Ten or so days ago, I was embroiled in a truly absurd public transport ordeal. Because the train drivers’ union was going on strike, travelling from the West Country to London for an early start meant driving to Reading, overnighting in a hotel and then taking the Elizabeth line to the capital. Then, on the return journey, the same route came to a halt thanks to a train colliding with power lines. I was told about this while I was anxiously waiting at Paddington: my only option, it transpired, was to go to Waterloo, and get on a delayed branch-line commuter train – along with hundreds of other people in a similarly depressed and desperate state.
Most of us had to stand for at least an hour. But from the start of the journey, a lovely camaraderie started to kick in, infused with a soupçon of Christmas spirit. Two strangers discussed that night’s Spurs match. A fiftysomething father made small talk with a mum in her 20s who had managed to squeeze on with her baby buggy and two kids: “Wait till they’re teenagers, you won’t know what’s hit you.” The shared mood was full of that familiar sense that, in a country that no longer seems to work, such mishaps and failures happen all the time.
As the guard recited the long list of stations we would be calling at, I realised that the journey would be taking us through an affluent expanse of the home counties, and the kind of places that are still bywords for English Conservatism: Egham, Virginia Water, Sunningdale, Wokingham, Winnersh. For the entire day, I had been immersed in that day’s political news, and the febrile mood swirling around Rishi Sunak’s government. And in that context, the scene in front of me seemed to boil down to two questions. Where was the party that once confidently spoke to and for the places where tired and bedraggled people were getting on and off? And did the Tories have anything to say about their dire transport, let alone people’s increased mortgages, struggling hospitals and bankrupt councils?
Apparently not. The previous day, the immigration minister Robert Jenrick had resigned, decrying the bill meant to finally open the way to sending refugees to Rwanda. The prime minister seemed to be focused on little else. When it came to the everyday travails of the kind of people on the train – many of whom were presumably habitual Tory voters – the Conservatives were awol, just as they have been since 2016, if not before.
The train passed through Richmond, the upmarket London suburb snatched from the Tories by the Lib Dems that year as its remain-supporting voters realised the full horror of Brexit, which was then won back by the Conservatives, only to once again turn orange in 2019. Then we began a run of stops in Surrey. Looking at the map on my phone, I saw we were near Esher and Walton, where the last Tory majority was not much more than 2,500, and Dominic Raab has decided to stand down. About 10 miles in the other direction lay the towns of Camberley and Bagshot, in Michael Gove’s home patch of Surrey Heath, where the Lib Dems now have 24 council seats to the Tories’ six.
As it was nearing 10 o’clock, we arrived in Wokingham in Berkshire, long represented by that coldly ardent free-marketeer and Brexit enthusiast John Redwood, although 57% of the wider borough’s voters backed remain. Tory defeat in the new version of this seat looks like a tall order, but Ed Davey’s party insists it might happen. By now, the train’s increasing lateness had spread a weary silence through carriages that were now half full, and we soon crawled into Reading, that sprawling mess of underpasses and imposing office blocks that always suggests a chunk of England blurring into America: “Welwyn mixed with Middle West”, as John Betjeman once put it. Two minutes online reminded me of the local political scene: on the borough council, Labour now has 32 seats, while the Tories are down to five. Boundary changes have created the new constituency of Reading West and Mid-Berkshire, which is a Labour target; the Tory who looked set to inherit that seat, Alok Sharma, is another former high-up who has decided to quit.
These places are now part of the supposed “blue wall”, the broadly liberal, affluent counterpoint to the Brexity red one. As I have regularly been reminded while out reporting, what is driving its quiet alienation from the party it once solidly backed is obvious: the Tories’ dismal record, and a distaste for the hard-right politics that have eaten into the Conservative soul. But there are also much deeper shifts afoot, as the traditional suburbs move away from golf clubs and casual bigotry to the sort of modern middle-classness that involves organic food, worry about the climate crisis, and increasing ethnic diversity. For sure, those things are often combined with plenty of small-c conservative values, but they still suggest a big step away from the kind of tastes and beliefs that a lot of Tory MPs – not least those who are fond of Nigel Farage – think are as deeply ingrained among their voters as ever.
I should not get too carried away: there are unlikely to be imminent electoral shocks in Windsor or Weybridge and Runnymede. But if the Tories’ embrace of cheap and nasty populism continues, generational changes may eventually eject them from even these seats. If I was a Conservative, I would worry about younger people in such places, freshly informed that they will have to think carefully about falling in love with foreigners in case their earnings fall short of the new visa thresholds. I would also wonder how and why a political force that once styled itself as an embodiment of business success and a belief in the future is turning into such a weird bundle of neurotic and nostalgic grievances: not so much a party as an explosive coalition of political cults, all oblivious to the everyday failures and inconveniences that seem to define the whole country’s tired, slightly bitter mood.
When I finally got off the train, I was one of three or four people who wearily made their way to the station’s long-stay car park. For not much more than 24 hours, the ticket machine wanted the best part of £35. Drawing on my last reserves of seasonal cheer, I caught the eye of the besuited man behind me in the queue, and uttered a phrase that I later realised was a line the man now ennobled as Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton once used against the Labour party. “Broken Britain,” I said. And we both laughed, completely mirthlessly.
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
