Just fifty-eight days until polling day - we've got Parliamentary, District and Parish elections here in Creeting St Peter. Admittedly, you'd probably never know it if you were relying on one of the political parties telling you. Apart from during last year's European elections, not a leaflet of any sort has come to our home, although our District councillor may deign to pay us a visit from Eye one of these days (I'm not counting on it though...).
It shouldn't come as a surprise, really. Four years ago, despite my doing everything in my power to attract attention (what do you mean, Mark? You were delivering what? Leaflets?...), the Conservatives waited until the last four weeks before bothering to tell anyone what their councillor had done - not much, as it turned out. The year before, we had received some beautiful leaflets urging us to vote for Dr Dan Poulter. The fact that we weren't in his constituency appeared to have passed them by... although he would have been far better than David Ruffley...
In truth, this is the sort of place where democracy is relatively notional. There is little organised opposition to the Conservatives, and it becomes harder to envisage much as political parties dwindle in terms of their capacity to campaign. Rural campaigning is, in any event, more labour intensive and incumbents, especially Conservative ones, come with an inbuilt advantage. Unless someone breaks with the normal pattern whereby little happens between elections, inertia tends to be the order of the day.
At Parish level, we have five councillors in situ, and presuming that they want to continue, it is unlikely that we will have an election at all. That said, in the unlikely event that we had one, nobody would campaign anyway.
I'm going to have to seek excitement somewhere else, I guess...
No comments:
Post a Comment