I have been canvassing in Aylesbury – rather preemptively, as there is no election this year – and Milton Keynes. I’ll be out for Boris several times in the next few weeks and we’re back in Aylesbury on Monday.
A few things have really stood out:
- People are swinging to the Conservatives. Labour’s big, bureaucratic, controlling state is becoming obviously expensive, clumsy and ineffective and people seem to be finding the LibDems rather ineffective.
- People think society is in real trouble. Ian Duncan Smith’s Breakthrough Britain seems to be right on the mark.
- People feel there is now no effective social safety net. They feel they will not be protected from abject poverty in old age and that care for the chronically ill is ineffective. Apparently ironic under a social democratic goverment, but wholly predictable.
- Getting out and asking people what matters to them is much appreciated when there is no imminent election.
I have thoroughly enjoyed talking with people about what bothers them in society and in government today and I am ever more determined that the right answer is the Conservatives’ post-bureaucratic age.
