Election Special

Thank you for voting in the General Election and for trusting me to represent your interests and those of the constituency and the nation at Westminster. It is reassuring to know that even if you add together the votes cast for my two nearest rivals, I’d still have a majority.

Winning ways
It is not physically possible to talk to each of the 80,385 electors in four weeks – which is one reason why I always say that victory is won between elections, not just on Polling Day. During the campaign my team and I visited and canvassed in every one of our 106 distinct villages and communities. Over 60% of our electors live outside Salisbury so every day, for six hours a day, we were out on the road in my Battlebus meeting and greeting electors.

I was right to continue the tradition of public meetings in the evenings. Most constituencies say no-one comes to them any more. They have caved in to TV and radio. I spoke in over 20 villages from Hindon to Whiteparish and Tilshead to Downton. In Wilton only five people turned up but in Tisbury it was 59. In all, over 700 electors came to listen and to challenge me face to face. Then there were the letters, the e-mails and the phone calls. It meant starting before 6am every day and finishing at 10pm. You deserved no less!

Number crunching
But what of our national system of democracy? Even the original Greek direct democracy was far from perfect – women and slaves did not vote. This time, Labour won 5.5% fewer votes than last time – they polled fewer votes than in the election they lost in 1979 – but still won with a majority of 65 seats, on the lowest ever share of the vote for a wining Party at a British general Election.

The Conservatives gained 33 seats and won more votes in England than any other Party – nearly 60,000 more than Labour. The LibDems gained 16 seats and lost 5 – but got fewer votes than in 1992. UKIP won an extra 0.7% of the vote compared to 2001. They put up 496 candidates, 458 of whom lost their deposits. But they cost the Eurosceptic Conservatives over 20 seats..

Given the ‘greening’ of the main Parties in the UK and the new neo-socialist agenda of the Green Party, it is not surprising that only 19 of their 183 candidates saved their deposits..

Locally, since my first election in 1983, the LibDems have lost one third of their support – down 7000 votes. In the same period Labour has trebled their vote. The Conservatives polled over 2000 votes fewer than in 1983, clawed back some 1500 from 2001, but lost maybe 2000 votes to UKIP.

Size matters
Is the answer to change our voting system? I think not. It is more important to speed up the work of the Boundary Committee, to redistribute the electorate more fairly between seats. In the whole of Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland not one single seat has as many electors as Salisbury. Most have around 20,000 fewer voters and one (The Outer Hebrides) has just 21,346 electors and the winner polled just 6,213 compared to my 25,961!

It is an inconvenient but necessary feature of our democratic tradition that small parties are not discouraged from standing. They can and do swing seats and win them. I would rather have it that way than the unfair fudge of ‘proportional representation’. Every vote counts, PR or not. It is an unfair fudge because PR gives your vote to Party apparatchiks who horse-trade policies behind closed doors. What you were promised is not what you get. Your candidates are foisted on you from a big Party list – they are not home-grown. Worst of all you lose that priceless link between you and your own constituency Member. No system of PR can deliver you that.

All change
This was the last General Election to be fought on the current boundaries. Until the next Election I will represent our existing constituency community. At the next election Salisbury Constituency is expected to lose everything west of Wilton (to Westbury) and we lose Bulford and Durrington (to Devizes). Currently we are the 24th biggest seat in the UK and the Boundary Committee says we must lose 13,000 electors. I call it crazy, but that battle is behind us and we must move on.

How was it for you?
On reflection I think there were two election campaigns running in parallel. One was being waged on the national media, choreographed by tight-knit groups of politically-motivated men (yes, nearly always men) in Party HQs and moderated and manipulated by a handful of the usual (male) suspects (Humphreys, Paxman, Marr, and Dimbleby). Did they get it right?

The real campaign – ours – was between the candidates and you, the electors, on the doorsteps, in the streets and markets, at the village hall. This was about the values we live by, the standards we expect, the Englishness of the life we want to lead, about making ends meet, where to live, about safety and security, health and education, as we face an unpredictable and even dangerous future. As we tackle challenges from terrorism to climate change and GM crops to pensions, I will not forget that your local man at Westminster is accountable to you. Onwards and upwards!

Robert Key MP
22nd May 2005