Well, the national picture isn't looking good but I'm not getting the same impression locally. It's true there's little enthusiasm for the Conservatives - but I have found none for the other parties either.
Good morning. We’re now deep into the campaign and I’m getting a lot of contradictory signals! A lot of people I meet on the doorstep are cross with the Government, often for reasons I sympathise with.
Most of an MP’s work is out of sight, working on individual constituents’ battles with some faceless agency of government, or in meetings to discuss some detail of legislation.
Happy new year. I experienced what is apparently called the pathetic fallacy this week: the projection of one’s mood into the weather. The land was sodden, the skies grey. Then the waters rose and suddenly the countryside was a series of lakes, with island villages.
Since I last wrote the Middle East has descended into the most appalling violence; politics at home has raged thick and fast; and I have published a book.
Forgive a party-political newsletter for once. Parliament ‘rose’ last week for the summer recess. It was a bad week politically for the Tories, with two formerly safe seats lost in by-elections (in Somerset and Yorkshire) and a very near miss in Uxbridge, west London.
Last week John Glen, MP for Salisbury, and I spent a day at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) at Porton Down. Dstl sits on a vast campus comprising hundreds of buildings, some dating back to World War I and the first experiments with gas for the battlefield.
Since I last wrote the King was crowned, the Conservative Party had a ‘disappointing’ set of local election results, and I inadvertently made some headlines about family policy.
