Pandering to animal rights extremists will get MPs rejected, not elected

The reasons why England and Wales voted so convincingly for a Conservative Government on Thursday will be debated forever, but one of the most obvious is the complete rejection of both Labour and Liberal Democrats in any constituency that has a hint of the countryside about it. This is graphically illustrated by the post-election constituency map. Actually, suggesting that the voters rejected those parties is probably the wrong way round. The truth is that those parties have rejected rural voters. In 2015 Labour’s policy offer to the countryside was little more than a series of threats about everything from gun ownership to badger culling and extraordinarily the Liberal Democrats, despite having many sensible MPs in rural areas, also managed to exude indifference towards the countryside at a national level.

As a Conservative MP I should probably stop now and leave both parties to stew in the mire they have created, but there is a bigger issue here about countryside ‘representation’.