Former MPs standing for re-election are a rare sight in central London during a general election campaign. They are even rarer this time around, as the campaign happened to fall both during half term and when there was a parliamentary recess already planned, so many MPs had to change their email account signature to “[Party] Candidate” and cancel any family holidays abroad to hit the campaign trail in their constituencies.
Not that all MPs did cancel their holidays abroad. I know of at least one Tory sitting MP with a huge majority who decided that the fact that Ukip weren’t standing a candidate against him was reason enough not to cancel a holiday in Greece. I only hope a member of his family didn’t inadvertently post an Instagram image of him poolside with a glass of rosé while colleagues were knocking on doors from dawn to dusk in Labour-held marginal seats.
Campaign vehicles haven’t changed much since the 1970s. They usually languish for four years in garage hibernation between elections. They are then taken out and new stickers and battle decorations added.
I was impressed that my local Conservative candidate, Philip Dunne, drives his own white van with a sliding door that reveals a small library of Conservative leaflets, large board signs, tools, loud-speakers and mallets. As he has a 19,000 majority and no Ukip candidate standing against him (despite being a minister who voted Remain), I asked why he felt the need to campaign with the same zeal as if he were fighting a knife-edge marginal.
“It’s the only way I know to fight an election,” he said. “When I first stood I was only elected by 2,000 votes, so I don’t take any votes for granted.”
The other truth, of course, is that when it comes to increasing their majority most MPs are like fiercely competitive schoolboys.
While most candidates have agents – or share an area agent – some prefer to keep contact with the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) to the minimum and produce their own leaflets. That is the case with my father Bill Cash, who has been an MP since 1984 when he won the Stafford by-election. This is much easier when you still have a self-sufficient and autonomous local Conservative Party association. Even better when your campaign majordomo is a former military man who also makes his own hovercraft. My father’s campaign battle wagon thus resembles a political hovercraft with a megaphone loudspeaker system operating through a specially crafted rubber window.
But these ex-military campaign generals are becoming a rare species, as many constituencies no longer have their own offices but rather belong to a local Conservative “federation” with close links to CCHQ, which can better control the party politics through a federal local chairman. Its mildly ironic that while Theresa May is standing up for Britain and going it alone with Brexit, the Tory Party itself is adopting a more federal power structure across the country. My anti-federalist father’s Stone constituency, I’m glad to report, refused to take up an invitation to join a federation. But with the number of MPs being reduced to just 600 in the next election, expect more constituency offices and buildings to close.
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Standing up for what one believes in my still be the best way to win votes on the doorstep. Despite the attacks in London and Manchester turning June 8 into the Terror Election, matters of religious conscience have largely been absent from the election. My father recalls only one time in this entire campaign when he was asked a religious question. He was stopped by a middle-aged couple who wanted to know where he stood on euthanasia. They had suffered some family misery with a terminally ill parent and said they could not vote for a candidate who did not want to change the law to legalise euthanasia. My father replied: “I cannot support euthanasia as I am a Catholic.”
You might have thought my father would have resigned himself to a lost vote, but the conversation continued. Would he vote for euthanasia if both the country and Commons was in favour of it? “No, because I cannot compromise my conscience and beliefs,” he replied.
At this, the voter surprised my father by saying: “That is reason enough, and despite our differences we will continue to vote for you because you are honest and principled.”
Sitting back at home that evening over dinner, my father reflected on why campaigning was so important. “It demonstrates how so many people are intrinsically honest and have a belief in our system of government,” he said.
Jacob Rees-Mogg takes campaigning so seriously that he told me he has not left his constituency for the duration of the campaign. He is out every day in North East Somerset getting to hear the views of his voters. Likewise Zac Goldsmith in Richmond (with his mother Lady Annabel canvassing with him).
This four-yearly interaction with voters is a form of democratic communion and is a way of sanctifying the election process.
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