Jeremy Hunt has pulled off a dramatic Houdini act – the great escape of the election campaign.
When the exit poll predicted a Labor slide and massive losses for the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, according to him, were extremely happy and hopeful of achieving the most spectacular victory of election night.
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But when the result was declared at 4:40am, Hunt managed to go home with a majority of 891 votes after a series of recounts.
“You came here to see my death!” — the Chancellor said to me, smiling, as he left the Earl at the Edge Leisure Center in Haslemere.
And a member of his team confided to me: “We knew at 11:30 pm that we were going to win”.
There is confidence for you.
Mr Hunt’s great escape is a stunning personal triumph and a reward for the tireless hard work and campaigning he has undertaken in his new constituency of Godalming and Ash over the past six weeks.
He has proven himself as an example to his colleagues that a formidable challenge from political opponents can be overcome even when the odds are massively stacked against you.
But he and his team were not so confident of victory during a campaign that Hunt described as “grueling” in his graceful victory speech, in which he was also magnanimous towards Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.
During the campaign, Mr. Hunt’s defeat was widely predicted. He even warned his children: “Dad may not be chancellor, he may not be a deputy after the elections.”
And in an election in which several members of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet lost their seats, Hunt would have been by far the biggest victim of the Tory defeat.
A political career that included four ministerial positions, including two of the so-called “great state positions” – Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Chancellor – would certainly have come to an end.
He would also have been the first Chancellor of the Exchequer to lose his seat at a general election, an unenviable record.
A Liberal Democrat defeat would have been compared to that of Michael Portillo, then Defense Secretary, in Labour’s landslide victory of 1997. He even admitted during the campaign that he might be the victim of “a Portillo moment”.
His task was made even more difficult by the timing of the general election and the rush to the polls, which infuriated many Conservative MPs.
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Following Sunak’s shock announcement of a vote on 4 July, on 22 May it was claimed that Hunt was in favor of waiting until the autumn before holding a general election.
The hope, according to conventional wisdom among Conservative MPs, was that interest rates would fall, voters would feel the benefits of his national insurance cuts and he could reduce NI further.
Loyally, however – whatever his private thoughts – Mr Hunt publicly supported the 4th of July elections, telling The Mail on Sunday during the campaign: “The fact that we have had two significant tax cuts which have not changed The surveys actually show me that having a third party with the same problem probably won’t change the calculation.
“The Bank of England’s view is that there is an 18-month delay between the change in interest rates and their impact on people’s finances… hence the idea that there is a fall in interest rates and suddenly everyone feel good… is underestimating how people are making that decision.”
In interviews during the election campaign, Hunt predicted that his seat would likely be won or lost by the Conservatives by 1,500 votes or less.
This prediction of a small majority turned out to be correct.
Now, with so many Conservative ministers and senior leaders losing their seats or resigning, Mr Hunt will be one of the few “adults” and senior figures left on the opposition benches in the House of Commons.
In his victory speech, he said that the Tories had lost the trust of the British people. Now he will be one of the key figures in rebuilding trust in the opposition.
That is a task at least as difficult as holding onto your new seat against the formidable challenge of the Liberal Democrats, who are now on course to win around 70 or more seats in the House of Commons.
But he has already proven, with his remarkable result here, that he is not to be underestimated – and he is the great Houdini of Westminster.
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
