Chesham and Amersham: the revolt of the professional middle class
So what’s the story behind the stunning Liberal Democrat victory in the Chesham and Amersham by-election, a seismic win in the most traditional of Tory seats, at a time when Tories have a commanding poll lead?
There will be plenty of theories — and plenty of dismissals too. Mid-term blues (except that’s not what the polls are showing), Liberal Democrat by-election machine, win it back at the General Election, and so on.
But I think something far more fundamental is happening here.
I was brought up just down the road from Chesham and Amersham, in leafy Northwood (the place where the BBC filmed The Good Life because the real Surbiton didn’t look sufficiently Margot Leadbetter). And this is an area of professional and business people; people who understand professional values, and make their living (a good living, otherwise they couldn’t afford to live here) in a world of evidence-based decision-making and professional integrity. They have pride, standards and a sense of doing things properly. One of the reasons — perhaps the overriding reason — why they voted for traditional Tories was not ideology, but competence.
And they look at the bloviating charlatanism of the Johnson Government, and know that this is not them. They look at the corruption, and the denigration of evidence and the truth. They may not have been remainers (although many of them will have been) but will understand that Brexit has been an utter disaster. They look at the Government’s failure to honour the treaties it has signed, and know that it flies against every ethic by which they live. And they look at Johnson’s embarrassing G7 summit performance, and cringe with embarrassment at the antics of the posturing man-child. They want government by grown-ups, who live, as they do, by rules in a world of adult engagement and intelligent problem-solving. Many will be business owners who have faced difficult times through the pandemic: they will not take kindly to the wholesale looting of the public purse to hand contracts to Cabinet Ministers’ chums.
And there is Brexit, above all. People in professional and business environments know it’s failing. They see it in their daily lives. They see the dishonesty and incompetence; the lies and the use of flag-waving as a diversionary tactic. This was a narrowly remain constituency in the 2016 referendum; many of those who voted Liberal Democrat —whose policy is to rejoin eventually, and work towards Customs Union and Single Market membership — will have been people who voted Leave in 2016 but have been horrified at the way Brexit has been done.
If this speculation is right — and I am sure that there are other factors besides, like the clear sense of being taken for granted that has been widely reported — then that suggests that British politics may be in for something of a realignment.
Because, if I am right, the biggest by-election blow to a sitting Government in recent history has been delivered by people who do not even feature on the radar of the Leader of the Opposition. People —hitherto natural Tories — that their party has abandoned and to whom Keir Starmer, in his obsession with the Red Wall and his refusal to engage in the Brexit debate, has nothing to say. People who could not bring themselves to vote Labour, except perhaps for Tony Blair, but who believe the Tories have failed them utterly.
There are huge challenges for the Liberal Democrats too; how to turn this into a sustained electoral challenge. But the difference between Ed Davey and Keir Starmer is that, on Brexit, on civil liberties, he has been willing to challenge the Tories. The days when Liberal Democrats put Tories in Government have long gone; it is now Labour that, for whatever reason, appears — on Brexit most of all — to have accepted Johnson’s framing.
And, following Chesham and Amersham, we’re seeing, perhaps, a new political force emerging; the revolt of the professional middle class. There were hints of it in the elections earlier this year. And many of these are the same people who were among the more than a million people who three times marched through London against Brexit.
And the crucial message is, I think, that under Boris Johnson the Tory party has changed to the point where many of its traditional supporters can no longer vote for it. Brexit and the values that surround it may yet destroy the Tories. Who will now speak for alienated Middle England?
