The Conservatives should be worried about Chesham and Amersham

To me this by-election defeat was only surprising by its sheer scale

For a party that lectures Labour, often justifiably so, on their lack of ability to recognise and learn from defeat, the Conservatives are appearing to do much the same after their crushing defeat by the Liberal Democrats in Chesham and Amersham.

The Prime Minister’s first reaction was confused, blaming “particular circumstances” and describing the defeat as “bizarre.” It was like witnessing the out-of-touch nature of the Tory party play out in real time. Other activists have taken to social media to gloat over Labour’s abysmal vote count, as if their minds can’t see beyond the red vs. blue dichotomy.

To me this by-election defeat was only surprising by its sheer scale; the seat being one of the Conservative’s safest in the country. The Liberal Democrats achieving victories in the south never was some short-term trend, it’s indicative of a revival that could be seen with the local elections where the signs of this trend could be spotted. This has been brewing under the surface long before that, even. Some voters I got a chance to speak to on the doorstep in 2019 confessed their desire to vote Liberal Democrat over their opposition to Britain leaving the European Union, but ultimately wanted to steer clear of bolstering Jeremy Corbyn too. The voters of Chesham are not of the left, but they can now feel safe showing their dissatisfaction with Boris Johnson’s blue-collar style party.

Brexit did realign politics permanently. In the same way it pulled working class communities away from the Labour Party, it is pulling home county southern voters away from the party they’ve supported for decades. I’ve seen oversimplifications that amount to a supposed ‘neglect of the south in favour of the north’- frankly laughably out-of-touch assertions about something more fundamental. The current Conservative Party has rejected fiscal conservatism for big state spending, they’ve cut foreign aid and realigned Britain’s global priorities away from Europe and to the rest of the world. It’s this populist-like politics that repels voters in seats like Chesham.

The party will struggle to reconcile both voting pools to build a continued winning coalition, in exactly the same way Labour have struggled and failed to stitch a coalition of voters from Hartlepool to Hackney. In a politics without a strong opposition, other contenders will come up through the cracks and the Liberal Democrats (as well as the Green Party in some areas) will be that contender. Their clever tactics of using the usual anti-development Conservative talking points worked a charm, regardless of how far away those messages are from the purported values of their own party. If replicated, seats similar will slip away from Boris Johnson.

The party faces a choice; do they backtrack on planning reforms to stave off further defeats in leafy seats? If they do they risk the crisis of sky-high house prices continuing to hurt generation after generation, until those voters turn on the party into the long-term. If they continue on unabated, and construct HS2 to boot, they will see more damage in home county seats. So yes, the Conservatives should absolutely be worried about Chesham and Amersham.