Meet the kingmakers the Motorway Men

Matt Rudd & ,}

Im terribly sorry, Colonel Blashmount-Cadogan of Henley-on-Thames, but you will not be selecting the subsequent budding minister. You can stop great in to your spilt lager, Terry on the Mersey, given you wouldnt be either.

We have had Mondeo Man, Pebbledash People and Worcester Woman but, according to strategists from the main parties, the shortcoming for determining this years choosing rests with an additional alliterative representation voter: Motorway Man, a materialistic, car-dependent salesman who spends a large piece of his hold up on the road. David Brent and his friends will endorse the future.

The Tories have identified twenty-one representation constituencies from Milton Keynes to Morley and Outwood as the healthy medium of Motorway Man. He voted for Tony Blair in 1997 and 2002. He got a bit twitchy in 2005; this time he is, the Tories hope, ready for a change.

Who is he? Where is he? And what is he thinking? At weekends he can be found mowing the grass on one of the most stimulating senior physical education instructor housing estates that have sprung up along the M1 and M6 in the past decade. During the week the favourite springs in to movement in his Passat, his Insignia, his Zetec or, if hes utterly tough, his Titanium.

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In his ear is the ultimate Bluetooth hands-free device. On his satnav are the 3 meetings ahead. He will expostulate at slightest 30,000 miles a year, but right right away he is pulling in to Newport Pagnell services for coffee and a sandwich. And an vitriolic publisher is asking who he plans to opinion for.

Who are you formulation on choosing by casting votes for? I ask, given if Im not approach he thinks Im perplexing to sell him AA membership. The Conservatives. Probably.

Who did you opinion for last time?

Labour, but we need a change.

What do you do?

Im area physical education instructor for a comforts government company.

Do you live in an senior physical education instructor home that was built in the last 10 years?

Yes. Now can I go? I need the toilet.

His name is Geoff, he is Motorway Man and that probably is crucial. Of the 31 Motorway Men I spoke to on a miserable day customarily over connection fourteen of the M1, I can exhibit that: thirteen had voted Labour last time; eight of that thirteen really were not going to opinion that approach this time; 3 were undecided.

The superfluous five pronounced they would opinion Conservative ... probably. Why probably? Well, you cant certitude any of them, can you, pronounced Alan, a program await operative from Leicester, with a shrug.

You have to collect the most appropriate of a bad bunch. Which isnt easy, pronounced Chris from Tamworth, a pessimistic sales rep.

From my rarely systematic poll, the Motorway Man representation the Tories are anticipating for is by no equates to in the bag.

After a cheese and onion Ginster, I head in to Milton Keynes to encounter Motorway Man and his mother at home. In a sprawling estate called Shenley Lodge, I find a smiley Iain Stewart, Tory claimant for Milton Keynes South, knocking on doors. He is smiley because, carrying twice lost to Dr Phyllis Starkey, the well regarded Labour MP, he thinks he competence be in fitness this time and he is gentle in Motorway Man territory.

On the doorsteps of Faraday Drive his opening line is are there any issues youre endangered about? and, mostly, Mrs Motorway Man wants some-more speed bumps on the roads. The celebration that promises speed bumps on all residential roads would win a landslide.

Mr Motorway Man wants the economy sorted out. But when Stewart steers them onto that ethereal subject of who they are going to opinion for, they say: Conservative. Probably.

It is customarily when we reach the (slightly less) senior physical education instructor homes of Clegg Square that he gets a great barbecuing from a lady who looks unimpressed at the Tory intrusion. Okay then, what is your routine on the withdrawal of infantry from Afghanistan? she demands, arms crossed.

Momentarily dumbfounded by a subject separate to speed bumps, Stewart gets going on the batch response, but she interrupts, moves things on, presses for a transparent answer. Then she creates him clap by the total declaration and customarily after a great 10 mins can he have his escape.

Later I honour her on the third grade and ask her who she will be choosing by casting votes for. Oh, Labour, she replies with a sadistic grin. I customarily longed for to rubbish his time so he has less of it to worry my neighbours.

