Betfred is predicting an historic by-election defeat for Boris Johnson. The Liberal Democrats are odds on for a stunning victory at Tiverton and Honiton on Thursday overturning the biggest majority ever in a by-election in British political history.
The seat is up for grabs after Tory MP Neil Parish resigned after admitting watching porn in the House of Commons. He won the seat in the 2019 General Election with a thumping 24,239 majority – and defeat on Thursday will send shockwaves all the way to Downing Street.
Hundreds of politically savvy Betfred punters, who cashed in big time on Donald Trump being elected against the odds as US president and bashing Betfred again with the against all predictions Brexit vote, have made Devon vote the busiest by-election market in the bookie’s 55-year history.
Of more than 500 punters, who have put their money where their mouths are betting between £2 and £10,000 on the outcome, 47 per cent reckon a win for the Lib-Dem’s Richard Foord is on the cards with 43 per cent going for Conservative candidate Helen Hurford with Labour and the Green Party sharing the remaining ten per cent of the wagers.
Betfred organised £1 free bets in our shop at Bampton Street in Tiverton town centre where the majority of our canny customers thought the Tories were best value to triumph at 11/4 with the Lib-Democrats at 1/ 4 while Labour’s Liz Pole – second in 2019 – are at 150/1 with the Greens and the four other parties Heritage, Reform UK, For Britain and UKIP all at 500/1.
Tiverton shop manager Darren Newberry said: “Normally all the banter as you would expect is about the football, horse racing and greyhounds but this week the shop has been buzzing with everyone talking about the by-election. The interest levels have been phenomenal.”
Of the Betfred customers Roger Hart, a 69 year old grandad, said that the sitting MP had made a “silly mistake” and that Prime Minister had endured a tough two years coping with Covid, the war in Ukraine, cost of living crisis and train strike – not to mention Partygate.
However the retired brewery worker added that he’d previously voted Labour although this time he’d be backing Boris partly because “there is no one else to be Prime Minister.” He reckons the farming community in the constituency will hold sway…and the Conservatives have never let the farmers down.
Supermarket cleaner Anthony Winslet, aged 43 is meanwhile planning to vote Lib-Dem. He said: “They deserve a chance and I prefer them to the Conservatives. It’s not a protest vote but the odds show that this time there is a great chance of a change here.”
I have covered many by-elections and Hurford is the worst candidate I have found. Initially she says she wants to share “all my ideas and my aspirations for the Tiverton and Honiton”. The definite article is singular to her; she considers everything from her own perspective; her speech is filled with exclamation marks; its content is banality meets rage. “I know what it’s like to raise a family and be brought up in this area,” she says. “It’s beautiful! I’ve had lots of ministers coming down to support me and they’re saying, ‘isn’t it gorgeous?’ and I say, “Yeah it is, why would you want to live anywhere else?’”
“We love tractors,” says an old man by Tiverton market, sunning himself on a bench. He gives a filthy laugh and I hear pride in it: he sounds like Sid James. Tractors are why I am here, at least tangentially. In April, the Tory MP Neil Parish Googled a Dominator Tractor in the House of Commons and found himself watching BDSM porn in view of colleagues. He resigned to become a crucible for a by-election and a metaphor for decline. Ennui is the presiding atmosphere in Tiverton and Honiton: boredom. It’s another referendum on the Prime Minister’s leadership. They are getting repetitive.
“There’s nothing happening here,” the man says, when he stops laughing. “They’re just letting this town run down to the ground. They aren’t doing anything. You walk down through there” — and he points at a road — “they were going to take a building down, make more room for the market. They’ve scrapped that now. Why? Nobody knows.”
This is dairy country with undulating, sun-wilted hills from Exmoor to Lyme Bay. The towns are golden and ancient: less sleepy than necrotic. Londoners buy second homes and treat the landscape, which looks like an advert for butter, as a garden while common issues — low pay, lack of housing, infrastructure, local services — have been ignored. Still, it was safe for Tories: farmers are conservative. Parish’s majority in 2019 was 24,239 votes: 60.2% of the vote. Labour came second in 2019 and 2017 but the Liberal Democrats, the professional opposition, hope to repeat their successes in Chesham and Amersham and North Shropshire with their candidate Richard Foord, a former major in the army.
Three hundred activists a day come from out of the constituency to help: angry Tories don’t vote Labour. If it goes Liberal Democrat, it means Johnson is still in danger. If it doesn’t — and even Liberal Democrats are unsure — it means Partygate is forgotten, and he has hope: to continue his personal redemption through destruction.
“I would like,” the man continues, “to think the Liberal Democrats will get it. Make a completely new start. Because the Conservatives — what have they done?” But this is a by-election: just one less brick in the wall. It will change nothing. Does he know that? He answers his own question, enunciating carefully: “Very, very little. Did he [Neil Parish] make a mistake? Would you walk into the Houses of Parliament and produce a phone and start looking at porn?”
“Is he the only one who’s doing it?” asks his friend, and they guffaw for a while. In east Devon you must be patient. They think in decades. To them, Parish is a fool, not a fiend. There is not the same anger towards him as there was towards Owen Paterson in North Shropshire. Those who liked him still like him. (One man says he loves him.) Those who hate him hated him anyway.
At the edge of Honiton, where it segues from golden town to sprawl, I find the Community Arts Theatre. Public hustings are almost unknown nowadays because they are unpredictable but, since it is organised by the Fund Our Tivvy High campaign — the school needs to be rebuilt — the main candidates agreed to it.
I arrive early and watch the For Britain candidate, a ruddy, pinched boy called Frankie Rufolo, who carries aggrievement like a cartoon cloud over his head, attempt to infiltrate the hustings. He was not invited. “You’re a racist,” a youngish man tells him. “I’m an anti-racist,” Rufolo pleads back. (For Britain is endorsed by Tommy Robinson.) A security guard approaches to remove Rufolo. I ask Rufolo if he is local. “I have relatives in Devon,” he says sulkily. “No, you don’t,” says the security guard, and leads him away, head hanging like a daffodil.
I listen to the Labour candidate Liz Pole, a genial woman essentially trying to climb a mountain in slippers, giving a TV interview: “The Conservative vote has collapsed, even people who are voting Conservative are doing so through gritted teeth, a lot of people are staying home or are switching…” Her press officer, who is presumably decorative, won’t brief me on or off the record but I think it is less tactics — an informal non-aggression pact with the Liberal Democrats is a persistent rumour — than laziness. Later, when I call out to her, she places a finger in the air and walks to the carpark with it.
As the audience muster, a group called LIFT (Local Independents for Tiverton) unfurl a banner that says: The Party’s Over, Prime Minister. Post confidence vote, it is an ancient slogan. It could be by Cicero. “The Conservatives have taken us for granted,” says a LIFT supporter. “The only time we were on the news is when our MP was caught looking at pornography in the House of Commons.” He talks about local food poverty, which is “remarkable” (donations have flat-lined and the church that stores them is empty), the dangerous condition of the school and lack of representation, homes for locals and well-paid jobs. There used to be a clutch of thriving factories around Tiverton, he says. Now they are shuttered or small.
He is by far the angriest man I meet in Devon. This is not raging North Shropshire, where former Conservatives would denounce Johnson on street-corners, or Chesham and Amersham, where the atmosphere was a kind of gleeful transgression in sunlight. It feels sadder than that: splintered, tetchy, defeated, as if Johnson’s corruption is settling over everything like dust, leaving people bewildered and exhausted. Many people tell me they won’t vote, and never have: “I’d rather sit in my garden and have a cold beer.” “They’re all the same”. One Labour woman voted Liberal Democrat tactically in 2010, and never will again; an old betrayal haunts her and so she will help Johnson by voting Labour. A youngish man is one of the few Tory splitters I find: “I was a paid-up member of the Conservative Party and there’s no way I can vote for the Tories in the state they are in. They’ve lurched to the Right.”
Some people are gently awed that politics has fallen on them. A man in a checked blue shirt with exquisite RP accent, who is here to find out if the Conservative candidate is pro field sports, says: “I’m not going to tell you who I normally vote for, but I am much to my own surprise” — and he does look very surprised — “a floating voter.” If he is anything other than a Conservative now leaning Liberal Democrat, he needs a better disguise.
Inside, it is packed with political obsessives who know how they will vote: anti-Tory. The Tory candidate Helen Hurford, a former teacher who now owns a beauty salon — Corbynistas smirk at this because they are snobs — sits with Gill Westcott, the Green Party candidate, who is the sort of woman who sags under her obvious intellect. Liz Pole sits with Richard Foord. He looks open-faced but exhausted, as if a burden is upon him. That’s the disease of by-elections: the idea that they matter for anyone beyond the lobby’s Kremlinologists. They are only runes.
I have covered many by-elections and Hurford is the worst candidate I have found. Initially she says she wants to share “all my ideas and my aspirations for the Tiverton and Honiton”. The definite article is singular to her; she considers everything from her own perspective; her speech is filled with exclamation marks; its content is banality meets rage. “I know what it’s like to raise a family and be brought up in this area,” she says. “It’s beautiful! I’ve had lots of ministers coming down to support me and they’re saying, ‘isn’t it gorgeous?’ and I say, “Yeah it is, why would you want to live anywhere else?’”
