Newspaper Article

Election 2001: Something of the knight about him: Matthew Engel is visiting key constituencies in the campaign: Today: Michael Howard in Folkestone and Hythe

Engel, Matthew

2001

Overview

In the national eruption of 1997, the Conservative ascendancy in many struggling seaside resorts was buried under red or yellow molten lava. Folkestone and [Hythe] escaped. Tactical voting failed completely: the Lib Dems, the obvious challengers, lost ground to Labour; and the Tory won by 6,332 with just 39% of the vote. The MP was one [Michael Howard], former home secretary and leadership contender, now a backbencher and standing again, aged 59. Forgotten perhaps, but not gone. The storyline could be pitched at a Hollywood lunch: a hated representative of the ancien regime living quietly by the sea . . . his neighbours have no idea who this mild-mannered gent once was . . . but a lone gunslinger hunts him down - the last piece of unfinished business from the heroic year of 1997 in unheroic 2001. It seems unlikely that many in Lyminge have seen anyone jump off a lorry in their lives. The other candidates insist it's a rare experience even in Folkestone itself, a place in any case well- designed to put migrants off. \"I think he's frustrated,\" said Peter Carroll, the Lib Dem candidate, \"It's just not as big an issue here as in Dover.\" This one is only half Folkestone, with the rest split between Romney Marsh (mysterious politically as well as scenically), the Tory town of Hythe and the even more Tory villages. It's a boundary commission division, not a single community; there is no one mood.

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited
• Subject: Folkestone England / Howard, Michael / Parliamentary elections-UK / Series & special reports