This month’s focus groups took us to Portsmouth, to hear from 2019 Conservatives who switched to Reform; Southampton, to hear from switchers to Labour; and St. Ives, to hear from switchers to the Liberal Democrats.
The Angela Rayner property saga was the first political event to be mentioned by most of the groups. There was some sympathy for her over the complexities of house buying and the reliance on legal advice, most agreed that she had to go (though some thought there had been a degree of poetic justice: “The darling of the left, Angela Rayner, and her third property. Tell us again about the rich, Angela?” “It’s so hypocritical because she’s the biggest one who’s called these things out, then she just does it herself”).
At the same time, some thought her departure would be a loss to front-line politics: “She probably had to go but I do think it’s sad because in a world where people look at politics as being beige and a particular type of gentleman, she was very much Technicolor. Her story of where she came from was more interesting to me than what she stood for. She just seemed to be cut from a different cloth as a politician.”
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