Times of Tension

It was good to hear Nick Clegg last week distancing himself from the PM. We’re all Thatcherites now, claimed Cameron. Oh no, we’re not, insisted Clegg. Any reminder that the man is Deputy Prime Minister and not Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party is very welcome.

So too was another breaking of ranks last week, when agriculture minister David Heath drew attention to the looming disaster that is food security, or rather the UK’s lack of it. Heath, the LibDem MP for Somerton & Frome, may have been voicing his own views. Or those agreed by his party’s leadership. Certainly not the views of his Coalition partners, notably Osborne and Pickles, who remain desperate to destroy as much farmland as possible in the search for that strangely elusive growth they keep telling us that we need. Meanwhile, those who look ahead are buying farmland and laying the foundations for the new feudalism. The more land in others’ hands that is lost to development, the higher their own profits will in due course be.

Missing from Heath’s statement was any acknowledgement of the fact that WR have been making an issue of food security for years, while all the London parties have had their heads well into the sand. Just read this blog. Maybe Heath does. If so, he’ll know it won’t be the first time we’ve been proved right. We were right about the need to fundamentally restructure the financial sector. We were right about declining public enthusiasm for elected mayors and the whole ‘cities first’ agenda. We were right that localism, Coalition-style, would be a con. We were right about the resurgence of interest in public ownership and industrial planning. So what else are we right about? Peak oil? The need to rebuild the rural rail network (making substantial progress in Scotland and Wales but little in Wessex)? The need to stabilise our population and move towards a truly sustainable society?

It won’t give us any satisfaction to say we told you so. (Welcoming you to membership of WR would be far more constructive.) We do sense that change is coming. Not all of it positive by any means. Earlier this month we received news that West Dorset District Council, under pressure to meet London’s demands for ever more housing, has proposed 1,000 homes on land south-east of Dorchester at Winterborne Came. There is concern that the countryside setting for the homes of two Wessex literary giants – William Barnes and Thomas Hardy – will be destroyed by the development. The lies of London party politicians – that any number of houses can always be accommodated without harming our heritage – just go on getting bigger. But it’s what local folk should expect. So long as they go on voting for this, then this, of course, is what they will get. They will get something different when Wessex Regionalist councillors and MPs are elected to give London diktat its marching orders.

The fact that localism is failing to deliver on its promise of parish democracy will continue to pit Coalition councillors against Coalition ministers until the day they too realise that those in power in London truly don’t care what the yokels think. We who live here are an irrelevance, an irritation, an impediment to their careers. Yet we have it in our hands to destroy those careers by refusing to return these folk to Parliament. We won’t take that step, yet, because we are an essentially deferential society. We really do seem to believe that the big man in London must know what’s best for us. The vicious circle of deference and defeat will continue to repeat down the generations unless we say ‘no’. And follow through on that ‘no’ by building the regionalist alternative.

Ashdown Reveals Defection Terms

As we await the result of the Eastleigh poll, we can provide a little of the background to the coverage our candidate received on Wednesday’s Newsnight. (Catch it on iPlayer while you can: starting at 6:14 in and ending at 6:43.)

Colin reports: “I was able to crash in on some publicity given to Paddy Pantsdown when I suggested he join a real party, to which he threw his hand to his head saying he had lost hours of sleep the night before, worrying about doing so, whereupon I reminded him the Pope had resigned, thus setting a good example, to which he replied 'If the Pope joins the Wessex Regionalists I may consider it'. I am sure Liberal Democrat headquarters will be well-pleased with that footage!”

We are well-pleased that Newsnight included footage of five of the parties standing: Conservative, Labour, LibDem, UKIP and WR. It seems we are now established as the fifth party in Wessex, at least in their eyes. So complaining about the favouritism traditionally shown to the big battalions has produced a result at last.

Talking of favouritism, Colin also sends news of the four-party-only public meeting on Tuesday, which was arranged by David Babbs of 38 Degrees (dangerous radicals they are then):

“I had to shame him into agreeing I should be able to speak. He said I should be allowed one minute as opposed to four minutes for each of the unmentionable suspects, so, before commencing I took over chairmanship by asking the audience to show if they wanted me to have four minutes as the others. There was a majority in favour so I did, and had a good response from a full house with two rows standing at the back.

People are smiling in recognition when they see me and I have taken a number of details of people I have spoken to, explaining that I hope to return to Eastleigh sometime soon after the election and that we intend to field at least one candidate for each county for the General Election in 2015, for which we want offers from people to join us.”