A woman in a straw hat rises to ask: “In light of the resignation of two ethics advisers in less than two years, what is your personal view on the moral character of Boris Johnson?” “It’s hard to know where to start, just the lies, the repeated lies,” says Liz Pole, looking phlegmatic because the alternative is screaming: “The brass neck of the man.”
“The first part of that question, I believe, was about the resignation of the ethics advisers,” says Hurford. “It’s very Westmistery. That’s the expression I use. I’m not in Westminster but my understanding is that it was a commercially sensitive issue.” There are heckles at this, but she moves through them like a tank: “That’s what I’ve been told, thank you very much!” The chair presses her: do you have any concerns about his character? “I have no concerns that his pledges are honest”. Foord says: “To lose one ethics advisor could be regarded as misfortune, but to lose two ethics advisers can only be carelessness.”
Hurford is pressed on the cost of living (“I’m feeling it too!”) the environment (“I don’t have the answer!”) and the policy of sending refugees to Rwanda: when the refugees get there — “and it will happen” — they should “be treated kindly and fairly!” She summons Zelenskyy in her support and, at the end, when she is asked who her favourite thinker is, she names her grandfather. (Westcott names Gandhi, Pole Dickens and Foord W. B. Yeats and Paddy Ashdown). “You know, I hated school,” Hurford says conversationally, and it sounds like the truest thing she has said. “Slightly ironic that I became a head teacher.”
I think of May Welland from The Age of Innocence: Hurford has that hard, unyielding brightness. It shines. It lets nothing in. She is a typically Johnsonian Tory; evasive, anti-intellectual and self-obsessed; quick to anger when threatened, slow to change her mind, if she ever does. Every time she speaks, I feel materially closer to autocracy. At the end she says: “This is a fantastic opportunity for a girl that was born and raised and absolutely adores this constituency Tiverton and Honiton”. I wonder if she will burst into song. “Everything that I do will be for the benefit of Tiverton and Honiton because I am Tiverton and Honiton.”
Later I meet Richard Foord. He is not as interesting as Hurford, not being a mad kind of nadir, but he has spoken to hundreds of former Conservatives and, like Pole, he believes the Conservative vote is ebbing. “There are a lot of long-term traditional Conservatives who don’t regard Boris Johnson as a Conservative,” he says. “The most cited reason is that they regard him as lacking in integrity and honesty and for some people these traits are part of their own identity as Conservatives. Some Conservatives do put that above everything else.” There are Johnson loyalists, he adds, “who will stick with him, but I think they are outnumbered by the number of Conservatives who feel they should be better led.”
The next day I find the Liberal Democrat office on Honiton High Street. It is swagged with Union Flags. There are no chairs inside to discourage sitting down, which is not a sign of confidence. An elderly man returns from canvassing in Axminister. He moans that people aren’t budging from the Conservatives — “We are Conservatives,” he reports them saying to him — takes another bundle of leaflets, and leaves disconsolate.
The Honiton Conservative Association, a few doors down, is shuttered. There is a rumour, which I cannot confirm because it is shuttered, that the officers of the Honiton Conservative Association are voting Liberal Democrat. There is a Liberal Democrat sign on the Honiton Conservative Association, but I cannot say who put it there. I think it is a joke.
This by-election is the most depressing I have covered. It feels sunken and shameful, which is not surprising when you consider its origins: a by-election not for constituents, who feel ignored no matter their stripe, but for other people. The media is here, mugging locals and holding up queues in the butchers. They gawp at the nerve of it: as if we are more interested in a prime minister’s fate than a constituency’s. They wonder why they were not always so interesting to us; why we never came here before; if we are irreparably trivial.
I meet aghast and defensive Tories, thwarted Leftists, the undecideds who will choose whether Hurford gets to parliament or not and the eternal, maddening non-voters. But I can’t find the purity of the anger I heard in North Shropshire like a bell. “It’s quite amazing,” a Left-leaning bookseller tells me, his fingers stroking their spines, “how much people will tolerate before they rouse themselves.” I can’t escape the sense that the Tiverton and Honiton is just another distraction: another tiny chapter in the incremental narrative of Boris Johnson’s will to power. I wonder if he is more afraid of boredom or hatred. And we are back to him, again.
Guidance that would have allowed farmers to spread manures and slurry on land in a way that would overload it with nutrients and risk pollution of rivers, lakes and coastal waters has been changed by Defra, after a challenge over its lawfulness.
Manures, which include sewage sludge, abattoir waste and slurries, are a leading source of water pollution. Their application is strictly controlled under what are known as the Farming Rules for Water. But Defra’s guidance had directed the Environment Agency not to enforce a breach of the rules if a farmer produced its own manures or used imported manures that could lead to nutrient overload.
Campaign group Salmon and Trout Conservation wrote to environment secretary George Eustice in April threatening judicial review unless the guidance was withdrawn, saying it was “unlawful, as it tells the Environment Agency that land managers can, in effect, breach the 2018 regulations … and that any such breach should not normally be subject to any enforcement”.
Defra rejected the claim in May, saying that “the proposed challenge is without merit”. But earlier this month the department changed the guidance to remove the loophole.
Guy Linley-Adams, solicitor to Salmon and Trout Conservation, said that if the guidance had remained unamended, the organisation would have “pressed forward with an application for judicial review, because in our view, and in the view of counsel instructed by Salmon and Trout Conservation, the guidance, as originally published, encouraged unlawful acts.
“Farmers and land managers would have read the guidance and believed it to be permission, in effect, to spread too much manure on their land risking serious agricultural pollution of watercourses,” he said.
Defra said the guidance had been amended by Eustice to “clarify guidance to the Environment Agency on assessment of soil and crop need when planning nutrient applications” and that it had done so “in response to questions raised by stakeholders”.
The Farming Rules for Water were introduced in 2018 at a time when the European Commission was threatening to take the UK to the European court over its failure to deal with diffuse agricultural pollution and protect rivers under the Water Framework Directive.
But to date, the Environment Agency has not prosecuted any farmers or landowners for breaking the rules.
Speaking last month in front of the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee, Environment Agency chair Sir James Bevan said the rules were deliberately not enforced for the first couple of years “because the government asked us not to”. He said Defra “asked us to work with farmers through advice and guidance while farmers got used to it”. Bevan said the agency had been “more robust” over the last two years.
Salmon and Trout Conservation’s chief executive, Nick Measham, said the government is not doing enough to deal with agricultural pollution of rivers.
“The pollution on the Wye and many other rivers is often the direct result of farmers spreading chicken manure and cattle slurry carelessly or where it is not needed as a fertiliser. It is a huge problem. Agriculture is a bigger cause of our rivers failing to meet good ecological status than the water industry’s dumping of sewage.”
A series of regulations designed to protect the environment from water pollution are likely to be scrapped in their current form as part of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s plans to axe all remaining EU laws by June 2026, and Defra has said it is planning to reform farm rules towards a more advice-led approach.
“We fear the situation is about to get much worse,” said Measham. “The review of the Farming Rules for Water, the Nitrate Regulations and Silage, Slurry and Agricultural Fuel Oil Storage Regulations, that environment minister Rebecca Pow has confirmed is under way, may lead to wholesale watering down of agri-environment regulations, exposing English rivers to greater threat of pollution.”
There was a clear message to Boris Johnson outside a public meeting to hear from candidates at the Tiverton and Honiton by-election. A group turned up with a giant banner spelling out ‘The Party’s Over Prime Minister’, referring to questions over his leadership following revelations about Downing Street parties during the pandemic.
The stunt outside Tiverton Community Arts Theatre was the idea of account manager Rob Corden. He borrowed the banner from a friend in Newquay, who had put it on a barn. Mr Corden, 42, said: “We are all a bit worried about our political culture. We are all a bit fed up. What did it for me, was Nadine Dorries telling backbenchers to be mindful of Tory donors who had threatened to withdraw funding. I don’t think they represent the people, only the interests of the small elite.”
The message was held by supporters of the community group Local Independents for Tiverton. One woman said: “We’re the electorate, and we’ve had enough of his lies, his corruption and his amorality, and it’s time he went.”
The four candidates at the election meeting, including Conservative Helen Hurford, were already inside the building when the banner arrived. But the issue of Downing Street parties, and the prime minister’s character, cropped up during questions from the public in the 90-minute session at the 300-seat theatre, which is part of Tiverton High School, on a warm Thursday evening.
It was the only public meeting in the run-up to the vote for the Tiverton and Honiton seat on Thursday, to replace Conservative Neil Parish who resigned after watching porn on his phone in the House of Commons chamber. It was chaired by George Parker, a former pupil at the school, who was flanked by the Conservative Helen Hurford and the Green Party’s Gill Westcott on one side, with Labour’s Liz Pole and Liberal Democrat Richard Foord on the other.
One questioner asked the candidates for their “personal view of the moral character of Boris Johnson” following the resignation of his second ethics adviser, which triggered an uproar of shouting, cheers and whistles from the lively audience. Ms Pole said the “lies” and “brazenness” left her almost speechless. “People are just so upset about it, it is such a stain on British politics.” She added: “Boris Johnson has got to go.”
Ms Westcott was concerned that the prime minister “might be seen as one bad apple” but pointed out the Conservative Party voted him in as leader “knowing that he was a liar” and had confirmed him in place when he won a confidence vote. She accused the party of voting to increase poverty by ending the £20 Universal Credit uplift. “They are OK with hungry children, OK with changing the ministerial code,” she added, to shouts and cheers from the audience.
