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Polished boots click on the cobblestones as a group of uniformed military officers emerge from a flag-raising ceremony in the bustling Richmond Market.
Many wander off in search of lunch after spending an hour in Friary Gardens, where the war memorial represents the fallen of this historic town in Rishi Sunak’s constituency on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales national park.
Among those stepping out into the midday sun is Paul Betteridge, 69, proudly wearing his campaign medals and a jacket with the emblem of his former regiment, Third Royal Tanks, to celebrate Armed Forces Day.
Their motto – “Fear nothing” – could apply for more than a century to the Conservative Party in this safest of Conservative seats. But this year something feels different.
Betteridge and his wife Beryl, 69, shake their heads and laugh when asked how they rate Sunak’s chances of being re-elected as Richmond MP, let alone prime minister.
“It’s been a disastrous campaign and the Conservatives needed a good campaign more than ever,” says Betteridge. “The campaign started badly when they filmed him standing in the rain and from there it got progressively worse.”
So has there been a low point, in your opinion, in this gaffe-ridden election period?
Mr Betteridge sighs and says: “Look, I spent 25 years in the Tank Regiment, serving all over the world and I worked for the MoD for a long time after that.
“I’ve been away for 30 years but I still attend ceremonies like this, the raising of the flag, because it’s important to remember the sacrifices people made. It seems obvious that we should do it.
“However, Rishi Sunak did not think it was worth staying for the Dunkirk commemoration. The leaders of the world are all gathered there to pay their respects to those who gave their lives and where is it? Missing.
“It was a terrible moment and as much as he admitted he made a mistake, he showed very poor judgment and that, more than anything, affected me.
“However, I have to be honest: the alternatives are not very good. I will probably vote for Labor again, but I am not convinced, this time it is very difficult for us.
“It’s all very well for the Lib Dems and the Greens to make popular policies because they know they won’t get in and Farage is a disgrace, he says what he thinks people want to hear.”
Sunak is expected to win the lowest majority of any Conservative candidate in the Richmond constituency in 114 years. If the vote goes as the polls suggest, he will remain as MP in the new Richmond and Northallerton constituency.
If this election had taken place in 2019, he would have won a majority of 24,000, according to the Survation poll for the 38 Degrees campaign website. That projected majority is only 3,000 less than the 27,210 majority he actually got five years ago.
However, the situation is now tighter than anyone in this true blue corner of Yorkshire could have predicted.
The poll suggests Sunak could win just 39 per cent of the vote, ahead of Labor candidate Tom Wilson on 29 per cent, while Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party comes in third on 18 per cent.
Whatever the result, it looks set to confirm a notable drop in Sunak’s popularity and give Wilson the chance, however fleeting, to pull off one of the big electoral coups.
The last Conservative to lose this seat in Richmond was John Hutton, who ceded power to Liberal Francis Dyke Acland in 1906.
Acland lost his seat four years later to the Honorable William Orde-Powlett and has remained blue ever since in an unbroken streak of 114 years, mostly with landslide majorities.
Sunak was handed the safe seat in 2015 as a rising Conservative star due to his keen skills as an economist, replacing former Conservative leader William Hague, a Yorkshireman and People’s MP who now holds the title Lord Hague of Richmond.
Former soldier Flint, 76, who dislikes his first name so much he “retired it years ago”, does not believe Rishi Sunak has won over people in rural Richmondshire in the same way.
“You never see him,” he says. “You might see him in Northallerton because it’s close to where his house is, but never in Richmond. Willie Hague was different, you’d see him come into shops and he always had time for people, he’d stop and chat.
“I won’t be voting for Sunak and it will be difficult to find anyone who has a good word for him at the moment. I mean, why are his pants so short to begin with? He’s not a tall guy, why can’t he wear a suit that fits him? He needs to get rid of the drains.”
As annoying as Flint finds the Prime Minister’s pants, they are not the biggest of his concerns.
“They have ruined the economy and the cost of living now is alarming,” he says. “I’ll give you an example: I go to the supermarket to buy cat food and it costs £4.50, then it goes up to five pounds again and now it’s just hit £5.50. For cat food!
“I just don’t trust them and, for an ex-military man, I found walking out of the Dunkirk ceremony really disrespectful.”
Anyone looking for a reason for Sunak’s apparent decline in popularity might conclude that the military and military agree with Flint.
Although it is a largely rural constituency, it also encompasses Britain’s largest military base, Catterick Garrison.
“Everything went wrong,” says a serving soldier, who declined to give his name. “He thought people didn’t care anymore and that was an atrocious judgment, especially when you have a giant military base in your backyard with 13,000 people serving on it. I’m sure he lost a lot of votes in Catterick because of that, including mine.”
He also lost Ken Fairey, 83, a traditional Conservative voter who now plans to vote for the Reform candidate, Lee Martin Taylor, a former radar technician at The Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.
Fairey, a former fitter and turner who later served in the police and army, said: “He has been a disappointment as Prime Minister, there is no doubt about that.
“Cut and switch, one thing does one thing and the next thing does another thing. I don’t like the other one either, Starmer. I’m sick of hearing how working class his upbringing was, it’s just not convincing.
“I voted Conservative but this time I’m going for Reform. I have a lot of time for Farage, he says it clearly and he seems to me an honest man who tells the truth.
“It couldn’t be worse, right? She had faith in Boris and he let us down because of the pandemic. Sunak has done nothing to fix that.”
