David Cameron has said that the two most beautiful constituencies in England are his own, in Oxfordshire, and Oliver Letwin’s in Dorset. He obviously knows little of Thirsk and Malton, a small slice of North Yorkshire heaven, but the area will certainly be on his mind next Thursday. For here, the now supposedly united tribes of Tories and Liberal Democrats are engaged in a vicious local election, the first of the new parliament. If the nasty tone and temper of this rural battle is anything to go by, the national Lib-Con alliance hasn’t a chance.
In the Left corner (or thereabouts) stands Howard Keal, a local Lib Dem bigwig with a strong base in his home town of Malton. A journalist and ‘communications specialist’, Keal does a fine line in killer soundbites and putdowns. Facing him on the Right is Anne McIntosh, a seasoned Conservative MP, whose fierce struggles with her local party have made her more determined than ever to win this jewel of a rural Yorkshire seat.
The rapprochement between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives has done nothing to soothe tensions between the candidates. If anything, in this part of the world, the realignment has only heightened Lib-Con hostilities. Activists on both sides have become markedly more partisan in recent days, taking a lead from the warring Keal and McIntosh. As one Lib Dem put it to me: ‘There may be harmony in Downing Street, but it’s a fight to the death here.’
So where’s the love? This election, delayed for three weeks because of the untimely death of Ukip candidate John Boakes, should have been a gentle affair, a consummation of the Westminster coalition. A congenial contest in Thirsk and Malton could have shown how the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives can work together at the local level. It’s not as if it is going to be close, with McIntosh quoted at 1-25 on to win by a Thirsk bookmaker with Keal trailing in third at 16-1, behind Labour’s Jonathan Roberts at 7-1. (The young lady behind the counter at the bookies had her own take. ‘Cameron said Clegg was a joke,’ she said. ‘I think this coalition is a joke.’)
Voters across this sprawling rural constituency speak of ‘election fatigue’. They feel rather like lonely guests left at a wild party. Everyone else has packed up their passion and gone home. The coalition has imbued many here with a feeling of inevitability, a sense that their vote won’t make any difference. Few, if any, feel cross enough about the coalition to switch parties. Their mood is one of resignation.
The real anger exists between the two leading candidates, Keal and McIntosh. The reason that there is so much animosity between these protagonists, both pre- and post-coalition, can be attributed most of all to their combative personalities. But no doubt the animosity has been fuelled by their need to forge a coherent political identity against the all-consuming backdrop of the coalition, which makes local issues seem peripheral.
Post-coalition, Conservative and Lib Dem canvassers are still handing out campaign leaflets attacking each other’s candidates and their policies, with the Tories accusing the local Lib Dems of wanting to bring in road pricing and join the euro and the Lib Dems playing the inflammatory expenses card. As the election enters its final week, Keal, in particular, has upped the stakes. The insults are flying.
Here’s Keal on McIntosh: ‘She is a tremendously controversial figure, who is constantly at odds with her own party. She is mired in the expenses scandal, with extraordinary claims for mousetraps and the like, and has had a pint of beer poured over her at one of her surgeries. She has also dished out some awful personal abuse during this campaign, claiming that I can’t drive and that my wife and I have claimed £40,000 in expenses from Ryedale District Council over the past four years. It’s all utter nonsense.’
Keal admits that the good vibrations generated in Downing Street are not being felt in North Yorkshire. ‘Absolutely not,’ he says. ‘I’m afraid most marriages have arguments and we are having a hell of an argument here. There may be a national coalition, but I’m fighting to storm the blue barricades and I’m celebrating our recent successes in Westminster, where we have got inheritance tax for the few booted out in favour of tax cuts for all.’
‘Marmite’ McIntosh, who is loved and hated in equal measure by both her party and her constituents, is unfazed by Keal’s broadsides. She is canvassing ferociously hard and, like a jockey who has jumped the final fence in the Grand National and just has to negotiate the run-in, is keeping her eyes firmly focused on the prize. She was a shadow minister in the last parliament, but knows that — given the influx of Liberal Democrats into government — she may well now have to settle for just her constituency.
She speaks sniffily of Howard Keal as the ‘Liberal Democrat candidate’, refusing to call him either ‘Howard’ or ‘Keal’. She tries to sound positive about the new government: ‘I already have experience of working in a coalition, when I was a Euro MP in the 1990s, and I don’t foresee too many problems.’ But she doesn’t think her opponent has a part to play in it. ‘What is happening here in this election campaign,’ she insists, ‘is not relevant to Westminster.’
But Ukip’s new candidate, Toby Horton, who was once a staunch Conservative fighting Tony Blair in Sedgefield in 1983, is not so sure. He’s confident that, regardless of the voter fatigue factor, the Tories will see a number of votes lost to their right, as once reliable Conservative voters vent their bitterness at Cameron’s coalition compromises by choosing Ukip.
‘During the few weeks I have been fighting this election I have sensed a good deal of dissatisfaction within the ranks of traditional Tories who are worried about the direction in which their party is going,’ he told me. ‘I trust some will vote for me. Nationally, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have entered a Faustian pact, which will ultimately unravel. It’s certainly unravelling here.’
Whatever happens, this local election has proved that, while David Cameron and Nick Clegg have so far been able to smooth over their parties’ ideological differences in Westminster, there are going to be real problems outside the capital, when policies and personalities clash as they inevitably do in the cauldron of local politics.
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