Ms Hurford described ‘Partygate’ as “very Westminsterly”, and said her understanding of the resignation of the second ethics adviser Lord Geidt was due to a commercially sensitive issue. She added: “With regard to our prime minister, I believe the pledges he makes.” She had to speak over a barrage of heckling as she pointed to government achievements. She listed the Covid vaccination programme, £37billion of financial aid to tackle the cost of living crisis, and support for Ukraine against Russia, which had brought praise from the Ukrainian president. Ms Hurford concluded her assessment of Mr Johnson with: “I have no concerns that his pledges are honest.”
Mr Foord for the Liberal Democrats pointed out Mr Johnson was the first prime minister in history to have broken the law. He said: “148 MPs who see him up close and personal voted that they had no confidence in him as the leader of the party. If they have no confidence in him as the leader of the party, why on earth should we have confidence in him as the prime minister of our country?” Mr Foord said the election was a chance for voters to “get the prime minister out.”
A £40million rebuild for Tiverton High School was top of the agenda at the meeting, which was organised by the campaign group Fund Our Tivvy High. The meeting heard that a site has been identified and given outline planning permission, but it was waiting for a decision on funding from the government. A Labour plan to rebuild the school was scrapped by Michael Gove, the education secretary in 2010 when the coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats came to power. All the candidates agreed that the scheme needed to go ahead, but Mr Foord questioned why it had not happened in the 12 years since 2010 when Tiverton had a Tory MP, arguing the town had been bypassed because it was a safe Conservative seat, while Ilfracombe in the marginal North Devon constituency had been given a new school.
The issue focussed attention on the central campaign messages of the Tories and Liberal Democrats. Ms Hurford, a former primary school head teacher, said education funding was a top priority, and argued she was the only candidate who could work with the government to get things done for Tiverton and Honiton. Mr Foord said the Conservatives had taken the area for granted, and the election was a chance to send a message that people wanted change.
On the cost of living crisis, Ms Westcott said the Greens were calling for a £40 increase in Universal Credit, but it needed a long-term solution. Ms Pole said Labour had led on the issue, arguing for a cut in VAT on fuel and a windfall tax on oil firms which the government had eventually done. Mr Foord said a weekly shop had risen by £25 in the last year, while wages had effectively fallen by £65 as energy prices increased. The Liberal Democrats proposed a 2.5 per cent cut in VAT, which would put £600 “back in people’s pockets immediately”. Ms Hurford described it as an unprecedented global crisis which the government had responded to with a £37billion package of financial aid, giving £1,200 to the most vulnerable, and £400 off fuel bills for everyone.
A questioner raised the issue of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda. She described it as “disgraceful”, adding: “I personally feel ashamed at the moment.” Ms Pole described it as “unthinkable”, and Mr Foord said the £500,000 flight was a “gimmick”. Ms Hurford condemned the people smugglers sending people across the Channel from France, and suggested the Rwanda policy would deter people from using illegal routes of entry to the UK.
Outside the theatre, it was unclear how many people had been influenced by what they heard in the debates. One 19-year-old, who will be voting for the first time on Thursday, said he was disappointed by the amount of heckling by people hostile to the Conservatives. He said he was sympathetic to Boris Johnson, who has been getting “a pretty rough time”. One Conservative supporter said it had been a “rough crowd” for their candidate who had handled it well, although other bystanders described her performance as disappointing.
Political commentators are suggesting that the Liberal Democrats are poised to overturn the Conservative majority of more than 24,000 from the 2019 General Election. The Liberal Democrats are cautious about the prospects of making it their third byelection victory in recent months, with a report of their internal polling earlier this week putting them just behind the Tories, but they feel victory is within reach.
Nadine Dorries said she does not fancy the prime minister in an interview on Sunday.
The culture secretary, a long-term ally of Boris Johnson, was responding to questions about why she has supported the prime minister for so long.
LBC presenter Rachel Johnson, who is the prime minister’s sister, said: “I’ve got to ask – perhaps I’m the only person who can ask – but you do look at my brother in a particular way, I’m sure the listeners have seen the memes – the adoring memes.”
Dorries groaned, and claimed: “I’ve had that so many times!
“I look at Keir Starmer in the same way and no-one ever does memes of that, do they?”
The presenter said: “What do you see in him?”
“First of all, I don’t fancy your brother – not a bit,” she added.
“He’ll be gutted,” Johnson replied, to which Dorries said: “I think he knows.”
The culture secretary said she has been pushing for Johnson to become the prime minister since 2012, as she has “always seen the potential in him”.
“It was absolutely obvious, he was always going to be the person who got the Conservatives the kind of majority they deserved and also have the radical agenda we needed to get things done that needed to be done.”
Dorries has been a loyal and particularly vocal defender of the prime minister.
She suggested that Johnson will never be ousted from No.10 through a vote of confidence earlier this year, even as letters of no confidence in Johnson were being handed in by Tory MPs.
She said: “You call him Lord Geidt. I think the rest of the country had never even heard of him before and called him Lord Geddit.
“I don’t think they give a fig who replaces him or who he was or what he did. It’s a bit of a bizarre one isn’t it? Someone who wasn’t elected who has resigned.
“Everybody thought for 24 hours that he was going to resign over something that was going to compromise the prime minister, was suddenly blindsided by the fact that it was something to do with steel tariffs.”
There has been some confusion over why Geidt resigned, with some claiming that it was over steel tariffs.
However, The Telegraph reported over the weekend that Geidt said this reason was a “distraction” from the root causes of his decision to leave his post.
The Liberal Democrats say internal polling has put the party neck and neck with the Conservatives with just two full days of campaigning left before Thursday’s crucial by-election in Tiverton and Honiton.
Ms Hurford is expected to bring more cabinet ministers in to help. But there are no “stars” in the cabinet to call on. They are all lap dogs to “Big Dog”. – Owl
After speaking with 6,000 constituents in the Devon seat over the weekend, pollsters for the Lib Dems put their candidate Richard Foord on 45 per cent of the vote, level with the Tories’ Helen Hurford.
This latest survey of voting intentions suggests the Lib Dems have closed the two-point gap between themselves and the Conservatives that existed at the same point last week.
The poll also puts the Lib Dems ahead of where they were at the same point in the North Shropshire by-election, where they overturned a 23,000 majority to take the seat with a near-6,000 majority of their own.
However, with the Conservatives fighting harder in Tiverton and Honiton than they did in what they considered a safe majority in North Shropshire, Lid Dem insiders remain nervous that their efforts will not be enough to snatch this by-election.
Mr Food said: “This by-election is a very close fight between myself and Boris Johnson’s candidate.”
If the Lib Dems do reverse the huge Tory majority, it would be the largest by-election turnaround since Labour won Liverpool Wavertree from the Conservatives in 1935.
In 2019, Mr Parish won 60 per cent of the vote, with Labour second on 19 per cent and the Lib Dems back in third on 15 per cent.
With two by-election victories against the Tories in Chesham and Amersham last June and North Shropshire in December behind them, the Lib Dems are hoping the momentum will continue.
A spokesman for the Lib Dems said: “With just four days to go it’s neck and neck. We’re now level pegging with the Conservatives and it all comes down to these final days.
“Voters are fed up of being taken for granted by the Conservatives and are rallying behind the Liberal Democrats. We are the only party that can beat Boris Johnson’s candidate. We’re fighting hard for every vote and to bring real change to Devon.”
Ms Hurford is trying to persuade many life-long Tory voters, inclined to stay at home rather than vote for a Prime Minister they have lost faith in after his law-breaking in Downing Street during the Covid-19 lockdowns, to back her.
The Conservatives are also losing votes from farmers in this rural constituency following post-Brexit trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, which many claim will undermine them with cheap and lower quality products coming from these countries.
Farmers are also concerned about the loss of funding from Westminster via the Direct Payments system, which is being phased out and replaced by a Environmental Land Management Scheme in 2027.
The Lib Dems are attempting to bring more Labour, Green and undecided Tory voters over to them in order to claim a victory that will heap further pressure on Mr Johnson as he continues to battle to remain the leader of his party and the nation.
Both sides are also calling on activists to make their way to Devon to help in their respective campaigns, as well as sending down big hitters from Westminster.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, who was in the constituency all weekend, is expected to be knocking on more doors around the constituency in the final two days of the campaign, Mr Foord will also be joined by former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, the party’s Treasury spokeswoman Christine Jardine, education spokeswoman Munira Wilson, and chief whip Wendy Chamberlain.
Tory candidate Helen Hurford was campaigning with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as well as Tory peer and Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes on Saturday, and is expected to bring another batch of Government ministers to the constituency this week.
However, Boris Johnson will steer clear of voters as his the previous safe Tory seat considered to be under threat because of his law-breaking activities in Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdowns.
While Labour’s Ms Pole declined to comment on the Lib Dem poll, she did say she was still fighting for every vote.
She said: “I don’t take any votes for granted, which is why I’m out everyday, across the entire constituency speaking with local people.
“Local people are telling me they’re tired of this Conservative government, the contempt Boris Johnson has shown them and their inability to tackle the cost of living crisis. People are keen for change here in Tiverton and Honiton.”
