Jeremy Hunt just paid £100k to prop up his own re-election campaign

It’s perfectly legal (and traditional) to chip in your own cash to bolster your election charges, writes Sean O’Grady. But a sum this big from the chancellor smacks of desperation…

‘Wealthy as he undoubtedly is – one of the few senior Tories to have made serious money from building up their own business – it has not previously been his habit to be so generous’ (PA)

Nothing oozes quiet confidence in your own political future than subbing your local constituency association £100,000 to keep it – and your career – going.

So it is with the current Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, who has used a small portion of his estimated net worth £14m net worth – £105,261, to be precise – to subsidise the activities of his “power base” (the South West Surrey Conservative Association) over the last five years.

Wealthy as he undoubtedly is – one of the few senior Tories to have made serious money from building up their own business – it has not previously been his habit to be so generous.

His personal donations to the association, which are all perfectly legal, stand in stark contrast to the total £4,447 he gave under the leadership of Theresa May and David Cameron, when his chances of hanging on to the seat were not in doubt.

I must repeat: none of this is corrupt. Indeed, in the good-old-bad-old days, an ambitious candidate turning up for a Conservative constituency association selection meeting might be expected to indicate, in the most discreet fashion, if he (less likely she) would be able to help support the campaigning activities of the hardworking activists.

In some cases, including the rare “hereditary” seats linked to local aristocracy, it was an unspoken assumption. Noblesse oblige, almost. These days it’s more unusual, and noticeable. And, of course, Hunt is required to stay within the law on election campaign spending. Even in Sunak’s Britain you can’t quite buy votes. Still, Hunt’s personalisation of his association doesn’t “feel right”, shall we say.

Rather like the nation’s finances that he presides over (and he can’t afford to sub), Hunt’s local association is in poor shape, cash-wise. The most recent set of accounts caution that its “balance sheet is at a less than satisfactory level”, and seems to be undergoing a sort of micro-recession.

Donations to the chancellor’s party locally were down by almost 50 per cent in 2021, with £42,693 in donations rolling in that year, down from over £80,000 in 2020. Their financial fortunes seem to have suffered in line with their sinking poll ratings.

It must be all the more galling for Hunt, because around Godalming and Ash – as the newly redrawn constituency is now known – there’s plenty of money around, even in this cost of living crisis.

According to the excellent Electoral Calculus website, a house in the area costs £576,540. Gross household income stands at £56,606 – and those are just the averages.

It’s also a marginal, with the Lib Dems serious challengers. We know why, too, and it tells us something about how electoral politics has been evolving. Hunt’s is an almost symbolic “blue wall” seat, and one ill-suited to the current Tory strategy of using culture wars to win the next election.

The modern migrant-hating, poor-baiting, Islamophobic party of Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson is evidently turning people off in these sorts of places – on top of the damage inflicted by Boris Johnson’s unconstitutional ways, Partygate and the notorious Liz Truss reckless mini-budget (and it was no accident that she had to ask Hunt to be her second chancellor to clear up the mess).

Electoral Calculus calls the political tribe in this corner of the prosperous south “kind yuppies”, who are actively repelled by some of the stuff the Tory party has been saying in recent times. A lot of that is of course directed at the “red wall” seats in the Midlands and North; but the problem is that Anderson’s disgraceful words can be heard in Surrey, just as easily as in Nottinghamshire.

Underlying everything is Brexit – another painful irony for Hunt, a Remainer, and a man wise enough to have considered it a disaster. His constituents are the kind of well-educated Remainers and commuters often reliant on the fortunes of the City of London, who find that the rabidly Europhobic Tory party has nothing to say to them, these days.

There are many more seats like this, where a slow influx of younger, more socially liberal graduates have shifted the social and political complexion of the pleasant towns and villages they live in.

Indeed, Hunt – apparently moderate and liberal-minded – is not a natural member of the current cabinet, which may be why we got those rumours about Sunak wanting to replace him with Claire Coutinho.

Hunt is locked in the wrong party – and he’s doomed. No amount of money can change that.