Britain’s outgoing chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, narrowly held onto his seat in Parliament on Friday, in a testament to the extraordinarily difficult political environment facing the Conservative Party in Britain’s general election.
Mr. Hunt won 42.6 percent of the vote in Godalming and Ash, a new constituency created after local boundaries were redrawn, but that includes much of the area he has represented since 2005. The candidate placing second, Paul Follows of the centrist Liberal Democrats, took 41 percent.
With picture-postcard villages, country pubs and an unmistakable air of affluence, there are few greater strongholds for the Conservatives than Surrey, where voters chose Mr. Hunt as a lawmaker in five consecutive elections. But this campaign, he told The New York Times in an interview last month, “was definitely the toughest it’s ever been.”
The fact that the second most powerful man in the government saw himself as the underdog was testament to the scale of the threat facing the Conservatives.
Angry at economic stagnation, the impact of Brexit and a crisis in public services after years of government austerity, many traditional Tory voters were deserting the party in the prosperous English districts that have long provided its most reliable support, according to pre-election opinion polls.
In places like Chiddingfold — a leafy village 50 miles southwest of London where the local pub dates from the 14th century — the most potent election threat came not from Labour but from the centrist Liberal Democrats, or Lib Dems, whose poll ratings had been rising before the election. The party’s more moderate brand of politics is more palatable to conservative-leaning voters unwilling to switch to Labour.
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