If the Conservatives lose in Tiverton and Honiton, and in the other by-election on Thursday in the “Red Wall” seat of Wakefield, it is thought backbench Tories may attempt to change party rules to allow another confidence vote in Mr Johnson. Earlier this month, 148 Conservative MPs voted to oust the Prime Minster – four in 10 of his MPs.
While bookmakers continue to make the Lib Dems strong favourites to take the seat, odds for a Conservative victory have shortened in recent days.
The Conservative campaigns was contacted for comment.
Gill Westcott is standing for election (image courtesy: Green Party)
Gill Westcott is one of eight people standing to replace former Conservative MP Neil Parish, with voters going to the polls on Thursday [23 June].
Ahead of the by-election, she has outlined some of the issues facing the constituency – which stretches from Bampton on the edge of Exmoor to Seaton on the Jurassic Coast – saying it is “vital” they are discussed.
“There are huge pockets of deprivation. Finding affordable housing is incredibly difficult. Rural transport is often few and far between. It’s not affordable. It’s not reliable.
“We need a lot more spending on education. There are 7,000 schools across the country that need urgent repairs and Tiverton High School needs a new school. That’s been promised [but] hasn’t materialised.
“Health services are creaking at the scenes. It’s no good recruiting more GPs and nurses if the ones that we have are leaving because they’re so stressed and they’re not supported.”
Mrs Westcott has lived in Devon for 30 years and has been involved in many community projects including helping to set up a trust to provide affordable homes in her Mid Devon village.
She backs increasing universal credit by £40 per week, insulating more homes to reduce energy use and bills, a higher minimum wage, and keeping pensions in line with inflation.
Discussing Devon’s housing crisis, Mrs Westcott says she is “hearing anguish about the lack of rented accommodation in general” and wants more action on behalf of renters.
On the environment, the Green Party’s main focus, she added how much more could be done by the government, criticising how it “seems to be quite happy to move in the opposite direction and encourage drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, which is a more expensive fuel….whereas if we invested in cheaper, renewable energy, we could have a much quicker return in terms of energy and it would be available locally.”
The by-election is taking place after the shock circumstances of Mr Parish’s resignation at the end of April, after he admitted watching pornography in the House of Commons.
Despite calling his actions “reprehensible” and outlining how she “differ[s] hugely from him in political terms,” Mrs Westcott said: “He was a good constituency MP and he spoke up for farmers.”
On his departure, she added: “He did look ashamed. When he spoke about it, he admitted the truth and he resigned, which is more than you can say for some of his colleagues.”
“Tiverton and Honiton needs an MP who has integrity, who tells the truth, who observes the rules, and who is committed to them, including the younger generation.”
In the 2019 general election, the Green Party candidate, Colin Reed, came fourth out of five candidates in Tiverton and Honiton, and lost its deposit with just 2,291 votes. That was a slight improvement on 2017, in which Ms Westcott stood for the Greens and also lost her deposit.
Candidates pay £500 to take part in an election and forfeit it to the Treasury if they don’t receive at least five per cent of the votes.
The Times swiftly withdrew a story that made allegations about the prime minister and his wife after Downing Street intervened to complain about it, No 10 has confirmed.
The piece alleged that Boris Johnson attempted to hire Carrie Symonds, who he has since married, as his taxpayer-funded chief of staff when he was foreign secretary and she was a Conservative party press chief.
The story claimed the plan fell apart when his closest advisers learned of the idea. Johnson was still married to the barrister Marina Wheeler at the time.
A spokesperson for Carrie Johnson said the allegations were “totally untrue”. A Downing Street source described it as a “grubby, discredited story”.
However, the freelance journalist who wrote it, Simon Walters, has defended the article, which appeared on page five of some early print copies of Saturday’s Times but was dropped for later editions after the intervention from No 10.
On Monday Downing Street confirmed it contacted the newspaper on Friday night and asked it to retract the story.
The Times has so far refused to say why it agreed to remove the story although its website has been flooded with comments from readers demanding an explanation.
Political sources with knowledge of the incident have said the original story is correct.
Dominic Cummings, a former adviser to Johnson who has become an arch critic of the prime minister, backed up the original story and went further, suggesting Johnson also attempted to appoint his wife to a government job in late 2020.
The prime minister’s spokesperson said they were unable to comment on Johnson’s activities before he became prime minister but said “others have made clear this story is untrue”.
The spokesperson denied Cummings’s claim that Johnson tried to get his wife a Downing Street job while prime minister.
The decision to remove the story is understood to have been made by Tony Gallagher, the Times’ deputy editor, who was standing in while the editor, John Witherow, was on leave.
A News UK spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on suggestions the company’s chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, was also involved in the discussions.
Guto Harri, the current Downing Street director of communications, was an adviser at News UK, the owner of the Times, between 2012 and 2015.
Contrary to online speculation, there is no superinjunction or specific legal issue preventing reporting of the story.
MailOnline published a rewritten version of the Times story on Saturday, only to also quietly delete it without explanation.
The story that the Times pulled was rereporting an allegation that appeared in a critical biography of Carrie Johnson by the Tory donor and peer Lord Ashcroft. The original accusation remains available online as part of the serialisation of the book – which is still hosted on MailOnline.
Andrew George, formerly MP for St Ives, is calling for intervention at national level. “Since the late 80s, I’ve argued for a new planning use class for non-permanent occupancy,” he says. “So any person wishing to convert an existing property from permanent to non-permanent use would need to apply for planning permission.
“Local communities and authorities could set limitations on this, and there would also be a register of existing second and holiday homes, based on which authorities could apply higher levels of tax.”
“Holiday let, holiday let, holiday let,” says Leo Walker ruefully, as he leads the way through the historic fishing quarter of St Ives in Cornwall, pointing to successive properties.
As the afternoon sunshine breaks through the clouds and gaggles of tourists devour ice-creams at the nearby harbour beach, Walker is reminiscing about how this area – known locally as “downlong” – was once affordable for young renters and was populated with traditional B&Bs.
“I used to pay £25 a week to live here, but those prices are long gone,” he says. “Housing poverty here is not a new thing. Something should have been done about it 20 years ago.”
In 2016, residents in St Ives voted to take action against the scourge of second home ownership. By inserting a “principal residence” condition into the sale of new-build properties, a mechanism known as Policy H2, the St Ives Area Neighbourhood Development Plan hoped to curb the influx of investment buyers, while providing better and more sustainable housing prospects for locals.
Morag Robertson, chair of St Ives Community Land Trust, says: “The policy was designed to temper the feverishness at the edges of the market and to ensure open land was used for housing for local people, not for speculative investments or holiday lets. We think that’s been a success, but we should’ve gone further.
“The town has been sucked out by holiday lets in the last couple of years because H2 doesn’t stop existing properties from being turned into holiday lets. We’ve also faced issues such as no-fault evictions [long-term renters have been forced to leave their properties at short notice when the owners turn their properties into holiday lets]. Maybe we should have tackled the existing market head on. Maybe we weren’t bold enough.”
The average sale price of a home in the heart of St Ives has risen from £336,153 in 2016 to £556,493 this year. Local estate agents attribute some of that increase to heightened demand throughout the south-west since the Covid pandemic, but lifelong resident Vaughan Bennett feels “the horse had already bolted”.
“You won’t hear a St Ives voice here anywhere, it’s now a glorified holiday camp,” he says. “I’m Cornish born and bred; a big chunk of my heritage has gone. I don’t feel good about that.”
Bennett collects waste on behalf of holiday companies in St Ives and feels “conflicted” about being part of such a ravenous tourism industry. “I don’t know what anyone can do about St Ives,” he adds. “Perhaps restrictions will work elsewhere, but not this end.”
Cath Navin, co-founder of campaign group First Not Second Homes, welcomed the news of Whitby’s referendum.
“Amnesty International recently said housing needs to be enshrined in human rights – I agree, it does,” she says. “The way things are now, we’ve lost our moral compass.
“The fact that you’ve got queues of people stepping up for a referendum to change things in Whitby is really important. There are many more honeypot areas like this, and I think more places will follow suit.”
Even the tourists themselves are sympathetic. Paul Thomas and his family live in Upton St Leonards, near the Cotswolds, and say their community has been eroded by second-home owners.
“Houses in our village get bought up by people from London who then lease them out,” Thomas says. “You have to find the right balance between tourism and residential, because tourism does fund these areas.”
However, many academics have criticised the limitations of Policy H2. Among them is Nick Gallent, professor of housing and planning at University College London.
“If you’ve decided to buy a second home in St Ives, do you really want a new redbrick house on a peripheral estate or are you looking for an old fisherman’s cottage by the harbour?” he says. “I think most buyers want the cottage. But H2 hasn’t restricted the sale or usage of existing properties. That’s the problem.
“H2 in St Ives was an act of political theatre because the local authorities needed to be seen to be doing something. That’s not a criticism of them – they’re doing what they can with the powers they have through the planning system.”
Andrew George, formerly MP for St Ives, is calling for intervention at national level. “Since the late 80s, I’ve argued for a new planning use class for non-permanent occupancy,” he says. “So any person wishing to convert an existing property from permanent to non-permanent use would need to apply for planning permission.
“Local communities and authorities could set limitations on this, and there would also be a register of existing second and holiday homes, based on which authorities could apply higher levels of tax.”
As Walker wanders the streets of St Ives pondering the merits of ethical tourism, he describes the current situation as “an economic accident”. Yet he says he is lucky.
