'I'm not expecting a call from Nigel' Chancellor takes fight to doorstep

At the first three doors that Jeremy Hunt knocked on during his canvassing session in leafy Godalming this week were voters who said they would back the Conservatives.

- Pippa Crerar

The chancellor, looking a bit embarrassed, admitted they were not representative of what his team have been seeing across this Surrey constituency, where his almost 9,000 majority is under threat from the resurgent Liberal Democrats.

But at the fourth door, Tory voters Stephen and Caroline told him they felt it was time for change. "The Conservatives have had a good crack at the whip," said Stephen. "Unfortunately I think they've lost their way."

Many in Westminster were surprised when Hunt announced he would be standing again, with former colleagues such as Theresa May and Michael Gove having decided it was time to stand down after 14 years running the country.

After almost 20 years in parliament and a string of senior cabinet jobs, including foreign secretary and chancellor, and with the Tories on course to lose the next election and with it swathes of constituencies - including his own of Godalming and Ash - some expected Hunt to retire from parliament.

Yet he had no such plans. "I think I can hold it," he said in an interview with the Guardian in the Inn on the Lake pub in the town. "But it's going to be a very big fight, the biggest I've ever had."

Like many Tory candidates, Hunt is getting squeezed from the left with the Liberal Democrats potentially on course to take the seat - and the right, from what he said were "Boris Conservatives" who would presumably now drift to Reform UK.