Jeremy Hunt says victory is 'bitter pill to swallow' and vows to 'win back trust' in Godalming and Ash

891 votes have come between Jeremy Hunt and defeat. Opinion polling and the exit poll had led many to assume that the Chancellor would lose his Surrey seat to the Liberal Democrats. However, the Tory grandee held on by the tightest of margins.Read the full results here.

After a night of being told it was too close to call, the shock result was announced in the early hours on Friday to gasps, cheering and tears. The result bucks the nationwide trend which has seen tory MPs such as Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt, Gillian Keegan, Jacob Rees-Mogg loose their seats.

In the end Hunt won 23,293 votes, just more than Liberal Democrat Paul Follows who received 22,402. The race was also contested by the Greens, Labour, Reform UK and the Women’s Equality Party.

READ MORE: Godalming and Ash General Election results 2024 in full as Jeremy Hunt hangs on

In his acceptance speech, Hunt praised the magic of democracy and thanked his supporters for keeping the faith when every national opinion polls said the Lib Dems would win.

However Hunt also said the result was a “bitter pill to swallow” for the Conservative Party. He said “when you lose the trust of the electorate all that matters is having the courage and the humility to ask yourself why - so you can earn it back again.”

While Mr Hunt did not stick around after the result, Paul Follows, his Liberal Democrat opponent, did. Speaking to journalists he said there was “a progressive majority in this constituency.”

He added: I am exceptionally proud of the campaign that we ran here in Godalming and Ash. I honestly think that if this country's electoral system changes we will end up having a much better country for it. I urge the incoming Labour government to make that change of electoral system the priority for the next few years.”

Follows thanked not only his team but also Green and Labour activists who have worked with him over the last few months. He said: "It will hit people quite hard tomorrow" that the votes the Green and Labour party received combined with his would have created a large enough majority to beat the Conservatives.

Mr Follows, who remains the leader of Waverly Borough Council, said he wanted to continue holding Hunt to account, specifically on fracking and water.

Former chancellor Jeremy Hunt, tried twice to become Tory leader. He was responsible for controlling how the nation’s money was spent at a time of soaring living costs, taking on the role of Chancellor of the Exchequer after then Prime Minister Liz Truss’s mini-budget caused economic turmoil.

He has served as the MP for South West Surrey for nearly 20 years since 2005, and has won the new constituency of Godalming and Ash, narrowly beating the Liberal Democrats. Mr Hunt’s attempts to take the Tory crown in 2019 were scuppered when Boris Johnson got the top job.

His referendum vote for the UK to remain in the EU was said to have worked against him . He was also knocked out of the leadership race in 2022. He backed Rishi Sunak over Ms Truss, and was later appointed Chancellor.

Culture secretary for the London 2012 Olympics, Mr Hunt went on to become the longest-serving health secretary from 2012-2018, engaging in a bitter and protracted bout of trench warfare with junior doctors before rising to foreign secretary when Mr Johnson stormed out of Cabinet over Brexit.

In 2018 when he was foreign secretary, he embarrassingly got his wife Lucia’s nationality wrong during a meeting in Beijing, saying: “My wife is Japanese … my wife is Chinese. Sorry, that’s a terrible mistake to make.”

Like Mr Johnson, the then foreign secretary refused to call then US president Donald Trump racist for telling four Democratic US congresswomen to “go back” to where they came from, even though all were American and only one was born overseas.

Instead, Mr Hunt said: “I have three half-Chinese children and if anyone ever said to them ‘go back to China’, I would be utterly appalled.”

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