“My mum bought a four-bedroom house in 1971 for £15,000 – it’s now worth £1.1m,” he says, pointing “uplong” to their family home on the hillside. “We don’t want to sell it because we live there together. But if it wasn’t for that house, I couldn’t afford to live here because I don’t have a million pounds for a house!”
In the English department on the top floor of Tiverton High School, there are holes in the ceiling. Rain leaked in last year, damaging GCSE coursework. When a tile fell off in the girls’ toilets, asbestos was discovered. There are boarded-up windows, damp patches and mould, peeling paint and signs warning of a “fragile roof”.
Environment Agency officials say the school of 1,400 pupils “is at risk of dangerous flooding, in excess of 1.5m . . . a depth that poses a risk to life”. A county council report says it would cost £16 million to repair.
……Since last spring, the government has chosen 100 schools to be rebuilt. Just over a quarter are in Tory marginals or target seats with a majority of 10 per cent or less, and nearly a fifth (18) are in Tory marginals or target seats with a majority of 5 per cent or less, according to analysis by The Sunday Times.
Adam Wishart, the convenor of Fund Our Tivvy High, said: “This is one of the safest Conservative seats in the country. But people feel let down.
“They have been promised this school would be fixed for more than 15 years. It is rated a ‘good’ school but the buildings are 60 years old and not fit for purpose.”
Wishart, a documentary maker, has two children at primary school who he wants to send to Tiverton High. He added: “We want a school fit for our kids. I am worried about sending mine here because of the Environment Agency warnings.
“The government has agreed to fund 100 schools for rebuilds since February 2021. Only four are in the southwest.”
Christian Wakeford, the former Tory MP who defected to Labour, has said that he was warned when he was a Conservative MP that funding for a new school in his Bury South constituency would be scrapped if he voted against the government.
Wishart added: “Even if you take his [Wakeford’s] testimony with a pinch of salt, we have been concerned that Tiverton and Honiton is being left behind because we aren’t a red wall marginal, and we have a solid Conservative majority. So now we are asking . . . can the Conservative candidate [Helen Hurford] secure a commitment from government to promise the money to rebuild the school before Thursday’s election. Then we can decide how to vote.”
The Liberal Democrat candidate, Richard Foord, 44, a former army major and father of three who lives locally, has made school repairs one of his top priorities, along with reducing ambulance waiting times, forcing water companies to reduce sewage in rivers and cutting VAT by 2.5 per cent.
He says he has a “mountain to climb” to win the seat but many expect the Conservative majority to be slashed. “While it is regarded as a safe seat it does not get the funding it needs,” he said. “The levelling-up money goes to the Midlands and north where the Tories are chasing votes. The southwest is neglected — that is what folk here tell me.”
At hustings in the school with all the by-election candidates on Thursday last week, Hurford said she had told Boris Johnson when he visited Devon to help her to canvass that she backed the school rebuild “100 thousand trillion percent”. When she refused to reveal the prime minister’s response but said his pledges were “honest”, the audience jeered.
Photos dating back to the 1960s show how the problems with the school buildings have escalated. One shows Parish standing next to the head teacher. He is holding a bucket to catch water coming through the roof next to a sign that says ‘Caution: wet floor’.
Kyle Alves, a university lecturer whose daughter Enelle, 11, is in her first year at the school, said: “We can see areas where the roof has leaked, where there has been water damage, there is paint peeling and damp behind walls. This is all noted even in recent surveys.” He fears the “left-behind” and “dingy” buildings will dampen students’ academic aspirations.
Built in 1959, the school, part of a federation of three run by the local authority, was identified as in need of a new building in 2009. A year later, Michael Gove, then education secretary in the new coalition government, scrapped the existing building programme for schools which had been established by Labour in 2006.
School representatives have since met ministers in London several times to beg for help. Once they were told to “sell off school playing fields” to pay for the work.
“I thought, have they read the papers, do they understand it is on a flood plain — who would build houses here?” Sowden said.
Head teachers across the country have had to ask parents to dip into their pockets to repair schools. In one London school, parents recently chipped in to refurbish the staff room; in another, parents held an art auction with postcard-sized works by artists including Tracey Emin to pay for a photographic studio.
But that approach relies on parents with the wherewithal to help. At Tiverton High, Sammy Crook, the head teacher, says parents cannot afford the millions of pounds required. The average salary in Tiverton is about £23,000. In some rural schools, head teachers have volunteered their DIY skills.
Crook is “disappointed and frustrated”. Most head teachers of crumbling schools stay quiet for fear of deterring parents. While private schools embark on ambitious programmes to create state-of-the-art theatres, swimming pools and classrooms, she would be happy with a school that does not leak or flood.
“I accept I am not going to have an Olympic-size swimming pool in a state school. What I don’t accept is that our young people don’t deserve the inspiring facilities any young person should experience, irrespective of whether they go to a private or state school.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “School rebuilding is directed solely by data on the condition of the estate, both from schools themselves and one of the largest, most comprehensive datasets in Europe. The safety of pupils and staff is paramount, and buildings where there is a risk to health and safety will always be prioritised. We have allocated over £13 billion since 2015 to improve their condition, including £1.8 billion this financial year. Our school rebuilding programme will also transform 500 schools over the next decade, prioritising schools in poor condition or with potential safety issues.”
Devon County Council has now launched an independent investigation.
However, “Alison Hernandez, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall, was unavailable for comment.” – how unusual for her, too busy taking selfies perhaps?
Are Devon and Cornwall Police still in denial? – Owl
John Humphreys, who was also a Conservative councillor on East Devon District Council until May 2019, was permitted to continue to mix freely with children for seven years before his eventual conviction despite a warning to county council officials from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in 2014.
The Conservative-run county council has now conceded that it should have shared the referral from the child protection charity regarding Humphreys more widely.
Humphreys, who also served as a primary school governor in Exmouth, was eventually convicted in August last year, and received a sentence of 21 years for raping two boys in the 90s and 2000s. The victims were aged between 12 and 15.
In a letter seen by i, Cllr Andrew Leadbetter, Devon’s cabinet member for children’s services and schools, confirmed the NSPCC’s concerns around Humphreys’ behaviour after Independent county councillor Jess Bailey raised questions about the case.
Cllr Leadbetter wrote: “I can confirm that the Local Authority Designated Officer (Lado) received a referral via the NSPCC in 2014.
“As part of the Lado process, our officers discussed the case with the police. The police were already aware of the individual and allegations that had been made and advised us that there was not enough evidence to investigate further, and it was agreed that no further action would be taken.”
Cllr Leadbetter added that the council had “evaluated the response” to the NSPCC referral and had concluded that “we should have held a multiagency meeting to share information and consider what if any next steps could be taken”.
A spokesman for Devon County Council said: “We are reviewing the decisions that the council made at that time, and will be undertaking an independent review to ensure that our service is robust and effective, implementing learning arising from that review.”
While the NSPCC was unable to comment on its referral to the council regarding Humphreys on confidentiality grounds, i understands it related to the councillor having continued access to schools despite the allegations made against him to police and council officials years earlier.
Referrals from the NSPPC are made when it believes the information given to it should receive further assessment from an external agency, such as the police or a local authority.
Paul Arnott, the elected leader of East Devon District Council (EDDC) who compared Humphreys’ modus operandi to prolific predatory sex offender Jimmy Savile, said: “I have done as much as I can to ensure that the victims have a voice.
“One has informed me now that he alerted the NSPCC in 2014 to the ongoing risk of Humphreys’ access to minors at local educational establishments.
“It is my understanding that this was the nature of the NSPCC referral made to Devon County Council.”
Cllr Arnott previously told i that Humphreys’ behaviour bore a worrying similarity to that of paedophile Jimmy Savile.
In May, i revealed that at least one unelected official at EDDC had also been made aware of the child sexual assault allegations made against him in in 2016.
Despite this information, the district council continued to permit Humphreys to serve as a councillor, attend civic events where children were present, and awarded him its highest accolade of Alderman in December 2019, just two months before his case was passed to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Asked if district council officials were also aware of the NSPCC referral regarding Humphreys to the county council in 2014, EDDC declined to comment.
Mr Arnott, who became EDDC leader after an independent, Liberal Democrat and Green alliance took control of the council after 45 years of Conservative control, added: “Since Humphreys’ historic 21-year sentence 10 months ago, the local and national Conservative Party, Simon Jupp MP, the police and the County Council have adopted a blood-from-a-stone communications strategy.
“What right-minded person would not now see this as a conspiracy of silence involving different entities over two decades? Why did they not make a clean breast of their various involvements and what they knew on the day Humphreys was jailed?”
In a written statement the victim, who was sent by his school to work at Humphreys’ gardening business in 1999, wrote: “My mum took me to Exmouth Police Station where I made a full signed statement,” he said.
“Then I heard nothing at all, except I was regularly harassed by local police officers afterwards. In 2005 they just said that the case had been dropped.”
When the crimes of Jimmy Savile emerged in 2012, the victim says he decided to call the police again. However, it was not until a second victim came forward to police in 2015 that the investigation was re-opened.
Asked if Devon and Cornwall Police would launch its own investigation into its handling of the case, a spokesman said: “There are no current matters of police conduct that would require referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.”
However, the police added that its approach to investigating sexual offences, both current and historical, “is all but unrecognisable from the early 2000s, both in how we approach investigations through to how victims are supported.”
