The 2024 General Election campaign is now a fortnight old and things have not been going well for the Tories.

We continue our look around key constituencies with a trip to the Hampshire/Surrey border, where former Aldershot resident Neil Monnery takes a look at the betting market…

Ah Aldershot, memories. It has been nearly 15 years since I last lived in the town and from what I hear, not much has changed apart from a new complex up near the 24-hour Tesco. The town centre was in decline back then but no matter how the country was going, this was one of those solidly blue working class seats.

Aldershot has been a constituency returning an MP to the House of Commons since the 1918 General Election. On every single occasion, the electorate of this seat have returned a Conservative to be their representative but the odds suggest that run is about to come to a screeching halt come July 4.

This might not be one of the headline seats that pundits will be watching but considering this is where the British Army are based, just the notion that they wouldn’t vote Tory would be considered sacrilege, yet the numbers do seem to be suggesting that Labour are going to win.

Aldershot has been solidly Tory since its inception and they’ve never had a majority below 5,000. Up until the coalition government, it was the Lib Dems who were their primary challengers but like pretty much everywhere, voters deserted the party in 2015 in a protest and that meant those who opposed the government, moved en masse to Labour. The Red Rose party trebled their vote between 2005 and 2017 but last time out in 2019, they were still more than 16,000 ballots shy of winning the seat.

Had you told the people of this constituency that less than five years later, all signs pointed towards them having a Labour MP, then very few would have believed you. This though is the problem the Tory party are facing in many of these commuter towns across the south. In the more affluent areas, the Lib Dems are surging (like in neighbouring Farnham & Bordon and Godalming & Ash) and being very much on the front foot, whereas in the poorer areas, it is Labour who are making a large dent in the Tories numbers.

With Reform UK on the ballot and expected to do very well in a place such as the home of the British Army, incumbent Leo Docherty is facing an uphill battle, which has not been helped by the fact he moved his primary residence to London and is reportedly not on the Electoral Roll in his constituency according to a report in The Mirror. This will be embarrassing and it will allow Labour to claim that he hasn’t connected with local people and his personal vote seems to be fairly non-existent.

Checking out the latest Aldershot General Election Odds with us at Betfred sees the Tories are available to back at 2/1 (33% chance) to hold on to the seat with Labour now trading at 4/11 (73% chance) to get the gain. When the market opened, it was pretty much nip and tuck with the party of government 1/1 and Labour 8/11.

The latest MRP polling predicts a Labour win by 6% but those numbers are from before Nigel Farage jumped into the race and turbocharged the Reform UK ticket. When the next update comes along, I like Labour to be more than 10% up. The money is clearly going one way here and this might be one of the most embarrassing losses in the upcoming General Election for Rishi Sunak’s party.

We’ll cover this ongoing story from now through to General Election day itself from our team here at Betfred Insights. Keep checking out our coverage from the Next Prime Minister markets through to key individual constituencies over the coming weeks as we follow the twists and turns from a betting perspective for the 2024 General Election in our Politics Betting Tips section.