CAMPAIGN TRAIL:Damian Collins is bidding to win seat held by former Tory leader, writes MARK HENNESSY
THE FIRST flat owned by Conservative candidate Damian Collins in Netherwood Road near Shepherds Bush in London was once home to Michael Collins during his days working for the post office before the Easter Rising.
“Ken Livingstone unveiled a plaque on the wall outside to mark the fact that Collins lived there,” Damian Collins (no relation) said. “We had a couple of Galway lads who called once who wanted to see where he had lived.”
Today, Collins is bidding to hold on to Michael Howard’s old seat of Folkestone and Hythe on the English south coast for the Conservatives, which, barring an extraordinary upset, he should easily do.
Given that Labour has virtually no presence in the constituency, the only competition comes from the Liberal Democrats, although even the tide behind leader Nick Clegg is unlikely to do much for the party in this constituency.
“There isn’t much evidence of a Liberal Democrat surge here,” according to Dublin-born local councillor George Bunting.
“They ran the council here for four or five years and they tried to put up the council tax by 38 per cent.
“Then they closed the public toilets and stopped cutting the grass, so there isn’t much enthusiasm for them locally,” says Bunting, who is canvassing most days to protect the Conservatives’ 13,000-strong majority in the constituency.
The Conservatives copper- fastened their majority on the Shepway council in the 2006 local councils, helped by the defection of six Liberal Democrat councillors who were unhappy with the way their council group was being run.
However, despite its Tory background, Folkestone is not some middle-class nirvana: the town has struggled to hold on to local employment in recent decades, following the loss of tourist and ferry business.
Much of the constituency outside of the 40,000-strong town of Folkestone is rural, including the reclaimed Romney marsh, which, according to one of Collins’s canvassers, has “more sheep per acre than anywhere else on the planet”.
The local Asda supermarket recently carried out a survey of its customers, which, while it showed that concerns about the economy were the top priority, also found that feelings on immigration were not far behind.
In place as a parliamentary candidate for four years, Collins has yet to emerge from the shadow of Howard – himself the son of an immigrant Romanian Jew who rose to serve in successive cabinets under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Collins’s grandfather, also ironically named Michael Collins, left Donnybrook in Dublin in the mid-1950s for Northampton with his family, including Damian’s then six-year-old father.
Brought up in Northampton, Damian later went to Oxford University and spent time as president of the Oxford University Conservative Association – the breeding ground for many a Conservative minister.
He ran for the Conservatives in 2005 but he was never going to win unless there was a hefty national swing behind the man whose shoes he is now bidding to fill. However, Howard’s hopes of moving in to Downing Street were not to be realised.
Given the need to make his own way in the campaign, Collins spends ages on the doorsteps with those constituents who are at home on a Monday morning, leaving his canvassers frequently wondering where he has disappeared to.
In all bar a few, the message is good and more ticks are made on canvassing sheets. “We haven’t seen any evidence of people changing their voting intentions because of the television debates,” he said.
In one, though, a Tory voter expresses a degree of mild- mannered exasperation with the campaign run by the Conservative leader, David Cameron
“Why isn’t your man making more headway,” Collins is asked. “Who is doing your advertising now?
"Well, it certainly isn't Saatchi and Saatchi [the company credited with Margaret Thatcher's Labour Isn't Workingslogan from the 1979 election]. It's rubbish, isn't it," the candidate is told.