Donkey Droppings

The seat of Shropshire North has returned a Tory MP since 1835. Eighteen thirty-five. That was before the accession of Queen Victoria.

Yet no one accuses its voters of being prepared to vote for a donkey if that donkey had the right colour rosette pinned to it. Even though they do in fact give a majority of 15,828 to Owen Paterson.

David Davis's Haltemprice and Howden has been held by the same party since 1837. That party has held several more seats continuously since the nineteenth century.

However, if a seat has been Labour since 1945, or in some cases since as recently as 1966 or later, then its inhabitants can expect a torrent of abuse.

The fact is that the Conservatives honestly believed that Britain had become an elective one-party state in 1992.

Between that General Election and Britain's departure from the ERM, that expression really did used to be employed, even by the BBC.

But they have not won a General Election since, and they do not a stand a cat in hell's chance of winning the next one, or the one after that, or the one after that.

Privately, their leading figures aspire to nothing more than the "triumph" and the "moral victory" of holding the Labour majority below 100. One hundred.

So all that the rest of them have left is Bullingdon bellowing at the plebs for our daring to exist, and for our failure to acknowledge spontaneously the grandeur of our betters.