Pollsters say that in 2024, Liberals could win North Dorset
I was born in Dorchester, delivered by my Dad- a country GP – during the two minutes silence on November 11th. I am reminded of this when we sing at Huish Park
I was born on a Yeovil Saturday, it was pissing down with rain
My Mum said, “what a big head, I ain’t doing that again”.
Origins are important in the West Country, my mates told me when I went to boarding school “London begins at Salisbury”.
The house I grew up in is on the old A30 in Shaftesbury. John Betjeman called the A30 “the longest country land in England”. Latterly it has been eclipsed by the A303 and the “run to the sun” but it was the way to London before the M3 for anyone bold enough to drive there.
This deliberate provincialism is all pervading. Yeovil Town sing “cos Somerset is wonderful” (it’s full of cheese, cheese and more cheese). Cider trumps beer, wurzels are a thing and when Millwall fans taunted us with blow up carrots we laughed and sang back “you’re not scary anymore“.
Down but not out.
For nearly 10 years , my Dad was Liberal Parliamentary Candidate for North Dorset. At one time he hoped to win it but he never came close. In 2019 , only 20% of voters , voted Lib Dem and it looked like it might be pushed into third place with a Labour revival.
This has not proved the case, pollsters predict that Liberal might win North Dorset. A whole swathe of the West Country could turn as orange as Aintree on Grand National Day
Some bold souls are even predicting that the Liberals could win North Dorset! Liberals now run the County Council (like my Dad did) and my mates back in Shaftesbury are riding high on Tango!
Tapper fantasy prediction
And where did Liberal MP choose to launch his South West Campaign – Yeovil Town’s Huish Park – that’s where!
And who won the wheelbarrow race? The orange wheelbarrow, that’s who! Yeovil, the constituency of Paddy Ashdown, of the Green Army and of by far the greatest – team the world has seen!
Liberalism has always been the party of methodism. Methodism is what you did if you didn’t vote conservative and Labour (despite Tolpuddle being in Dorset) didn’t come into it. My Dad was a Methodist preacher , I am a Methodist, it’s hard to lose your roots even if you’ve been in the Smoke 40 years (eh Frankie Doyle?).
While Liberalism in Twickenham and Richmond is about holding out against Brexit, the West Country (which voted leave) turned against the Liberals in 2019. But now it is picking up the anti- Conservative vote and vaguely warming to the “idiot that fee off the paddle-board”.
Which makes me happy. Liberalism has a lot to give as a third party, and even if it does not get the popular vote of Reform, it will get the seats Reform can’t. Its vote is embedded and latent, no matter how hard the Liberal have hammered the advantages of being pro-Europe, Liberalism hung around in the West Country.
Like Yeovil Town, it was down – but it’s certainly not out.
