voters accepting it was time for one, but dreading the possibility of a Labour victory.
Doubtless I would be told that Rishi was doing his best, that he’d faced tough challenges beyond his control, and that Labour couldn’t have done any better in the circumstances. I would surely be told that Keir Starmer was a bit wet, and be regaled with the age-old anti-Labour tropes I’ve heard a million times — Brown sold the gold, the “there’s no money left” note, they’re controlled by the unions, the chaos of the 1970s, etc.
Would I encounter a stray Labour supporter? I couldn’t rule it out of course, though I hadn’t found one in Broxbourne. That was a few months back, however, and the Tories have continued their terminal slide since then, so who knows?
With all this in mind, I approached my first voter and asked them to share their opinion. My expectations were about to be upended.
The very first person I spoke to was enthusiastic for an election, disappointed with the Conservatives, and quite ready to vote for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. I thought I’d find maybe one Labour voter on this outing; how strange that they should be the first person I speak to, I thought.
And it continued from there. From voter after voter, I heard one of two things: that they were glad for an election and voting Labour, or that they believed all the parties were as bad as each other and intended not to vote.
Of all the people I spoke to, both off and on-camera, not a single one expressed an intention (or even an inclination) to vote Conservative this year, and I know that at least some of these were former Tory-voters.
I spoke to pensioners — perhaps the segment of society that the Conservatives have most devotedly served — who felt poorly treated by the government and were staying home on polling day, or taking their vote elsewhere.
Immigration is a topic which has come up repeatedly on the street. In my experience, the more Conservative the seat, the more it comes up. In Broxbourne, nearly everybody complained about it. Yet in Epping Forest it came up just once, and only in passing.
One thing that did come up, and has come up before elsewhere, was the conspiratorial worldview that whoever wins the election, they would be doing the bidding of some shadowy puppet master. It dismays me to hear things like this; people squandering their vote due to the false belief that some kind of secretive world government is really in charge. But this belief is out there and I think it’s growing.
There was another phenomenon that reappeared this week too: the true-blue voter turning green. Time and again in recent weeks I’ve spoken to disillusioned Conservative voters who are leaning towards the Green Party in the coming election. It’s bizarre to me: going from really very right-wing to really very left-wing, so I seized the opportunity to ask one of the latest blue-green switchers why. The environment, they said.
Fair enough.
Look, I know that this is a true-blue seat. And I know that it’s almost certainly the case that I happened to have stopped voters who are unrepresentative of the wider constituency — just my luck. Maybe Waltham Abbey is the most left-leaning part of this solidly right-wing seat, and I simply didn’t realise. Certainly I spoke to too few people to draw any profound conclusions.
But I was nonetheless taken aback to find zero goodwill for the Conservatives here, and even flashes of enthusiasm for their Labour rivals. History tells me that this seat will stay blue, and I believe it, but I also believe that — as it stands — the result will be closer than in 1997. Conservative HOLD.