SURREY, England — There are impassioned election fights going on in this leafy part of England — but you’d be hard-pressed to find a voter jumping for joy at the prospect.
Across Surrey’s county and borough councils there’s a united theme: apathy and anger at politicians of all stripes.
Rising costs, struggling public services, and general disillusionment with national politics mean even in well-to-do Surrey suburbs — once Conservative strongholds — the public appears checked out. And that’s forcing candidates to lean into their local links.
In a More in Common focus group held with nine Surrey residents this Wednesday — witnessed by POLITICO — only half said they were planning to vote in English local elections on May 7. Low turnout in the locals could inject additional uncertainty into an exercise that will be widely read as a bellwether of the national mood as much as three years out from the next general election.
John, an IT manager from Woking, said: “I don’t even bother voting anymore. I don’t think that any politician will actually go through with what they say they’re going to do.” The participants’ names have been changed, as is standard practice in focus group reporting.
“It just feels like for the first time ever in my life, in 40 years, it feels like there’s no hope here anymore,” said Chloe, a property manager in Surrey’s West End. National issues, including the climbing cost of living, migration, the housing of refugees and asylum seekers, all come up repeatedly in the discussion.
Such gripes — replicated across the U.K. — are mainly beyond the scope of next week’s local elections. That won’t stop the Liberal Democrats from fighting hard on a local ticket to try to hammer the Conservatives.
The picture here is complicated further by a local government reorganization. Surrey County Council is currently run by a minority Conservative leadership. Of Surrey’s 11 borough councils, four are fully held by the Lib Dems.
But from next week, this structure will be dissolved and replaced by East Surrey Council and West Surrey Council.
The Lib Dems are fighting to win — and trying to take the nice guy approach as they do.
Kill them with kindness
On a stormy day in April, Surrey Heath MP Al Pinkerton — who won the parliamentary seat from the Tories after cabinet minister Michael Gove stood down in 2024 — is on the doorstep, making the case for local Lib Dem councillors.
Pinkerton is frequently called over by a resident or a councillor for a catch-up. He listens intently to one man who explained how he fell and smacked his head, then waited hours for an ambulance to arrive. The MP asks one elderly couple about their health, and they scoff at some recent literature that landed in their letterbox from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
All the constituents Pinkerton meets while out and about with POLITICO complain about hyper-local issues — often the state of the roads or the local hospital.
The Liberal Democrat campaign has always been about the local drive. MPs map the area like the back of their hand, and — removed from actually being in government — get the chance to signal their frustration at the Westminster government for not caring enough about their corner of the U.K.
One senior Lib Dem official, granted anonymity because their job did not allow them to speak on the record, pitched the centrist outfit as the party that will mend your church roof. “We are the nice cheery people who will get things fixed,” they said.
The party’s presence makes some dent on the generally downbeat More in Common focus group participants, with May, from Esher, saying she is leaning toward the Lib Dems because they “are already up and running, addressing some of the problems that we do have.”
Across the county, pops of neon orange “vote Lib Dem” placards catch the eye. There’s also a smattering of blue Conservative boards.
Money problems
Rising household costs aren’t the only financial woe in Surrey. The to-be-formed West Surrey Council could be “bankrupt from day one,” Surrey Lib Dem MPs Zöe Franklin, Will Forster and Al Pinkerton told the BBC.
Analysis by the BBC has shown that the councils merging to form the new entity have a combined debt of £4.5 billion. The councils forming East Surrey Council, meanwhile, owe a total of £285 million.
Those woes are cutting through with voters — and incumbents are feeling the heat.
“My council has just got so much debt from the Conservatives,” complained focus group participant Stacey, who lives in Woking — where the borough council has been forced to sell off key regeneration projects after declaring bankruptcy. “It’s unreal, and we’re all paying for that in our council tax now, paying for all the mistakes and the stupid statues in the town center.”
“There’s a hugely high awareness of the economic realities in West Surrey,” Pinkerton said. “That does place a particular kind of pressure, or onus, on somebody who’s campaigning with a realistic chance of running the show.”
He likens whoever wins West Surrey — one of the key targets for the Lib Dems, along with East Surrey — to becoming the captain of the Titanic at the point that it hits the iceberg. “We already know we can’t change course, we’re just aiming straight at that iceberg,” he adds.
“But that’s what my team really wants to do. They want to ensure that they are in control. Because it may not be about avoiding the iceberg. It might be about who gets into the lifeboats first.
“It’s going be about how you can ensure that your community responds as well as it can to a moment of consequential adversity.”
‘Wafer-thin’
On a pretty village high street in Claygate, Conservative Group Leader for Elmbridge Borough Council (currently in “No Overall Control” with a Lib Dem minority) John Cope nurses a coffee.
In the shadow of a shattering Tory national defeat at the 2024 general election, Cope does not exude optimism. But there’s a sliver of hope for the center-right party here. “I suspect around here the results are going to be wafer-thin between us and the Liberal Democrats. In some places, it’ll come down to 30-40 votes,” he says.
“In that scenario, as a candidate, you just have to fight, meet as many people as you can, talk to as many people as you possibly can. In my perspective, just be really positive, [and say] ‘this is what the council is doing, if you’re happy with it, absolutely carry on voting for them. If you want change, this is what I would do differently.’”
He, like many of his Lib Dem rivals, is using his local edge to try to combat rampant despondency about the national state of play.
Cynicism toward politics is “a big barrier for everyone voting for anyone,” Cope acknowledges.
But he adds: “It’s why I feel like I have a bit of an advantage in my campaign. I’ve been around quite a long time. I live in my area, and I’ve kind of been involved in all the different projects. So when I come up against that cynicism, I can go, ‘I managed to get a bridge at Walton station. I managed to get disabled access. That’s a very tangible thing that we can point to … you can cut through that cynicism.’”
The coffee, in an area where both Conservative and Lib Dem placards are on display, gets interrupted twice: once by a lolopping golden retriever and once by a lady who — in a surprisingly polite tone — points to Cope’s campaign literature and says: “You are not welcome here.” Neither expands on the interruptions.
Andrew McDonald contributed to this report.