Ms Bailey suggested Devon County Council’s failure to review its handling of the case until now could lead accusations of a cover-up.
“A very worrying pattern is emerging. Now we have Conservative run Devon County Council apparently failing in its safeguarding response to Humphreys in 2014, then also failing to examine its actions in the ten months since his conviction,” said Ms Bailey.
“Surely, when there were so many red flags as there were in the Humphreys case you would have expected Devon County Council to have reviewed its response.
“Instead, it remained silent and only provided information and initiated a review when they were forced to do so by my direct questions. This silence will lead many people to wonder whether there has been some kind of cover-up.”
“We still do not know how Humphreys, whilst under criminal investigation for very serious offences against children, was allowed to continue being a Conservative councillor.”
Alison Hernandez, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall, was unavailable for comment.
The former anti-sleaze MP Martin Bell has urged voters to turn this week’s byelections into a referendum on the “loss of trust in public life”, as he warned that Boris Johnson’s conduct had slipped well below those of the government he successfully stood against in the 1990s.
Bell ran as an anti-sleaze unity candidate in the Cheshire constituency of Tatton in 1997, in the wake of a series of scandals that helped sink John Major’s government. However, he said that the attempts by Johnson to change rules for political ends meant things were “worse now”.
In an interview with the Observer, he called on Labour voters to vote tactically to unseat the Tories in Tiverton and Honiton, where the Lib Dems are attempting to overturn a huge 24,000 majority. He said it was similar to the majority he had had to overturn in Tatton to defeat disgraced Conservative Neil Hamilton.
“Obviously, local issues are going to be important,” he said. “But just the way that events have fallen, it is in a sense a sort of referendum on the present practice of politics and the loss of trust in public life. I really think we’re in a worse place than we were in 1997, simply because the government keeps trying to change the rules to its advantage. I think the people in both Wakefield and Tiverton have a wonderful opportunity to send a message that ‘up with this we will not put’.”
He said that the attempt last year to change Commons rules to help Owen Paterson avoid censure after a lobbying scandal, combined with the resignation of Johnson’s second ethics adviser, Lord Geidt, meant voters should send the prime minister a message about his government’s conduct. “Honestly, as bad as things were in the 1990s – in the first age of sleaze, if I may put it like that – I think they’re worse now. I was so much struck by the Owen Paterson affair last November and the attempt by the government to change the rules. The idea that you replace the committee on standards with one of your own choosing struck me as gerrymandering.
“Every week it gets worse. The government redraws the code of conduct, it puts [Geidt] in an impossible position. The Lib Dems have a much harder task in Tiverton than Labour does in Wakefield, but I know from experience that it is doable.”
Bell said that those loyal to Labour who wanted to vote for the party in Tiverton were able to do so. Unlike in his victory in 1997, Labour has not stood aside. However, he said that anyone who helped unseat the Conservatives would relish being on the “winning side”.
“Individual enthusiasts, if they’re Labour in Tiverton or a Lib Dem voter in Wakefield, they are not disenfranchised, they still have a candidate to vote for. But I think there’s a strong case for them to vote tactically. If the Tories managed to hold on to Tiverton, I think they’ll see it as a great success. But I cannot remember a byelection which is likely to have a greater national impact than these two because of the peculiar situation in which we find ourselves.
“If you’re going to be made really unhappy by not voting for your Labour candidate, you’ve got someone to vote for. But think of the impact that you can make by being, for once, on the winning side. Even the minority of Labour supporters in Tatton who really did not like the idea being thrust upon them of an outsider coming in were absolutely delighted to see the back of Neil Hamilton. I think the voters have a huge opportunity to just send a very strong message to Downing Street on Thursday.”
Having bright colours and greenery in our cities can make people happier and calmer, according to an unusual experiment involving virtual reality headsets.
A team of researchers at the University of Lille, in France, used VR to test how volunteers reacted to variations of a minimalist concrete, glass and metal urban landscape. The 36 participants walked on the spot in a laboratory wearing a VR headset with eye trackers, and researchers tweaked their surroundings, adding combinations of vegetation, as well as bright yellow and pink colours, and contrasting, angular patterns on the path.
By tracking their blink rate, the researchers learned about what the volunteers were most interested in. The participants then filled out a questionnaire about their experience.
The researchers found that the volunteers walked more slowly and their heart rate increased when they saw green vegetation in their urban setting. They also kept their heads higher, looking forward and around, instead of towards the ground. While adding and taking away colour didn’t make quite as much of a difference for the participants, they were more curious and alert when colourful patterns were added to the ground they were virtually stepping on, according to the study. According to Yvonne Delevoye-Turrell, a professor of cognitive psychology at the university and the lead author on this study, the results demonstrated that the urban experience had been made more pleasurable.
The research, published on Friday in Frontiers in Virtual Reality, suggests that making some small tweaks to the city boosts morale, even when people are experiencing them through virtual reality. “We think that the variations in human behaviour obtained in virtual reality can predict the changes that would be obtained in the natural settings,” said Delevoye-Turrell.
Michal Matlon, an architecture psychologist and consultant, who was not involved in the study, said: “I think that though most people appreciate nature in cities – they find it beautiful, and they usually react with anger when it’s taken away – they don’t fully understand how beneficial spending time in nature is.
“We often underappreciate the compounding effects that enriching ordinary places with nature can have.”
Matlon said even the smallest of changes, as demonstrated in the study, could affect the experience of someone on their way to work, for example.
The findings are part of a growing body of research into the restorative effects of vegetation and colour in urban settings.
However, Steffen Lehmann, a professor of architecture at the University of Nevada, in the US, who was not involved in the study, wondered whether a VR simulation could provide the input to back up the thesis. He said he was also concerned that the study was reductive.
“It is not particularly useful to build a scientific argument on the dichotomy, ‘concrete versus vegetation’,” he said. “[This issue] requires a more differentiated and nuanced discussion.”
Delevoye-Turrell said using VR to carry out the study was fundamental to the experiment, because testing the elements in real-life environments would mean very little control of the distractions participants experience, such as noise, traffic or weather changes.
“We have reached the technological capacities to produce a virtual environment that offers similar immersive experiences, [in contrast to] the natural settings,” said Delevoye-Turrell.
In future research, she said she planned to also measure physiological changes, such as temperature, and add smells and sound to create multi-sensory, immersive environments.
Exeter will miss its target to become a carbon neutral city by 2030 unless emissions reduce significantly, a new report by the city council’s CEO reveals.
The building sector has the highest emissions (35 per cent) followed by power (24 per cent) and transport (22 per cent). Levels from each of the remaining sectors are seven per cent or less.
The council declared a climate emergency in 2019 and pledged to work towards creating a net zero city by 2030. The target is 20 years in advance of the 2050 target set nationally.
Since January, its chief executive Karime Hassan has also been working on the city’s carbon neutral goal at Exeter City Futures, a community interest company.
Exeter currently produces just under half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide (equivalent) per year, according to a report by Mr Hassan to a council scrutiny committee, a reduction of around a third since 2008.
The report outlines how reaching the target by 2030 requires a “much greater reduction” in emissions and says significant private investment will be needed, well in excess of what the council can afford on its own.
The drop in emissions in Exeter since 2008, when they were estimated at 717 thousand tonnes of CO2, is due to ‘grid decarbonisation’ – moving away from fossil fuels like coal – which has taken place outside Exeter.
However, the current level of reducing emissions because of grid decarbonisation will not continue. Even if it did, Exeter would still be producing 291,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2030 based on current trends – “nowhere near net zero,” the report says.
Local sector reductions in buildings and transport emissions have failed to even meet previous targets set in 2007, with a lack of progress in these areas described as “particularly concerning.”
The building sector has the highest emissions (35 per cent) followed by power (24 per cent) and transport (22 per cent). Levels from each of the remaining sectors are seven per cent or less.
The document says: “Growth in the city is leading to increases in emissions and the decarbonisation of electricity cannot continue to make up for the shortfalls in these sectors. The city needs to make significant progress in buildings and transport to deliver net zero.”
Emissions from Exeter’s buildings have “hardly changed since 2008,” it adds, with almost half of the city’s homes estimated to still need more loft insulation.
Exeter has a target of 42,200 homes to be powered by heat pumps by 2030, as gas boilers are phased out, but only 449 homes currently have such a heating system.
Emissions from transport remain “stubbornly high,” the report says, stating that huge increases in electric car ownership, charging points and active travel (walking and cycling) will be needed to meet the 2030 target.
Reductions in waste emissions have also failed to materialise, with levels described as being “similar over the past four years.”
The UK’s carbon budget – a set of national targets enshrined in law – includes increasing recycling rates to 70 per cent by 2030. However, Exeter is way off meeting this target.
Just 28 per cent of the city’s waste was recycled in 2020/21 – a figure slammed as “appalling” earlier this year by one councillor who criticised the lack of a universal food waste collection service.
Kerbside collections are being be rolled out, but not particularly quickly. Currently Alphington only has access to the service, meaning most of the city’s unwanted food ends up in general rubbish. Exeter residents still have to take glass to bottle banks if they want them to be recycled, unlike most of Devon.
The council blames vehicle and driver shortages for the delays.
In the report, a senior officer says the carbon reduction findings explain “in stark terms the challenges to deliver net zero. From a financial point of view, the scale of investment required is far in excess of that which the council can afford.”
