‘It’s a fight to the death here’

David Cameron has said that the two most beautiful constituencies in England are his own, in Oxfordshire, and Oliver Letwin’s in Dorset. He obviously knows little of Thirsk and Malton, a small slice of North Yorkshire heaven, but the area will certainly be on his mind next Thursday. For here, the now supposedly united tribes of Tories and Liberal Democrats are engaged in a vicious local election, the first of the new parliament. If the nasty tone and temper of this rural battle is anything to go by, the national Lib-Con alliance hasn’t a chance.

In the Left corner (or thereabouts) stands Howard Keal, a local Lib Dem bigwig with a strong base in his home town of Malton. A journalist and ‘communications specialist’, Keal does a fine line in killer soundbites and putdowns. Facing him on the Right is Anne McIntosh, a seasoned Conservative MP, whose fierce struggles with her local party have made her more determined than ever to win this jewel of a rural Yorkshire seat.