Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab – a contender for the next election’s “Portillo moment”?
Ladbrokes
A prominent Brexiteer in a strong Remain seat
The Foreign Secretary and former CON leadership contender, Dominic Raab, has been a rising star in the Tory party and now holds one of the top seats in Johnson’s cabinet. He’s also a strong Brexiteer.
There’s nothing wrong with that except that his seat, Esher and Walton, borders the SW London Lib Dem seats of Twickenham and Kingston and at the referendum in 2016 the votes split 41.57% Leave to 58.43% Remain.
It is part of Elmbridge which at the Euro Elections in May saw the LDs top the poll. This was the result:
Lib Dems 38.9%
Brexit Party 27.6%
CON 12.1%
GRN 10.3%
Change UK 5.3%
LAB 3.7%
At GE2017 Raab won with 58.6% of the vote ahead of LAB on 19.7% with the LDs getting 17.3% so on the face of it a likely CON hold with a sizable majority. But that was then – this is now. Since the general election CON and LAB have slumped in the national GB polls while the LDs have flourished and are touching three times the vote share of the last election in the latest polls.
The Tories have been losing council seats in Elmbridge and, of course, an early general election will be about Brexit.
Raab’s views on Brexit are clearly very much out of line with his constituents and he could just pay a price.