They added the authority “set aside £1 million a year ago in order to provide some resource to the project, but this in itself is clearly a tiny fraction of what is required.”
Despite this, the report concludes it is “broadly understood” what needs to be done to make Exeter carbon neutral. This includes replacing all gas boilers with heat pumps, replacing all fossil fuel cars with electric ones, producing more renewable energy from extra solar panels, retrofitting homes, improving recycling rates and “massively” increasing cycling.
“There are plenty of political, financial, legal, technical and supply chain reasons why this may be extremely challenging to deliver by 2030,” it warns, but adds there will be “opportunities for the local economy, investment, labour demand, and innovation in technology.”
A by-election deep in once-safe Conservative territory threatens to upend British politics. For the parties fighting it, the stakes are huge – but they’re picking their battles in very different ways.
It’s a hot summer morning in mid-Devon and Kayleigh Diggle stands in the bookshop she runs, feeling conflicted. The 32-year-old, who normally supports the Greens, is annoyed with the Conservative government and is considering a tactical vote for the Liberal Democrats. But the sheer relentlessness of latter’s campaign makes her recoil.
“It’s their constant leafleting,” says Kayleigh. She’s sick, too, of looking at the party’s Day-Glo yellow-and-black diamond-shaped posters (“Winning here!”) everywhere she goes. “It’s very, very, over-the-top.”
Voters in Tiverton and Honiton aren’t used to anyone having to fight quite this hard for their votes.
Kayleigh Diggle
Sprawling from the fringes of Exmoor to a stretch of the Jurassic Coast, this cluster of villages and market towns was seen until recently as an extremely safe Conservative seat.
Then erstwhile MP Neil Parish admitted watching pornography in Parliament after, by his own account, searching online for tractors.
Now there’s a by-election to replace him. Partygate, turmoil on the Tory benches and the cost of living crisis have made the 23 June vote a crucial test of the public’s mood.
And with another by-election taking place on the same day in the northern “Red Wall” battleground of Wakefield, Tiverton and Honiton has been tasked with delivering an interim verdict from the Tories’ southern base on Boris Johnson’s government.
The Lib Dems came third here in 2019, while the Conservative winning margin was a gargantuan 24,239. But having recently won a brace of safe Tory seats at by-elections in Chesham and Amersham and North Shropshire, Lib Dem campaigners have poured into the seat.
However, the Conservatives are also battling hard to hold on to what was theirs, albeit with a lower-key, tightly controlled strategy that couldn’t be more different to the Lib Dems’ electoral shock and awe.
And despite talk of an informal alliance between opposition parties, Labour’s candidate, who came second here in 2019, insists she hasn’t given up the fight, either.
On Honiton’s handsome Georgian High Street, Jubilee bunting flutters against the florists and tea rooms. It’s here that the Lib Dems have set up one of their campaign headquarters in an empty shop unit.
Inside, a crudely sketched map on the wall shows where party volunteers have travelled from – Orkney, Carlisle, Kingston-upon-Hull. The party say that last weekend, 350 activists knocked on 14,000 doors.
Piles of leaflets are carefully arranged into neat bundles by polling district. Canvassers are given issues specific to each area to discuss – river pollution in Axminster, for instance, or lack of dental services here in Honiton.
In charge of directing volunteers today is Chessie Flack, 24. What gives her a political identity, she says, is “this perfect Lib Dem machine of a load of activists in socks and sandals, and they knock on every door in the constituency and they win the campaign”.
But no-one is under any illusions that overturning such a huge majority will be easy.
Chessie Flack
In a cafe across the street, the party’s candidate Richard Foord empties a pile of miniature marshmallows into his hot chocolate and stirs. Bookmakers have named him the favourite to win but he knows he’ll need all the energy he can summon.
“I think we can’t entirely take at face value the bookies’ odds as a predictor or a forecast of this election outcome,” Foord says.
“We are absolutely working for every single vote but recognising that there’s a mountain to climb, frankly.”
Richard Foord
In his Tattersall shirt, Foord, who lives locally, looks like he’s stepped out of the pages of Country Life magazine. He has the military bearing, too, of a man who spent a decade in the Army, having risen to the rank of major. On the front page of a leaflet distributed by his campaign, he is pictured in uniform above the slogan: “I served my country. Now I’m fighting for Devon.”
Along with the Union Jack bunting in the window of the campaign office, this looks a lot like a pitch to the 58% of voters in the seat who voted to leave the EU.
Earlier in the day I spotted Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, on a train heading west, and asked if his party’s “Stop Brexit” slogan under former leader Jo Swinson in 2019 damaged its chances here in 2022. He was emphatic that it didn’t: “Traditionally we’ve been strong in rural communities, Liberal Democrats have been strong in the West Country,” said Sir Ed. “So in many ways this is going back to where our roots are.”
Helen Hurford
In a 1980s estate on the fringe of Tiverton, the sun blazes down on a near-empty car park outside a community centre. Half an hour ago, the phone in my pocket buzzed and a Tory press officer summoned me here to meet candidate Helen Hurford.
Previously, the Independent reported that she had been “ordered not to speak to the media”. The Financial Times wrote that she “was being shielded from the national media” and the Times described her as “somewhat elusive”.
But now a car pulls up and out steps Hurford, in a blue dress and trainers. With a broad smile, she flatly rejects the suggestion that she’d been kept hidden from the press corps.
“If you’d wanted to find me you could have just followed me around, knocking on the doors – you would have easily found me,” she says.
Her focus, she suggests, is on the residents of Tiverton and Honiton, not reporters: “The people of the constituency come first.”
She talks about the need to improve the area’s road and rail network and support local farmers. Hurford emphasises, too, that she was born and brought up in Honiton and was the head teacher at a local school. “She has probably taught a large part of the population around here,” says local Conservative activist Luis Gordon.
It’s not the only way in which the Conservative campaign appears to have been carefully managed. While Johnson has visited the constituency during the campaign, his appearances have been low-key and without advance fanfare.
The Lib Dems have accused the prime minister of “hiding away” – but equally, it makes sense for the Tories not to take risks. “It’s a small-C and big-C Conservative area,” says Dr Hannah Bunting, a political scientist at the University of Exeter. “It would really be remarkable if we saw the seat changing hands, even under the current conditions.”
Privately, senior Lib Dem insiders concede that the Conservatives are taking this contest a lot more seriously than they did prior to their December 2021 defeat in North Shropshire.
And while national issues might be a headache for the Tory campaign, it’s not clear that the circumstances of Neil Parish’s departure are having much of an impact. The former MP, a farmer himself, enjoyed a lot of goodwill among the agricultural community, according to Richard Tucker, chair of the local National Farmers Union.
Richard Tucker
“As farmers we felt we were well represented in this area,” adds Tucker. At a recent NFU hustings, he says, “all the candidates were pretty open in acknowledging that they weren’t as agriculturally qualified as Neil. But they’re all open to learning – well, they’ve got to be.”
Issues they’ll need to have brushed up on include the government’s new food strategy, the phasing out of taxpayer-funded direct payments to farmers under an EU scheme and the surging cost of fertiliser – all of huge concern to those working in agriculture locally.
Among those contesting the by-election are the United Kingdom Independence Party, which came second in the seat in 2015, and Reform UK, which shares some of its political DNA, having also once been led by Nigel Farage.
The Green Party, which attracted more than 2,000 votes here in 2019, is also standing again.
Above all, what seems to motivate Conservative activists is the suggestion that Labour – who are concentrating their fire on Wakefield – have agreed to give the Lib Dems a free run in Tiverton and Honiton. Both opposition parties strenuously deny there has been any kind of formal agreement.
But Chris Daw, a local councillor who has been campaigning for Hurford, is visibly riled at the notion of any stitch-up. “It annoys me because I think, you know, let’s just be honest with each other,” she says. “Not just put out hints. I believe they should be straight up front and say what they’re doing.”
If anyone could confirm or deny the existence of a pact, it’s Liz Pole. This is the second time she has stood as Labour’s candidate in Tiverton and Honiton. On the previous occasion, in 2019, she earned more than 11,000 votes while finishing second, albeit distantly.
Over tea in a cafe in Cullompton, in the west of the constituency, Pole is emphatic that there has been no deal. “That is definitely not part of my political DNA whatsoever,” she says. “I’m fighting to win this constituency, I want to see Labour thriving and growing.”
Liz Pole
However, Pole, who runs a software business and has lived locally for 20 years, admits it’s “frustrating” to read articles anointing the Lib Dems as the main challengers. Remarks by nearby Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw were interpreted as calling for a Lib Dem win, although Pole says his comments were “taken a little bit out of context”.
While Labour’s big beasts, including party leader Keir Starmer and deputy Angela Rayner, have flocked to Wakefield, it’s harder to detect them in this part of Devon. Asked about this, Pole replies that she’s expecting a visit from shadow food, farming and fisheries minister Daniel Zeichner – a frontbencher, certainly, but perhaps not one with the greatest box-office appeal.
So Pole is getting help from closer to home. She says Labour has activists in each of the seat’s 24 wards and their campaign will go into each of them with her messages about affordable housing, the cost of living crisis and food strategy.
Richard Clarke, 49, has travelled here from Cawsand, south-east Cornwall, to campaign for Pole. He says that on the doorstep, voters are receptive to what she’s saying.
