As the dust settles after the General Election, it is a time of mixed emotions. First and foremost, I am grateful. Grateful to the voters of the Kenilworth and Southam constituency that they were prepared to put their trust in me again, especially against the backdrop of a generally dreadful set of results for Conservative candidates everywhere. There will be much to be said in the coming weeks and months about the reasons for that. Next comes a sense of exhaustion, for all involved in this election I am sure. Election campaigns are tough and this one was particularly so. You don’t fully appreciate how big this constituency is until you try to get your message out across it in less than 6 weeks. In addition to hustings involving other candidates, I held 12 public meetings around the constituency amounting to well over 12 hours of answering questions in addition to knocking on hundreds of doors. Digital campaigning plays an ever greater part in our democracy of course, but I still believe there is no adequate substitute for face to face contact with the electorate and I believe too that candidates for elected office should make themselves available to be challenged and assessed, however old-fashioned public meetings may now be. It was of course an additional challenge to have to compete with England’s football matches on some of the evenings we had booked. Also new, and unwelcome, was the need to have a security presence at the public meetings for the first time in the six General Election campaigns in which I have been a candidate. There is sadness too, as I come back to Westminster without friends and colleagues who made such a positive contribution there and in the constituencies they previously represented.
I have also felt pride in being able to participate in this great demonstration of our democratic principles. Once again, hundreds of people in our area campaigned for candidates, helped to run polling stations or counted votes, or contributed to voter turnout being noticeably higher in the Kenilworth and Southam constituency than the national average. Perhaps most of all, I am glad to live in a country where we choose our Government in an election and the losing side accepts the result. There are many other places around the world where this cannot be taken for granted. We have just witnessed power in the United Kingdom transfer swiftly, peacefully and in an orderly way. That is actually a remarkable thing, and both winners and losers in the democratic process need to defend it.
