Sketch: Beautiful countryside, but not many voters
Could this be the least successful canvassing session of the general election?
Many places across Britain are perfectly suited to the urgent politics of a general election. The simmering tensions of the BNP threat in Barking. The working class fervour of Teesside. The manufacturing miseries of the Midlands.
Not all of Britain is like this. Other parts feel as if the locals haven’t really got worked up since the civil war. The inhabitants of West Worcestershire’s idyllic rural countryside probably only raised half an eyebrow then.
Here the world is unspoiled. In the Vale of Evesham parish boundaries are more significant than local divisions or wards. A succession of delightful little villages marks the countryside. The price of asparagus is about as outrageous as it gets.
There is a solution to all this, a natural correction which helps keep the balance in check. Namely, that these places tend to vote Conservative.
West Worcestershire is different. Here, thanks to what must sternly be described as a desire to disturb the natural order, the local Liberal Democrats have been plotting away. Campaigners admit the process has taken decades. This is a mere blink of an eye compared to the timescale we’re operating on here; one local said the Tories had been in place “since the Romans”.
Still, the truth cannot be denied. In an area which should be as Conservative as Ann Widdecombe’s underwear, West Worcestershire has now become a Conservative marginal. The local Tory candidate must surely be privately appalled. She’s actually having to bother campaigning.
Harriett Baldwin deserves sympathy. The seat is huge, 80 square miles in total. It takes an hour and a quarter to drive from one end of it to the other, which perhaps gives a flavour of the usefulness of her predecessor Sir Michael Spicer’s two-hour, once-monthly surgeries. Still, she’s doing her best. In the extreme south of the constituency, on a beautiful spring afternoon, she was to be found knocking on doors.
Following a rendezvous outside a village hall, the convoy of delightfully communitarian Tories advanced to an utterly obscure part of Britain. “I’ve never done it before,” Ms Baldwin said of the village – or what it a hamlet? Or a settlement? – where we were heading to. “So I’d like to do it now.” So we did. It was not entirely clear that we had arrived, for parking was a matter of clambering up the grassy verge. There were houses nearby, that much was clear. But there were not very many of them.
Ms Baldwin and co were scratching their heads over a map. It appeared the road down which we had driven was the new constituency boundary. “We’re Peter Luff,” one helpful voter said. Ms Baldwin was hoping they had replied “We’re Ms Baldwin.” With half the buildings ruled out the supply of nearby voters was even more limited. I advanced with the Tory candidate into the wild.
Or, more accurately, up a lane. This was called, presumably for clarifying purposes, The Lane. Was it the first ever lane? Did it get there before all other street names? Harriett (I was starting to get to know her better now) was talking about “banker-bashers” and other villainous Lib Dem behaviour. The birds were twittering, the wind was rustling in the trees. Far off in the distance some dogs were barking. All was sweetness and light.
There were so many doors to knock on – three, or perhaps four – that I quickly lost count of how many were tried. In all the process must have taken no more than a few minutes. Harriett shoved her leaflets through the impassive, unmoved letterboxes. Anyone with any sense would have been relaxing in the back garden, after all.
On returning to the main group the navigational crisis was intensifying. Some members, it seemed clear, had just about had enough. So after just a few minutes the decision was taken to call it a day and go to the pub.
Back in London the general election news agenda was moving on to discuss Trident and the Nick Clegg threat. Here, politics appeared to have evaporated completely. A quiet drink was much more like it.
With landscape like this, who needs politics?