“People know we need a change of government – and people also know that needs to be a Labour government, because obviously you don’t get Liberal governments, unless you’re living in 1906,” he says.
There’s a sense among Labour’s activists, however, that the by-election has come at an inopportune time for the party.
Broader trends suggest traditional north-south political divides are being upended and in 2021’s local elections Labour won district council seat in Honiton, its first in East Devon for more than two decades. Parish’s resignation, some volunteers feel, interrupted that momentum.
“Voters are looking for a home, I think, and a by-election isn’t necessarily the best time to find that,” says retired academic Paul Furlong, 73, from Aveton Gifford in south Devon.
Nonetheless, Tiverton and Honiton has until Thursday to find a berth, temporary or otherwise.
Boris Johnson’s former ethics adviser has said the reason given by Downing Street for his resignation was a “distraction” and doubled down on claims that the government wanted to break international law.
After he dramatically quit this week, Christopher Geidt said his explanation had used too much “cautious language” leading to “some confusion about the precise cause of my decision”.
In Lord Geidt’s initial letter to No 10 on Wednesday, he said he had been asked to give advice on an “odious” breach of the ministerial code. The response from Johnson suggested this was over a plan to extend steel tariffs in contravention of World Trade Organization rules.
However, after much mystery over why Geidt decided to quit over this issue and not greater concerns around Partygate, he issued a “clarification about the reasons for my departure”. “There has been some confusion about the precise cause of my decision,” he wrote in a letter to the Tory MP William Wragg, the chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee (PACAC).
“My letter has been interpreted to suggest that an important issue of principle was limited to some narrow and technical consideration of steel tariffs. The cautious language of my letter may have failed adequately to explain the far wider scope of my objection.”
Geidt, a former private secretary to the Queen, said the emphasis on the steel tariffs issue was a distraction and “simply one example of what might yet constitute deliberate breaches by the United Kingdom of its obligations under international law, given the government’s widely publicised openness to this”.
While the explicit reference to international law was removed from the ministerial code in 2015, Geidt said there was “no explicit derogation, no let-off written into the code to absolve individual ministers of their own obligations”. He said given his commitment to integrity, “I could not be a party to advising on any potential law-breaking”.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said Geidt had quit “because of the odious behaviour of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street”, and added: “It’s high time for Tory MPs to do the decent thing by showing this rotten, rule-breaking prime minister the door.”
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Karin Smyth, a Labour MP who sits on PACAC, said the Geidt letter had provided “helpful clarity”, but that “it isn’t steel that broke the camel’s back”.
The government was accused earlier in the week of threatening to breach international law by publishing plans to unilaterally override the Northern Ireland protocol signed by Johnson as part of his Brexit deal.
Westminster insiders speculated that Geidt could have been referring to the issue without explicitly referencing it in his latest letter when he referred to concerns about ministers breaking international law.
Geidt is the second ethics adviser to quit under Johnson. In November 2020 Alex Allen stepped down after his finding that the home secretary, Priti Patel, had breached the ministerial code by bullying staff was brushed aside by No 10.
Downing Street has launched a review of the ethics adviser role and has not confirmed whether it will replace Geidt.
The Conservative candidate in the Tiverton & Honiton by-election was jeered and heckled by an angry crowd last night [Thursday] as she tried to dodge questions on Boris Johnson’s integrity.
Helen Hurford, the owner of a beauty salon, was met with hostility at the only hustings held before the ballot next Thursday.
The by-election was triggered by the resignation of Neil Parish, the Tory MP who was forced to stand down after he admitted to watching porn in the House of Commons.
The Liberal Democrats are hoping to overturn a huge Tory majority of 24,239 and deliver another blow to Johnson after the prime minister narrowly survived a vote of no confidence last week.
The party secured by-election upsets last year in the traditionally Conservative safe seats of Chesham & Amersham and North Shropshire.
At the hustings, which took place in Tiverton High School, Hurford was asked what she made of the resignation of Lord Geidt, who stood down as the prime minister’s adviser on ministerial standards on Wednesday.
“In light of the resignations of two ethics advisers in less than two years, what is your personal view on the moral character of Boris Johnson?” a member of the audience asked.
Hurford said that Johnson was “honest in relation to the pledges he makes”, but did not give her own view on his moral character.
As she tried to list the government’s achievements in rolling out the coronavirus vaccine and providing military support to Ukraine, her response was increasingly drowned out by angry cries of “shame” and “answer the question”.
“It is very easy to stand on the sidelines and attack and be aggressive,” Hurford retorted. “What I am hearing on the doorsteps is people are fed up of it. They are sick to death of it. And what they want to hear is how we are going to support them with the cost of living which is affecting us all.”
Pressed about whether she had any concerns about Johnson’s character, Hurford said: “I have no concerns that his pledges are honest.” Her answer was greeted with boos and jeers.
Johnson visited Tiverton & Honiton last week, where he held a private meeting with Hurford and a group of farmers.
The Conservatives have stepped up their campaign with Michael Gove, the housing secretary, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, among those to go canvassing in east Devon.
I imagine that most readers are simply exasperated that Boris Johnson, despite being so comprehensively disgraced, has still not gone. He has lost the confidence of the public in Devon and across the country, but he continues to cling to power. Finally, his MPs managed to hold a vote of no confidence and many of them voted against him. But it seems that still the majority will back him come what may.
In their party best: Hurford and Johnson hiding from the public together for a photo-opportunity in a supporter’s garden.
The spinelessness of East Devon’s Conservatives
It is sadly no surprise to find that our local Conservative representatives appear to be among these. Simon Jupp, the MP for the East Devon constituency, had said he was waiting for the Sue Gray report to make up his mind. Well the Metropolitan Police issued Johnson with a fixed penalty, Gray issued a damning report, and still Mr Jupp had nothing to say. We must assume he’s one of the MPs who backed Johnson but was too ashamed of it to let his constituents know. Maybe Johnson promised to make him a junior minister for paper clips next time round?
What is it with the East Devon Conservatives? Having produced over the last decade one councillor, Graham Brown, who was caught offering to fix planning for large sums of money, an Alderman, John Humphreys, who was convicted of appalling rapes, and now an MP, Neil Parish, who had to resign for watching porn in the House of Commons, the rest of them just seem to be particularly spineless.
Certainly their by-election candidate in the Tiverton and Honiton constituency, Helen Hurford, is in no hurry to break the rule. Still silent on virtually all the issues of the day, Ms Hurford sat out the Johnson confidence vote and waited until the prime minister had won before making a comment, to the effect that she gave him her support. If voters are misguided enough to return her to Parliament on June 23rd, don’t expect her to be outspoken about East Devon’s interests – or anything else.
A captive of the party machine
We only have to look at Ms Hurford’s campaign literature to see that this very inexperienced politician – she only recently became a town councillor – has already become captive to her party machine. How else to explain that she put out a leaflet addressed to the voters of ‘Tiverton, Honiton and the surrounding villages’, seemingly unaware that Seaton, Axminster and Cullompton are substantial towns? The leaflet was clearly written by some advertising person from London, but why didn’t the candidate put them right?
More serious was the leaflet on yellow paper which contained a collection of smears and distortions about the Liberal Democrats. The leaflet had Ms Hurford’s name in tiny print at the bottom but no indication at all that it was produced by the Conservatives. This leaflet has now attracted national notoriety – why didn’t the candidate veto it?
Most concerning of all to me was that she used Seaton’s community hospital for a photo opportunity, claiming that there are hundreds of new nurses ‘in our area’. This is the hospital that lost its beds and was almost demolished for housing development because of her government’s policies and the refusal of Devon Conservative councillors to block the closures. Given the national shortage of beds, the hospital ward could be put back to use – but the shortage of nurses is so chronic that it probably couldn’t be staffed as things stand.
Support Richard Foord on the 23rd
This is my last column before the by-election, in which we have the chance to end decades of being taken for granted by complacent Conservative MPs. Richard Foord, the Liberal Democrat candidate, has been on the doorsteps in Seaton and Axminster and is running an honest – and vocal – campaign. I will not be going as far as my East Devon Alliance colleague, Paul Arnott, and actually joining the Liberal Democrats. I intend to remain independent of any national party. But I urge all my readers to support Mr Foord on the 23rd.
Vanlifers are are people who live in a car or van either part time or full time.
The Journal understands there have been caravans and motor homes parked in on the site behind the Marks and Spencer Foodhall, in Royal Avenue, for around three months.
The site is owned by East Devon District Council (EDDC), however, the authority has confirmed that the site was re-regulated as a car park to facilitate works to improve the town’s sea defences.
This has left the council powerless to stop motor homes and caravans parking there.
EDDC says it is looking at future regulation of the site.
An EDDC spokesman said: “We are aware of a number of vanlifers who have been using the area behind Marks and Spencer, in Royal Avenue, in Exmouth.
“The car park was de-regulated as part of the tidal defence work to allow it to be used as a construction compound and site office, and so far a new parking places order has not been applied, this means we cannot stop campers and motorhomes parking there at this time.
“The council is currently considering the future regulation of the site and it will be discussed next month, at a campervans and motorhomes car park workshop.”
Fairlynch Museum 27 Fore Street Budleigh Salterton EX9 6NPRef. No: 22/1300/TCA | Validated: Fri 10 Jun 2022 | Status: Awaiting decision
East Devon Watch 