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Queensberry Rules

A bogus newspaper calling itself the “Wiltshire Mail,” but which is actually a voice piece for one of the other political parties, has been joining the other junk mail on North Wilts doorsteps in recent weeks. It contains a number of relatively mild personal attacks on yours truly, which I have no intention of dignifying with any kind of response.

However, it might be timely just to say this to the other parties who will be fielding candidates against me at the General Election:- I pledge that I will be campaigning on the issues and the issues alone. I will be seeking to persuade the voters that a Conservative Government led by David Cameron will be better for all of us than a Labour one led by Gordon Brown, and that I personally will continue my thirteen years of fighting for the people of North Wiltshire. I will make no personal attacks of any kind on other candidates, nor indeed will I react, aside from libel, to any underhand personal remarks they may choose to make. Let’s make this a clean campaign discussing the problems the nation faces and how each of the parties will try to solve them, and leave personalities out of it.

I do also feel strongly that the same should apply nationally. We all sympathise deeply with Gordon Brown’s tragic loss of a child. Of course we do. But that tragedy will neither make him a better nor a worse Prime Minister. His Piers Morgan interview and its content were carefully planned. It was a wrong thing to do. I equally dislike claims in the tabloids that he regularly abuses and assaults his staff. If he does, he certainly should not. But I want to know what he’s going to do to mend our country if he gets another five years in the job, not about his relations with his secretary.

Talking of pretty nauseating and unconvincing press interviews, I have to say that all I want to know about Tiger Woods is whether or not he will win the next major golf tournament.  I want to know about Sir Nicholas Winterton’s political views and career rather than his pretty dopey remarks about Standard Class railway passengers. And when we get to the much-vaunted TV debates amongst the party leaders during the campaign itself, I very much hope that they will be weighty and courteous exchanges about the great matters facing us all, rather than a PMQ- style punch-up. (Which may be fun but really adds very little to the sum total of human happiness.)

So let us try to leave behind our fixation with each other’s private lives, and focus on the problems facing the world, whose magnitude is perhaps greater now than ever before. Poverty, ignorance, terrorism, warfare, climate change, jihadism, the national debt, profligate overspending, the economy in turmoil.

When it comes – and it may not be long away now - I shall be carrying on the very long and honourable North Wiltshire tradition of decent, pleasant, civilised campaigning. I shall robustly argue that our great country is in a shambles, the blame for which lies squarely in Downing Street, and that only a Cameron Government can start to get things sorted out. But no matter what the personal foibles, characteristics, private lives or history of the other candidates may be, I shall make no reference to them whatsoever. When the bell rings to signal the start of the campaign, let’s come out fighting. But let’s stick to the Queensberry Rules.

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