A great fifteen roundabouts south (I have to give my TomTom a Strepsil to get us there), I find Starkey and mangle the headlines that Motorway Man is (probably) choosing by casting votes Tory. She rolls her eyes and says she is confident: Support is firming up. I feel the splash but I have a great possibility of holding the seat. Milton Keynes has been remade given 1997.

She lists the improvements. So isnt she undone that she could lose given of the faults of the leadership? Theres no point in removing annoyed. I got in in 1997 with a 15% representation given of Tony Blair. Its swings and roundabouts. As I try to leave Milton Keynes I can endorse that it is really roundabouts.

That night I have cooking with Cheryl Cole, by that I meant her manuscript is personification as I sit, unhappy and alone, in a Harvester perplexing not to be tempted by the bottle wine. I spin in for the night at a Premier Inn subsequent to the A426 in Rugby. I have bagged the last room in the road house and ask the receptionist since a Premier Inn customarily off the M6 would be packaged to the rafters on a Wednesday night.

Its the sales guys, she replies. Theres a big industrial play ground customarily over there, so they come here and stay overnight. They similar to it.

Who are you going to opinion for? I ask.

I probably wouldnt bother.

Rugby is aim chair series 48 for the Conservatives. The old subdivision of Rugby and Kenilworth swung to the Tories at the last choosing but the range shift defining Rugby as the own subdivision equates to the Tories can no longer take it for granted. They need the areas new Motorway Men.

The Tory candidate, Mark Pawsey, competence even be one himself. Over toast at my Premier Inn he explains how, in 1982, he picked Rugby as the preferred place for his start-up commercial operation provision products to the catering traffic given of the glorious main road access.

Once we have got the yes, theres really a mood for shift debate out of the way, he admits that he is anticipating some-more people uncertain than he was 6 months ago. Hes assured but we still have to close he deal.

Later that sunrise I find myself well and indeed lost in Coton Park, nonetheless an additional obstruction of phased developments, stand in garages and Laurence-Llewelyn-ed show homes on the hinterland of Rugby. I dwindle down an iPodded jogger.

Who are you going to opinion for? I ask and she says: None of you. Im ill of the lot of you. She has run off prior to I can point out that I am not one of them.

By the time I reach Leicester Forest East services, I cant face asking an additional 31 sales reps if they are overhanging to the right, so I ask an IT expert called Alex Brown. He has regularly voted Labour but is disillusioned. And he doesnt certitude the Tories.

In actuality he has turn assured that the routine of removing to the tip of the two-party complement is not gainful to great governance at all: Ill opinion Lib Dem. Maybe. So there you go. A 100% representation to Clegg.

Mike Edwards, the Labour claimant for an additional main road extrinsic seat, Derbyshire South, is eating a cake when I encounter him in a lay-by subsequent to a intelligent housing estate and he is annoyed: given the media regularly concentration on the negative.

Edwards is unapproachable of what Labour has finished for open services. He thinks what Gordon Brown did in the arise of the universe monetary predicament was phenomenal. He wishes Brown perceived some-more approval for it. And he offers a journalist-weary whine when I ask him about Motorway Man.

Who knows who will endorse the election? Are you going to win? I dont know, but weve got a great representation to have to your Motorway Man, to parents, to the production industry, to everyone.

His main opponent, Heather Wheeler, is most perkier in her pearl necklace, her cardie and her bunkerish Nissen hovel headquarters. She likes articulate about Motorway Man, often given she claims to be removing a four-to-one certain reply from him on the doorstep. I discuss it her that is not what I have found.

I have found a lot of people meditative about choosing by casting votes Tory but with caveats, with probablys and maybes. She admits that a serve 40% customarily dont know.

I dont know either. All I do know is Im blissful that I am customarily Stuck-At-His-Desk Man. Motorway Man has to do as well most driving, as well most coffee, as well most visits to the total Harvester salad bar.

As I pass behind by Milton Keynes, I gangling a thought for Alan Francis, the pony-tailed beardy Green celebration claimant fighting on a sheet of less housing, fewer roads and improved buses for the most Motorway Men and Women of his constituency. Francis does not expostulate and I think he spends utterly a large piece of his hold up watchful at train stops as the rest of the universe races by.

To contend his means is destroyed would be unfair. So I wont.