What are the voters of chesham and amersham telling the tories? | thearticle

The Chesham and Amersham by-election result last night was a painful defeat for the Conservatives at the hands of the Liberal Democrats. It is almost unheard of for them to lose a seat in

deep blue Buckinghamshire. By turning a Tory majority of more than 16,000 in 2019 into a Lib Dem one of more than 8,000, Sarah Green pulled off one of the most remarkable by-election upsets

for decades, with a whopping 25-point swing. It was an unexpected blow for Boris Johnson — but it should not have been. As MP for nearby Uxbridge, the Prime Minister should have known that

HS2 is hugely unpopular in the shires. So are the new planning laws which will reduce the right of local communities to block housing developments. Add to this the Government’s failure to

protect residents in care homes from Covid, the patchy pandemic support for the self-employed and small businesses, a poor choice of candidate by the Tories and a lower turnout. With all

these negatives, Chesham and Amersham had the makings of a perfect storm. Most striking is the collapse of the Labour vote: a humiliating but unsurprising result for Sir Keir Starmer. The

party has little traction at the best of times in rural Home Counties seats — and these are not the best of times for the party that was trounced in its own homeland of Hartlepool only a

month ago. Expectations are so low for Labour that a bad result will have been factored in — but this was worse than bad. To come third behind the Lib Dems may be regarded as a misfortune;

to lose a deposit looks like carelessness. Labour need to ask themselves why they were the victims rather than the beneficiaries of tactical voting. Perhaps the voters had noticed that the

official Opposition seems to have taken a break from opposing. None of this is to detract from what was clearly a clever campaign by the Lib Dems. Sarah Green was a charismatic candidate in

a seat that had been held by another popular woman: Dame Cheryl Gillan, who died after a long fight with cancer. The Tories selected yet another middle-aged businessman, Peter Fleet, to

replace her. Boris Johnson turned up to campaign for him, claiming that at 6ft 9in, he would be their tallest MP. Voters were understandably unimpressed by this argument. More seriously,

they evidently did not trust the PM’s promise to turn the Chilterns into a national park and to restrict development to brownfield sites.  The question is bound to be asked: is the

Government being punished by the electorate for this week’s decision to postpone lifting Covid restrictions for another month? Some commentators did predict a backlash: in the _Telegraph,

_Charles Moore warned that Boris Johnson would pay a political price for erring on the side of caution rather than opening up the economy. The sense of disappointment that the Prime Minister

had taken a detour from his much-vaunted roadmap may have played a part in this stinging reverse. But the likelihood is that the voters had already decided to deliver their rebuke to the

Tories before the delay was announced. Just as their counterparts in Hartlepool did not like being taken for granted by Labour, so the people of Buckinghamshire do not feel listened to by

the Tories. The Government’s obsession with the Red Wall has left the Tory heartlands feeling unloved, undervalued and overlooked.  What, if anything, can the Conservatives do to shore up

their support? There are certainly lessons to be learned. It is never too late to ensure that the protection of wildlife and conservation of the countryside are not brushed aside in the name

of “the economy”. HS2 should be forced to take much more care not to damage the environment. Central government cannot simply drive a coach and horses through sensitive local communities to

meet arbitrary national targets on housing or energy. Rural poverty is real, even in seemingly prosperous places such as Buckinghamshire, but property owners have interests too. Levelling

up is not just a matter of subsidies and handouts. Education, health and other public services tend to be concentrated in urban areas, but people who are increasingly working from home

expect services to be just as good in villages and suburbs. Internet and mobile phone coverage matters as much as roads and railways in making the home office viable. Politicians in their

palatial Westminster bubble can have no idea how hard it is to survive in the improvised circumstances of the pandemic. It will hardly come as news to Boris, but he should get out more.

Chequers, where he spends most weekends, is just a stone’s throw from Chesham and Amersham. Yet it might as well be on the other side of the moon.  The Prime Minister may long for the day

when he can “make money and have fun”, but the people who put him into Number Ten expect him to try harder to allow _them _to do precisely that. Right now, it feels harder than ever to make

a living, raise a family and enjoy the fruits of one’s labours. That, surely, is what a Conservative Government is elected to do something about. The message from Chesham and Amersham is:

ignore us, the people of England, at your peril. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make,

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