Should Michael Gove retain the ambition of capturing the hearts and minds of the Tory heartland, he might do well to avoid the picturesque Oxfordshire town of Woodstock.
As David Cameron, the town’s MP, prepares to leave his day job and return to expending more of his energies on constituency matters, shoppers at the Saturday farmers’ market could find few kind words for one of his putative successors at the end of a tumultuous week.
“Michael Gove is obviously very intelligent,” said Helen Hamilton, 50, a Leave voter who runs a health clinic in the town, “but I don’t think he’s right to be leader after what he did this week.”
Ivan Owen, 85, who describes himself as “95% retired” from the manufacturing company he set up that now employs 700 people, agreed. “Over the years there has been a lot of back-stabbing in politics but it’s not really called for,” he said.
Gove could try to win over the affections of the citizenry by recalling the words of Elizabeth I, a temporary and somewhat unwilling resident of Woodstock, held under house arrest there for a year in 1554: “Much suspected by me, nothing proved can be,” were the words she left scratched on to a window. The sense from the patrons of the farmers’ market, however, is that even the invocation of Gloriana herself would not help his cause.
Instead, clutching bags brimming with beetroot and gooseberries, local cheese and meat, Woodstock’s voters were moving rapidly through the various stages of grief provoked by the resignation of the prime minister, before cautiously eyeing the field of pretenders.
“We’re big fans of Dave in here,” said James Talbot, 29, pausing as he trimmed a customer’s hair in the Woodstock Barbershop. “We cut his hair sometimes, and his son’s hair. I don’t think any of them could compare with him for being cool, calm and collected. He must have seen it coming, though. He looked a bit embarrassed afterwards. At least we’ll see more of him, which will be good.”
Woodstock’s farmers’ market is nestled at the top of a high street boasting all the features the hordes of tourists visiting the neighbouring Blenheim Palace would expect in a quaint English town: cobbled streets, Cotswold stone buildings, and a gentle air of things being right with the world.
Brian Yoxall, 76, wearing a tweed jacket and a pair of Crocs, paused and surveyed the shoppers in the bright sunshine. “I think the mood is largely one of despondency,” he decided. “I think most people will be pleased that he’s staying on as MP. I’m full of admiration for the way he combined the onerous duties of being prime minister while being a constituency MP.”
Yoxall, a councillor and former mayor of the town of 3,100 inhabitants, is persuaded that Theresa May is the right person to follow Cameron as prime minister. “I never did like the idea of Boris Johnson,” he said. “I regard Michael Gove and Theresa May as being very serious politicians. I don’t think either really has the charisma to be prime minister, although I think they are both capable.”
Woodstock has seen national leaders come and go before: Winston Churchill was born and is buried here.
Peter Gilbert, standing behind his cheese stall in the market, has little time for of the idea of Johnson as prime minister material. “Standing down was the right thing for him to do. His first speech after the referendum was quite subdued. I think things have fallen apart for him a bit. He’s a bit like Donald Trump but for the British public it has stopped being a joke. May is the only one with gravitas or credibility.”
In the market stall opposite, Sebastian Peissel, 50, proprietor of the Meat Joint who also counts Cameron among his clientele, is equally dismissive of Johnson and Gove. “I think Theresa May has more going for her than the others. It’s time to get rid of the naughty schoolboys and put a woman in charge. Anyone who was heavily involved in the campaign is going to find it very hard. Theresa May kept her powder dry.”
Swarn Lally, 61, sub-postmistress of the post office at the top of the High Street, took a similarly gender-determined view of the best way to clear up the referendum fallout. “Theresa May knows what she is talking about,” she said. “Being a woman as well helps; women understand the issues better.”
At the end of the market, tending his Pie Mighty Pies stall, Nathan Tuckwell has a different perspective to most of those around him. A Labour supporter, he lives 11 miles away in Chipping Norton. “They love Dave in Chippy,” he declared. “Now we’re going to have Theresa May, an unelected prime minister? We live in strange times. It’s a seismic shift in our history.
“The whole fact of Boris Johnson standing on a ticket he didn’t believe in shows the hypocrisy. People talk about the Chipping Norton set, but there’s a massive demographic and real deprivation. It never reaps the benefits of its affluent label. This is a very strange place.”
