If there were 50 hours in the day, it still wouldn’t be enough for our Conservative European parliamentary candidates to visit everywhere and do everything they wanted covering the six counties in the East of England during the election campaign.

To me, their daily programme seems exhaustive, but they do it because they are 110% committed to meeting as many people as possible. That is even more important now when politicians are tainted as greedy, grasping bad guys as they want to reassure voters that there are many decent, honourable ones out there too.

Inevitably, there are occasions when candidates can’t attend a local hustings because the invitation arrived at short notice or they have already made firm plans and don’t want to let other people down. It means that regrettably, candidates can’t accept every invitation, and I would imagine that is true for all political parties.

This week I was sent an email by a local journalist complaining about our lack of attendance at a couple of hustings, so I forwarded it to our candidates who I know have been working flat out round the clock and asked for their responses. Here is one of the replies from John Flack. I doubt it is humanely possible to do more in a day.

John also makes an excellent suggestion about local newspapers becoming actively involved and getting local candidates on a political platform to debate issues in front of as many voters as possible:

I have gone everywhere that I have been asked to go. In the last couple of weeks I have spoken at meetings in Brentwood (against David Campbell-Bannerman ) Felixstowe, Peterborough and Southend. I (like my fellow team members) have driven thousands of miles criss-crossing the region (all at my own expense) and as per the Party’s pre organised programme have knocked on thousands of doors in dozens of constituencies in all six counties, participated in “walk abouts” through town centres and have attended many “special interest” briefings and meetings.

Last Saturday I spent the morning (along with Claire Strong) on a street stall in Berkhampsted High Street, being seen by hundreds of voters, and yes, many raised the issue of Westminster members expenses.

Yesterday, after the Newmarket launch, I drove all the way to Lancashire to represent the Team at the national launch with David Cameron and I signed the candidates pledge in front of the T.V cameras on behalf of the whole Eastern Candidate Team.

I am working full time every day between now and the election (with the exception of Sunday 24^th) and will be in Peterborough and Cambridge City tomorrow, Rochford, Southend and Billericay the day after and so on. Each day meeting hundreds of voters.

Many of the invitations to “hustings” meetings we have received have been at short notice and/or will be attended by a handful of people, the vast majority of whom have already entrenched political views. If we were to re-arrange our pre planned programme to attend these events, it would mean breaking commitments elsewhere where we meet many more genuinely uncommitted voters.

Perhaps the Eastern Daily Press and the wider Archant Group would like to arrange one or more genuine large hustings  meetings, publicised well in advance in all its papers, so that they might attract a broad cross section of the genuinely interested public, including hopefully some floating voters. That way candidates could debate the real issues and choices that the UK and the East of England face in its relationship with mainland Europe. Hopefully, the papers would also give full coverage in their pages to the debate.  That would be a genuine public service by Archant which other news media organisations could follow.

Pic: From left to right, Geoffrey Van Orden MEP, and our excellent candidates Clare Whelan, Vicky Ford and John Flack.