For decades, many voters and pollsters have written off rural Dorset as being of any political interest due to its habit of consistently returning the same party to parliament. As I read the New Blackmore Vale’s letters page, do I detect that the blue wall might be crumbling here, too?
Indeed, I can’t help but wonder sometimes, reading the Tory columns, whether they’ve given up. Are they eyeing the next life raft to a job in a right wing thing tank, or the Campaign for Rural England?

The member for North Dorset desperately tried to connect with the thousands struggling locally this Christmas. He offered us his mawkish, jingoism-lite reflections on ‘our strong networks of community groups and charities’ that ‘deep within our British DNA [force] us to whether storms and rise to challenges’.
Gosh, it’s like watching a re-run of Cameron’s ‘big society’ mashed up with Dad’s Army. And it’s typical of the Tories to venerate the charities that mop up after their failure to feed the country, rather than address why the UK is in this position.
We shouldn’t be. The reality is, Britain is still a rich country. Millions of its population shouldn’t have to rely on a patchwork of charities for food. Different, intelligent choices are available.
Some 800,000 children in the UK living in poverty are not eligible for free school meals because, cruelly, the threshold for qualification has not increased with inflation. PWC calculated that extending meals to them would generate £1.71 in core economic benefit for every £1 invested – higher than for an increase in universal credit. And extending free school meals into the holidays would take the fear out of Christmas for families.
Buy hey – ‘free speech…helps safeguard our liberties’ proclaims Hoare. As the Manic Street Preachers once sang, freedom of speech won’t feed my children.

I know what Conservatives will say – it’s not the duty of the state to feed people. I agree. The state should be fostering an economy that works for its citizens, providing sufficiently well paid, secure jobs so that people can feed themselves. But the Tories have failed to do that. So here we are.

For children in poverty, either the state feeds them, or it forces them to food banks like the one in Sturminster Newton – run by a Tory councillor! Truly, this is the conservative circular economy.
I choose to look forward to a brighter future next year. One where – let us dream for a second – the Tories give in to public pressure and call an election. One which brings in a Labour government. With local Labour MPs that don’t leave it to Children in Need to support children in need.