The Lib Dems’ fatal flaw in a knife- edge Cornish vote? Jo Swinson
LUCY OSBORNE won’t be voting Lib Demon December 12.‘ I remember what they did on tuition fees,’ the fiery lead singer of Cornish folk band Du Glas tells me. ‘Here in Cornwall, we don’t forget. And we hold grudges.’ I’m in Zennor, a tiny village clinging to the rugged gorse hillside overlooking Porthzennor Cove. Situated in the constituency of St Ives, it has a Tory majority of 312 and is one of Jo Swinson’s key target seats. But she has a fight on her hands.
Peter Eadie is a barman at the Tinners Arms, where Lucy and her colleagues are performing. The pub was a regular haunt of DH Lawrence and his German wife Frieda. Or it was until October 1917, when the locals began to suspect they were signalling prowling German U-Boats, and had them evicted under the Defence of the Realm Act.
‘They’re an independent people down here,’ Peter explains. ‘The idea we voted for Brexit, but it won’t happen, offends a lot of them. They think it’s about fairness and democracy.’ He’ll be backing Boris.
The South West has traditionally been a Liberal stronghold. St Ives resisted for decades as John Nott, Margaret Thatcher’s Defence Secretary, held back the yellow tide by standing on an official National Liberal and Conservative platform. But in 1997 the citadel finally tumbled when Andrew George won the seat with an 11,000 majority. He retained it for 18 years, only to see it snatched away by current incumbent Derek Thomas in the Lib Dem purge of 2015.
Sitting in the snug Penzance front room of one of his supporters, George claims to have only reluctantly agreed to mount a fresh challenge.
But he exudes a nervous energy that betrays his hunger to return to Westminster. ‘I fear the alignment of Farage and Johnson. I fear for the future of this country if this hard- Right alliance succeeds.’
This antipathy doesn’t stop him acknowledging that Boris’s GBD mantra – Get Brexit Done – is resonating. But he claims that in a part of the world that places a premium on political independence, it’s being offset by the spectacle of Tory moderates such as Sam Gyimah and Sarah Wollaston walking away from their tribe.
‘There’s a sense on the doorsteps that what we need is moderate people running the country. And they’ve been impressed that the Liberal Democrats have attracted decent, respected former Conservatives.’
THEY maybe. But they are rather less impressed by Jo Swinson’ s controversial policy of revoking Brexit without even taking the issue back to the voters. And to his credit, Andrew George doesn’t duck it. ‘I think the position is counter productive ,’ he says bluntly. A strong Remainer, at the party’s conference he confronted his leader, warning it would create a backlash in constituencies such as this. A prediction that’s proved prescient.
I put it to him that although St Ives voted Leave by the relatively narrow margin of 55 per cent to 45 per cent, the Cornish character is especially predisposed to rejecting attempts to override the democratic will. ‘Very strongly,’ he says. ‘Taking that rather extreme position – or significant position – makes stopping Brexit less likely. It might generate such a negative reaction it makes it more difficult for us to make our case.’
Despite that, the liberal tradition is still embedded in this part of the world. Entering the hamlet of Cripplesease, the ruined engine house from the old Giew tin mine rises up through the mist. It was while working in a mine that Dennis Boase’s grandfather had the encounter that determined his grandson’s political allegiance.
‘My grandad was digging clay and hauling it up so it could be sent to the potteries around Stoke,’ he recounts. ‘Then one day this man appeared at his door. He says, “Do you like having your job?”. My grandad says, “Yes”. He says, “Do you like having this cottage?” My grandad says, “Yes”. The man says, “Well, I’m your local Tory MP, so you’d better vote for me next week.” The day after the election my grandad went and knocked on the MP’s door. He says to him, “You know where you can stick your job and cottage.” And in my family we’ve been voting Liberal ever since.’
It’s hard to imagine Derek Thomas imposing himself so aggressively on his constituents. The current Tory MP for St Ives is thoughtful and softly spoken.
‘It’s been a very difficult place to be an MP,’ he says of his four years in Parliament. ‘All the disunity has made it quite miserable at times.’ He loyally supports Boris, and his Brexit stance. But he’s desperate for the political agenda to move on to other issues, in particular his personal passion, the environment. ‘Cornwall is a wonderful part of the world. It’s largely unspoilt. But we must keep it that way.’
Thomas agrees with his opponent that the go-faster stripes the Prime Minister has painted on the Tory Party have cost him some support among moderate Conservatives.
But again, he believes Jo Swinson’s revocation stance is tipping the balance in his favour. ‘The idea you say to a community like this, “Actually, we had the referendum, we don’t agree with it, we’re just going to scrap it and move on,” that really flies in the face of what people down here think.’
To test his thesis I paid a visit to the village of Paul, just south of Newlyn.
In the tiny church yard you can find a monument to Dorothy Pentreath, purportedly the last native speaker of the Cornish language.
I’d been informed this was a Lib Dem stronghold, but no one had told beef farmer Shaun Boys. ‘I’m sick of the lot of them,’ he tells me. ‘I’m taking over and setting up a benign dictatorship.’
I also spoke to Peter, a former soldier; Jimmy Bradshaw a musician; Jackie Griffiths, a former teacher; and Kate O’Shea, a local artist. None of them told me they were backing Andrew George.
CORNWALL is a unique place. I asked one resident if he was local. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. He’d actually lived in the area for 40 years. ‘If you can’t trace your family back six generations, you’re welcome, but you’re not a local,’ I was told.
Despite that, my visit was instructive. It revealed that while national attention is focused on northern Labour Brexit switchers, there are a small but significant group of anti- Brexit Tory voters disillusioned with their own party’s position. It also underlined how the perceived betrayal of the Clegg years still lingers with some.
But one thing leapt out. Jo Swinson is absolutely killing the Liberal Democrats.
The Boris/Corbyn old boys’ act is crushing her. She is virtually invisible to the voters – I’d been discussing her with one Cripplesease resident for five minutes before he suddenly declared, ‘Oh, so Jo Swinson is a woman?’ And the single policy of hers that has registered – unilateral Brexit revocation – is even toxic to many Remainers.
When I met up with Derek Thomas I also bumped into Liam Fox who’d spent the day canvassing for him. He posited an interesting theory. ‘What people forget is Jo Swinson holds a Scottish seat,’ he said, ‘and if she backs a second Brexit referendum she’d also have to come out for a second independence referendum. And she can’t afford to do that.’
She’d better do something. At the moment the squeeze on the Lib Dem vote is seriously jeopardising their hopes in marginals like St Ives. And if it falls much further it could even start breathing life into Jeremy Corbyn’s flat-lining campaign, relieving pressure in dozens of other seats they and the Tories hope to snatch from Labour.
Back in the Tinners Arms, Du Glas are finishing their final number. ‘I can buddy, I can rocky, I can walk like a man,’ sings Lucy Osborne, echoing the anthem of the fierce Cornish women who used to chisel tin and break rocks in the pits around Zennor. Jo Swinson needs to start to echo them as well.