He doesn’t need my help

A weird thing has happened.

I wrote down what people said at the hustings, without telling you about the mooing woman, which was the best bit of the evening. It was my longest blog. A marathon read, that was likely to make you sweat. Then people read it. More people read the blog than attended and then those who attended shared it and I have unwittingly become a John Whittingdale supporter. Or maybe JW has become a Julia-of-all-trades super-fan, as he was one of the sharers, suggesting that everyone should read it before polling day. 

I hadn’t seen it because, unsurprisingly, I haven’t made him a Facebook friend but when we went out to dinner with some mates they had and thought it was very funny.

Since I wrote down what was said, people who know me stop to tell me their voting intention and weirdly, they seem to think I’m going to be excited that long-standing Labour, Green or Lib Dem voters are going to vote for a Conservative. Whilst I can’t claim that he has been a terrible MP, have to concede that he works hard in his constituency and grudgingly admit that it would probably be bad for democracy if the seventh safest opposition seat was lost to the governing party, I can’t help reflect on the idea of whether he needs my help.

The truth is, he doesn’t. He’s a shoe-in. 

And if there was any worry for him they’ve even changed the boundary, taking some of Chelmsford to compensate for the bit of Maldon they gave to Priti Patel to secure her quite recently formed Witham seat.

That’s not a constituency with a majority of left-leaning voters. 

In fact, at the last election he won 72% of the vote with the left  being split (Labour 12%, Lib Dem 12%, Green 4%). I’m assuming that he’s worried about some of his votes going to the bonkers woman from the Reform party but even when UKIP fielded a half-decent candidate in 2015 she only took 17% of the vote and he still won 60.9% This constituency has a 60-70% turnout, so even if the non-voters all turn up and plump for the same party on the left and he loses 12% of his supporters, he still has nothing to worry about. 

‘So, what’s the point of me voting Labour, Lib Dem or Green?’ you ask.

The point is that he does look at it. If he attracts some of the left-leaning voters then we send the message that we like what his government did. If more people vote, ideologically against him then he might have to stop and reflect on the fact that if his government hadn’t had austerity and put a ban on capital spending in schools and hospitals (which he voted for) then he might not need to be saving St Peter’s now. 

Whatever happens at least it will all be over by Friday and we can go back to not caring about politics.