Daniel Hannan has been the Tory MEP for South East England for 241 months during which time of 240 months he was one of a number of MEPs and even spoke very boldly about how he needn’t bother campaigning as he was top of their list. However due to the loss of support for his party last month Daniel has suddenly realised he needs to pay attention to what is going on in his constituency which represents 8 million people and covers a great deal of rural areas such as most of Sussex. The Labour Party developed the theme for housing for key workers way back early on in Tony Blairs regime when they were attempting to resolve matters of housing and one of the major blockages was the Tory opposition in local settings to housing targets being set by the Government. Every time the Government stood up and called for more homes to be built, the Tory dominated South East Councils with people like Henry Smith as leader of West Sussex claimed that such a demand was unacceptable and refused to engage in meaningful planning. Indeed that was why Eric Pickles erased the Regional Assemblies as soon as he arrived in office. One of the arguments that was raised around 15 years ago was that the Police, Schools and Hospitals were under threat from the lack of housing in a number of locations and so the idea of key workers was expressed and indeed the provision of housing discounts for such people was offered. There was always a challenge when it came to those of us who needed housing but worked outside of certain public sector agencies, but at least by raising such matters the issue of housing provision was being understood by most politicians so that they could hopefully change their approach. Sadly in those days Daniel was either asleep or disinterested in such matters. What would be helpful now would be for him to begin to campaign for housing in rural areas for people who wish to live in those communities such as farmers families, shopworkers and workers for businesses as well as the public sector employees. Perhaps whilst he is campaigning for such provision Daniel could also demand that people who own a primary home in a city or in another nation and who have used some of their substantial wealth to buy a second or third home in the countryside in a pretty rural setting could be challenged with the clear evidence that an empty property in a village 5 days a week or even 330 days a year prevents such villages from achieving sustainability. Of course the difficulty about such an approach is that a number of members of the Conservative Party are those people and they of course are the same people who Daniel wants to avoid criticising, unlike the Labour party folk who set out about 15 years ago to try to solve some of the problems that were being opposed by people like Daniel!