Samira Ahmed reports for Channel 4 News on her home constituency of Richmond Park, south west London, where the campaign has centred on a certain non-dom Tory candidate.
Blessed or burdened like Jane Austen’s Emma who was, famously, “handsome, clever, rich”, is Zac Goldsmith hero, villain or victim in the election story of Richmond Park?
Goldsmith’s opponents would have you believe he’s an exotic “non-dom”; but like the green parakeets of the constituency’s eponymous royal deer park, he’s a local creature. (The parakeets have been breeding since they supposedly escaped from the Shepperton Studios shoot of The African Queen).
After two days on the trail of the Tory challenger and his Liberal Democrat rival (and incumbent since 2005 Susan Kramer), but also after much of my life spent in the constituency I can see why so many people are deeply puzzled about the candidate who’s been dubbed by the national and local press, “the golden boy” and the “beauty” (and that’s just by the straight men).
Certainly judging by the enthusiasm of female voters of all ages I’ve voxpopped, his looks are the one part of Mr Goldsmith’s inheritance that’s doing him no harm.
An Old Etonian like David Cameron, son of the late billionaire financier James – libel scourge of Private Eye magazine and Referendum Party founder – and sister of the glamorous Jemima (ex Mrs Imran Khan), Zac’s strong reputation as a green campaigner is entirely self-made and made him a natural for the seat where they’ve been fighting Heathrow airport expansion for decades.
Now 35, he’s pretty much been known as the local Tory candidate for 3 years. His first teenage supporter appeared canvassing on my door step, at the very edge of the constituency more than a year ago, shortly before Gordon Brown famously “bottled” an election. And when Cameron was riding high in the polls, so was Zac.
Incumbent Susan Kramer has only been in the seat one term, though it’s been Lib Dem since the new boundaries in 1997 ended decades of Tory entrenchment. And it’s long been high on the Conservatives target list requiring little more than a 3.5 per cent swing to overturn Kramer’s 3,700 seat majority.
But even before the Clegg effect (which by the way, appeared quite substantial among voters I met), the balance started shifting in Richmond Park.
Depending on who you believe, that’s either down to Kramer’s solid toil – she was a former candidate for London Mayor – or as the Conservatives’ claim the Lib Dems’ attempts at dirty tricks in local politics.
Allegations that she and the Kingston Lib Dems team cooked up fears over possible cuts to A&E and maternity services at Kingston Hospital are playing very big in this acrimonious campaign.
Ms Kramer stands firm on her belief the hospital is threatened in NHS budget cuts; citing leaked documents and anonymous whistleblowers.
Even more damaging though, were personal allegations against Goldsmith. The breakup of his marriage garnered some media scrutiny, but the charge that he’s still spending a considerable amount of time refuting, is his tax-status.
While Goldsmith told me he’s always paid full British taxes on all his money, wherever it’s domiciled, the fact that he had a non-domicile status till little over a year ago is still the reason cited by some voters I met, for rejecting him.
I watched Ms Kramer (herself educated at the nation’s top public girls’ school, St Paul’s and a former City banker) confidently pressing the flesh outside the supermarket in East Sheen (Waitrose, of course) and dealing masterfully with a very angry Zac supporter who charged up for a confrontation right in front of the Channel 4 News camera.
Later the same afternoon I found Zac Goldsmith adopting a strangely low key strategy canvassing commuters at the strangely familiar Norbiton station. TV fans of a certain age will recognise it from the opening sequence to Leonard Rossiter’s sitcom The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin.
The Goldsmith strategy seemed to involve hanging around entirely out of view behind the noticeboards, smoking very tiny rollups, or having long conversations on the phone while his enthusiastic young supporters in blue “I back Zac” windcheaters handed out leaflets and talked the talk.
The few voters who actually sought Zac out – often after a wait for his attention – seemed to go away very satisfied, after he patiently answered all their questions (including, rather often, about his tax status).
In conversation he is undeniably thoughtful, engaging and charming; but also deeply frustrated by the amount of energy he says he’s having to devote to refuting falsehoods, instead of, as he puts it, “campaigning for change”.
But is he really “the Toff as outsider” against Kramer “the streetfighter”? (That was the take of comedian Rory Bremner ahead of his Richmond Theatre show with the two candidates guest starring).
The Jimmy Stewart figure in a SW14 version of “Mr (Gold)smith Goes to Washington”? Or was it actually a kind of unaware arrogance – standing around not quite canvassing for your own candidacy, while your “people” do it for you?
Does he find politics a bit too, well, grubby? And how can that be, when he claims he’s gone from being the youngest Conservative in the borough to building up the largest local Conservative Future membership in the country?
I suspect a fair number of voters are still genuinely puzzled. Zac’s supporters, and a fair number of charmed reporters, will tell you he is the real deal. An idealist who wants to change politics. He’s promised to stand down as an MP if a Cameron government were to renege on key issues including allowing a third runway.
Labour’s candidate Eleanor Tunnicliffe (who all evidence suggests is running a very distant third; and Cambridge-educated, by the way) pointed out that all the (refined) mudslinging about issues such as introducing carpark charges in Richmond Park means both Conservatives and Lib Dems are ignoring important issues like affordable housing.
Not everyone lives in those £3m villas on the Green or on the Hill. It may be one of the most affluent constituency in the country, but stretching from the mansions in Barnes and Richmond to the edge of New Malden’s Koreatown and Kingston’s diverse student population, there is everything and everyone to fight for.