“Since I first voted for Thatcher in 1979, I’ve always gone Conservative,” says the Hertfordshire farmer Andrew Watts – a longer period than the three decades he has been managing his cereal farm near the village of Puckeridge.
But when he enters the voting booth on 4 July, the 64-year-old will be backing the Liberal Democrats. Watts says the switch is partly down to what he calls a “lack of coherent agricultural policy” from Westminster, but he mainly blames it on a loss of integrity within the Tories in recent years.
