Nick Hillman for Cambridge

I have been keen to have some guest blogs on here and am pleased to run the first one below from my friend and fellow Conservative activist, Nick Bryars.

This is my second ever guest blog, having written on Leicester Politics www.leicesterpolitics.blogspot.com for Ross Grant (the Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate in Leicester South) earlier this week.

The big thing that happened to me campaigning in Cambridge today for my old friend Nick Hillman, was that I was squirted with tomato ketchup while standing on King’s Hedge Road in Arbury ward. I don’t know what motivated my attacker. I didn’t even see them as they drove away in a builder’s van because I was hit on the back of my coat sleeve.

It has got me thinking. I can’t say whether the battery was politically motivated, but in one sense I am proud to have been attacked like this. Every politician, even the most minor one like me, should suffer the occasional egg, bag of flour or squirt of ketchup. It keeps your feet firmly grounded. As a relatively new boy, I have won my spurs.

On the other hand, even politicians remain human beings (well most of them). Part of me undoubtedly feels a little hurt. After all, I was standing around minding my own business at the time. What gives them the right to do this? I felt really angry for a few minutes.

Of course, as we know all too well from events this week the sort of incident I experienced today, is part of the daily lives of many people up and down the country. They are often the poorest, the weakest and the most vulnerable in our society.

I draw only one conclusion from this. It is not the politically easy one that I could draw from this incident of incivility. It would be very easy to blame Alan Johnson, the police and a “New Labour Britain”. To a certain extent I do agree with the Party’s soundbite that parts of Britain are broken; but not all of it is. However, I do draw a more general Conservative philosophical and political point from the incident. The person who attacked me is ultimately responsible for their actions. No one made them do it. They caused me a small amount of unnecessary hurt. In the unlikely event my attacker reads this, I hope they have the maturity to reflect upon this. And may be pay my dry cleaning bill.