Back to the future

First, thank you! You have decided to send me back to Westminster with an increased majority. That is the bottom line - but the arithmetic that gets us there will provide hours of fun for psephologists of all political persuasions.

In my last 'View'' I entreated people to vote. Well, at 65% we did better in Salisbury than the national turnout of 59%. But our figure was down from 74% in 1997 and 80% in 1992. To put it another way, on June 7th, nearly 28,000 qualified electors in Salisbury and South Wiltshire did not vote.

Was it because the pound in our pockets feels good? Was it because voters were turned off by the relentless and bad-tempered negative campaigning being fought out on the media week after week? Perhaps it was because those media gurus sought to undermine and denigrate candidates of all parties rather than concentrating on policies. Character assassination is so much more fun for radio and television journalists - and they don't even have to know the policies.

The point was made by a supporter who rushed up to me at a filling station the morning after the poll and asked when he'd get to hear about some policies. Sad really. They were all there, in the manifestos and policy documents available from all good bookshops and on the internet, where they languished unread, unloved and now part of history.

Meanwhile, the show goes on. I held my first surgery of the new Parliament in Amesbury. The good people who needed help confirmed my view that we still have a very long way to go in improving our public services. People should not need their MP to speak up for them on housing, health and education - but they do, and I will.

Back at Westminster the new Government is finding its feet and we are finding a new leader. I will vote for Michael Portillo because I trust him and because I have worked with him on very difficult issues (we were Poll Tax Ministers together) and he stands head-and-shoulders above the competition for sheer competence, experience and depth of knowledge. He'd have loved to have been a family man - and he still asks after our children by name.

I write this in a hotel a couple of blocks from the White House in Washington DC. It is a long way to come for two days of defence briefings and exchanges with the US military in the Pentagon, with the State Department, with Republican and Democrat Senators and Congressmen - and with the new US Administration in the White House. It is worth every jet-lagged minute of it to be figuring out the future defence of our country with the movers and shakers of the most powerful nation on earth - and our closest ally. By the way, they've nearly all heard of Salisbury and many have visited us. Quite right, too!

ROBERT KEY MP