It’s a sunny afternoon on a lawn outside Wells Cathedral, and Bishop Peter Hancock is holding a croquet mallet. After a jolly speech, he turns to strike a ceremonial shot, thereby marking the start of a new season. It is a quintessentially conservative scene in Somerset.

Hancock does not talk politics, but the captain of the croquet club, Guy Arnoux, is more than happy to do so. Arnoux, a retired insurance broker, is a Tory through and through, and he expects most of his fellow players are too. “The majority is pretty strong around here,” he says. “I think we’ll do pretty well again.”

In fact, though, the croquet club is not quite as monolithic an organisation as it might seem. As the first games proper begin, a middle-aged female player tugs a sleeve and asks for a private word. Strictly no names.

“I heard Guy say we’re all Tories,” she says. “That’s not quite right. I don’t want anyone to know, not even my husband, but I’m voting Lib Dem.”

This will be the first time ever she has not voted Conservative. “Actually, I like Theresa May,” she says. “But I don’t want her to turn into a new Thatcher with a massive majority allowing her to do whatever she wants. We don’t need that. We must keep her in check.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Guy Arnoux, chairman of the Palace croquet club, Wells. Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

Tim Farron would be pleased to hear this stealthy admission, echoing as it does the argument he has been making to voters across the country. (“You do not need to agree with me on everything to agree that Britain needs a strong opposition,” he said on the Today programme on Wednesday. “If you’re a democrat, even if you’re a Tory, you should believe there needs to be a strong opposition.”) And in Wells, such compromises don’t seem to be unusual. Across the constituency, an intriguing number of people with an instinctive feel for one party say they may, in the end, go down a different route.

If the argument made by our anonymous croquet enthusiast really is being made more widely, it could be vital. Wells matters because it is the sort of place where a Lib Dem fightback could take place – and the sort of place that could stand between Theresa May and a rout of the opposition.

The Lib Dems’ own TM, Tessa Munt, won the seat seven years ago. That was thanks to a well-targeted campaign, the force of her personality – and partly, no doubt, the sitting Tory MP David Heathcoat-Amory’s slapstick role in the expenses scandal. (He claimed back the cost of manure for his garden.)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lib Dem candidate Tessa Munt chats with Danny Elliott in Wells Market Place. Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

But Munt was booted out in 2015 by James Heappey, a former soldier, who took the seat with a no-nonsense majority of 7,585. Munt blames the message that an unholy Labour/SNP alliance was the alternative to David Cameron for galvanising the Conservative vote.

As comfortable as Heappey’s majority seems, the Tories are not as confident as they might be. Their expectations of retaining the seat suffered a blow at last week’s local authority elections, when Munt took the seat of the Conservative county council leader John Osman in the city of Wells by 95 votes. If they weren’t taking the fight seriously before, the Tories are now.

Their campaign in Wells is bound to be complicated, for this constituency is a sprawling, diverse one. Its stretch of coastline includes sandy beaches, holiday parks and the resort of Burnham-on-Sea. Further east there is hugely varied countryside, including the Cheddar Gorge, the Mendip hills and part of the Somerset Levels.

They raise cattle and sheep; they make cheese and cider. The farmers are wondering what Brexit will mean for them. (Within reason, anyway: when Cheddar Valley beef farmer and Tory councillor Liz Scott was asked what the big issue was, she instantly replied: “The weather – we need some rain desperately.”)

The constituency has market towns such as Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury and large villages such as Street, the headquarters of the Clarks shoe company. Then there is Wells itself, England’s smallest city and famed as the setting for the horror comedy film Hot Fuzz. It has tradition – such as the croquet on the cathedral lawn – but also incomers from the south-east, searching for a quieter life.

And beneath the beautiful veneer, there are problems. Mental health services are stretched and house prices can make it hard for young people to stay. Getting a good job can be tricky for a young person and commuting to Bristol, Bath or Taunton is not easy.

Like the shy Lib Dem, Wells funeral director Rod Major is another prepared to lend his vote to Munt – but he starts from a different place. He joined the Labour party a few years ago specifically because he was worried that more social housing needed to be built. He likes Jeremy Corbyn, but can’t see him as a prime minister.

