Andy McSmith's Election Diary: Why politicians need to be shielded from the voting public

Greville Janner, who has escaped prosecution for sexual offences, was a rare example of a hereditary Labour MP. With a general election looming in May 1970 Barnet Janner, 77 year old MP for Leicester North West, assured his local party that he had no intention of retiring. On the strength of that assurance they went ahead and printed hundreds of items of campaign literature urging people to ‘Vote Janner.’ Two days later, he announced he was retiring after all. His 51 year old son then stepped forward, offering to take Dad’s place and save the party the expense of pulping all those new leaflets. It took just ten days to complete the adoption, and in June Greville filled the Commons seat that had been in the family since the war.

Perhaps the Leicester Labour Party took their cue from the Conservatives in Thirsk, who reputedly adopted Robin Turton as their candidate in 1929, after the sudden death of his uncle, also called Turton, so as not waste their ‘Vote for Turton’ posters.

If you wonder why the leading politicians spend the so much of the election shielded by their staff and supporters from all contact with the voting public, consider what happened to the Education Secretary Tristram Hunt when he went unguarded into a primary school in Derbyshire, followed by a camera crew from BBC East Midlands, and asked an angelic looking child whom he would vote for. “Ukip,” the boy replied. It would have looked rude or even cowardly for Hunt to have broken off the conversation there and then, so he asked the obvious follow up question: “Why’s that?” Came the reply: “I’d like to get all the foreigners out of the country.”

“Whenever the Government sends Cabinet members to my constituency my popularity seems to go up so I very much welcome the Lord Chancellor to Walsall.”

Labour veteran David Winnick is pleased to have his turf invaded by Chris Grayling.

The biggest single donation to UKIP among new figures released by the Electoral Commission came from the millionaire nightclub owner, Robin Birley. He used to be a generous backer of the Tory party, and bankrolled David Davis’s unsuccessful bid for the Conservative leadership in 2005. Last year, he switched allegiance, which may be causing some awkwardness within the family. After Birley’s parents divorced, his mother Annabel, married her long term lover, Sir James Goldsmith, making Birley the half-brother of Zac Goldsmith, who is fighting to hold his Richmond Park constituency against the Lib Dems, with UKIP threatening to split the right wing vote.

Labour has a strong chance of recapturing Norwich, which Charles Clarke lost in 2010to the Lib Dem Simon Wright by just 310 votes. One Although one analyst has given the Labour candidate Clive Lewis a 97 per cent chance of winning back Norwich South when talking to the New Statesman, he was keen not to appear to think it was already in the bag.

“In the multiverse there's still three universes in a hundred where there's a Green MP in Norwich, so anything could happen,” he said. "I could be caught with my pants down behind a goat with Ed Miliband at the other end - well, hopefully that won't happen."

Hopefully, it won’t.

Simon Wright, who snatched the seat off Labour’s Charles Clarke in 2010, by just 310 votes, has accused his opponent of being “both tasteless and extremely arrogant.” Tasteless – certainly, but not necessarily arrogant, I would say. Mr Lewis has duly apologised for what he called “an off-colour joke”.