Back in 2015 Lib Dem Voice had an interesting “conversation” with Dominic Raab, which we would like to share with you again.

The trigger for this was a post we published in February 2015 by Roisin Miller: Opinion: An MP who takes me for granted has left me feeling disenfranchised. In it she wrote:

Confession time. I’m a political activist and I’m not currently registered to vote. I have dropped off thanks to individual voter registration and I haven’t sought to redress it.

This is something which I find reprehensible, yet I am lacking the motivation to correct it.

I live in Esher and Walton which since 1906 has only ever returned a conservative MP. The lowest majority was in the 1930s, it was 16%. Dominic Raab got 58% of the vote in 2010, a majority of around 18,000.

I’ve written to Raab on a number of occasions and always got a reply. Often quite half hearted but it’s always come.

Do I feel represented? No. Regardless of party affiliation, he isn’t a particularly good MP. He was not really on local election literature, I’ve had nothing from him since I moved in 3 years ago and I’ve not once been canvassed.

Compare this to my parents in Havant, also a seat where the Conservative gets over 50% of the vote. David Willetts does not have to campaign as if his seat was marginal yet you always get an annual report, canvassing at local elections and a very heartfelt casework service (in fact I would go so far as to say the best of any MP I’ve come across, including worked for). Despite it being a safe seat, I was always compelled to vote, I felt it mattered.

Why the difference?

The answer is clear- it lies in the willing of local parties to engage with the electorate. Despite Havant being true blue Willetts clearly sees the importance of talking to his electorate.

It strikes me however that when someone as politically engaged as myself is left feeling disengaged by the state of my local politics, how must others feel? It comes as little surprise to me that many feel politicians don’t care when I know they do, yet at home I still feel like this.

The following day Dominic Raab added this comment below the post:

I have posted a full response to Roisin Miller’s post on my blog (for the record Liberal Democrat Voice declined to post it):

To which Mary Reid replied:

Dominic – Lib Dem Voice did not refuse to post it. You sent it to the personal email address of one of the editors instead of to the voice email address, so it was not picked up for a while.

As today’s editor I posted it a good 25 minutes before you placed your comment above.

So what was the full response that we received from him?  Here it is in full: Lib Dem Spin Doctor feels ‘Disenfranchised’.

(We have been asked to publish this post, unedited, by Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher and Walton).

On Sunday morning, I was made aware of a blog-post by Roisin Miller on Liberal Democrat Voice, an independent website for Lib Dem supporters, entitled: ‘An MP who takes me for granted has left me feeling disenfranchised’. What followed was a nebulous – but direct – attack on me as an MP, saying that I took my so-called ’safe seat’ for granted. In particular, apparently my responses to Ms Miller’s communiqués were ‘half-hearted’, I’m not ‘a particularly good MP’, she hasn’t received any literature from me in 3 years, and locally Conservatives are failing to ‘engage with the electorate’. I think Ms Miller deserves a response.

First, she might have mentioned that she was Ed Davey’s local spin doctor and Kingston & Surbiton Lib Dems’ campaign manager until August 2013 – and has run as a candidate in various local elections. Nothing wrong with that. But Ms Miller is not just any old ‘political activist’. She’s a professional politician having a go at her local Tory nemesis.

Nonetheless, it’s fair game to highlight lazy MPs who take strong majorities for granted. It’s just that, since I was selected as the Conservative candidate by open primary in 2009, in a process open to every resident regardless of political affiliation, I have been anything but lazy. In the 2010 election, we had 72% turnout – compared to 65% nationally, and higher than Kingston – a tribute to the efforts my team and I made to galvanise interest. Neither I nor voters were remotely complacent.

Ms Miller lives in Molesey. I live in and commute from neighbouring Thames Ditton. I’ve spent an enormous amount of time in Molesey – all documented on my blog here. Up at Westminster, I’ve been independent-minded, for example, campaigning against the snooper’s charter, and supporting a beefed up Right of Recall against MPs – examples of issues that many Lib Dems care about, as well as Conservatives.

Ms Miller says my replies to her emails have been ‘half-hearted’. Really? I won’t disclose the content, but I have written to senior officials and Ministers on a wide range of issues. Ms Miller is no stranger to the ‘campaign email’, but has invariably got a personal reply from me. I have written to her substantively seven times in two years.

Next, Ms Miller says she hasn’t had any other literature from me in three years. In fact, I send an annual ‘Westminster Report’, delivered by Royal Mail, to every address in the constituency. She should have had at least two since she moved here – perhaps one or other got swept up into the bin with pizza leaflets, who knows? But, since Ms Miller signed up for my monthly e-bulletin in April 2013, I am starting to wonder whether she isn’t being rather economical with the truth when she says she has ‘had nothing’ from me in three years.

What about face-to-face contact? In addition to all the local events I do, like any MP, I also hold public meetings every six months across the constituency – advertised variously, including via my e-bulletin – to discuss any local or national issue. I have held six in Molesey alone since February 2012, 40 in total since May 2010. These meetings have been vibrant, sometimes challenging. In Molesey, working with local councillor Steve Bax, we’ve tackled a range of issues – including parking regulations, getting behind community ideas for buying the Jolly Boatman site (a longstanding local bug-bear), and liaising with Heathrow to secure the suspension of local flight trial paths. If Ms Miller is so ‘politically engaged’, why hasn’t she been along to any of these meetings to make her voice heard?

There are two ironies in all this. The first is that, if the Lib Dems had their way, and we changed the voting system to Proportional Representation, it would break the constituency link between elector and elected that ensures local residents can hold MPs like me to account. The current system may not be perfect, but the alternatives are far worse.

Second, for all Ms Miller’s attack on ‘Tory complacency’, she was in charge of Ed Davey’s local PR and Kingston Lib Dems’ local campaigns until recently. As we went into the last election, Ed Davey had a bigger majority than my predecessor did in Esher and Walton. Mr Davey’s seat is now viewed as ultra-marginal, and Kingston Lib Dems lost control of the council. In contrast, my majority in Esher and Walton doubled in 2010, and since then local Conservatives have assiduously retained a council long controlled by opposition groups.

For my part, working with a great local team, I’m energetically engaging with voters, regardless of their political views and by any means possible. For hers, Ms Miller confesses she hasn’t even bothered to register to vote. If she really feels disenfranchised, I can only extend a warm invitation to her to attend my upcoming Molesey public meeting – as it happens next Wednesday, 7.30pm start, at St Mary’s Church hall in East Molesey.

Caron Lindsay added this comment:

I feel I should also tell you that during the rather bizarre correspondence we had with Dominic Raab on Sunday (which went, roughly, I demand a right of reply, ok, here are your options, and why not address these points, YOU ARE REFUSING ME THE RIGHT OF REPLY, no we aren’t, you can do one of these two things, YOU ARE SUPPRESSING MY VOICE), he demanded that we should publish whatever he sent us unedited. Excuse me, that’s not a guarantee we would extend to anyone, not even Nick Clegg. This is particularly important as his email contained something which was very easily provably untrue about the author of the original article. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to publish something we knew to be untrue, but we’re also not so unsporting that we would have allowed even a political opponent to do so. It wouldn’t have been right.

Make of it what you will.