He argues that people with a social conscience need to send a message out to May. “We can’t have the nasty party having it all their own way. We need to make sure we get as strong an opposition as we can to her. That’s why I’ll be voting for Tessa.”

Munt, too, is echoing Farron by making the case that May is bound to be PM, so her constituents should vote for a party that will form an effective opposition (“This is not North Korea,” is one of her lines) and for the person that will make the best local MP.

Danny Elliott, a market trader, does not buy it. He says Munt could have his vote in the county council’s elections (“She’s a good local politician”) but he would be backing the Tories at the general election. “Tim Farron wants to take us straight into Europe again. The country has voted to leave. I won’t vote for anyone who wants to go against that.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wells high street. Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

Elliott says he has no deep-rooted connection to any party. “I’m a floating voter but I think Theresa May has the balls to sort Brexit out.”

By and large, though, while the area voted to leave the EU, few people immediately bring up Brexit when asked what issues bother them. They talk about poor mobile phone signals, the patchiness of broadband, the lorries that trundle to the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant site from the quarries in Cheddar, the possibility of fracking in the Mendips, the closure of banks in Glastonbury, schools funding, GP waiting times, cuts to bus services, plans to extend a traffic-free path along the old Strawberry Line rail track route.

steven morris (@stevenmorris20) Wells voter - Pete Harding https://t.co/cLNNIGpNRO

Social worker Pete Harding is another volatile voter, but his concerns go wider than Brexit. In 2010 he went for the Lib Dems, but he became so incensed by the party’s coalition with the Tories that he stuck a poster in the window of his home in the picture-postcard town of Axbridge making it clear to his neighbours that he would never support the party again.



He’s changed his mind. “I’m going to give them another chance,” Harding admits over coffee in the town’s medieval square.

Harding has struck a deal with his 22-year-old son Jack, a student in Manchester. Jack will vote Labour in the north-west and Harding Lib Dem in the south-west. An inter-familial progressive alliance. “Everyone is sort of happy,” he said.

Meanwhile, nine miles south-west of Axbridge, the town of Highbridge feels like it is struggling. Its thriving cattle market closed in 2007. Shops are boarded up; a food bank operates at the Baptist church. Despite it all, the Tory vote feels strong here. Many say they want a Thatcher figure.

At K9 Groomers on Market Street, Diane Gay and Alison Prout are blowdrying a shih tzu called Suzie and a cockerspaniel called Ben. They complain that the heart has been ripped out of the town by the loss of the market and the building of hundreds of new homes for people who either commute somewhere else – or don’t work.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Suzie the shih tzu gets a blow dry from Diane Gay at K9 Groomers, Highbridge. Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

“It’s a no-brainer,” says Gay when asked how she would vote. “Labour is weak. Theresa May is another Margaret Thatcher. She’ll be good for the country – a woman with balls. She’s the alpha male in all this.”

steven morris (@stevenmorris20) Wells voter Mitch Peckham. https://t.co/KoB6CkfhNM

Electrician Jason Wright, sitting on a wall outside Asda, claims Highbridge is being ruined by people being crammed into social housing. “This used to be a bustling place where you knew everyone. They call it the hood now. I don’t know where all these people are coming from.” He and his wife, Carianne, voted Ukip last time and Labour before that. They will probably go Tory this time. More volatile voting.

And yet, in among all these volatile, highly engaged voters, it is worth remembering that there is another segment of the public who will be influential by what they don’t say – and who are a long way from the croquet lawn. Take friends Connor Baker, a barber, and bar worker Mitch Peckham. Over fried breakfast at the Boathouse cafe in Highbridge (where they are recovering from a boozy house party), they talk passionately and intelligently about the problems they and their town face. But, they say, they do not know the name of the prime minister.

“I think it’s a woman – I saw a meme,” says Connor. Neither will vote next month. “Politicians do nothing for people like us and places like this,” adds Mitch. “There’s just no point at all.”