Outside the Westminster bubble

While the political class is completely consumed by the Brexit drama, my impression from surveying residents this morning in Beckermet is that if the people we met today are representative of those citizens of the country who are not political activists - they're not.

We were out with the local CBC councillor Yvonne Clarkson, MP Trudy Harrison, and a good team from Copeland Conservatives on what we call "Pothole Patrol," asking local residents if there are any local issues they want us to address from potholes which need filling in to school place provision.

Reception on the doorstep was very friendly indeed and we had a number of survey forms returned. Very few people mentioned Brexit. Quite a few took up Moorside with us and Trudy Harrison MP was very happy to explain the work which is being done to ensure that the withdrawal of Toshiba does not kill the project.

We will be in a position to address rather more road and pothole issues thanks to the £12 million of extra money coming to Cumbria as a result of the budget for this purpose and I will elaborate further on that point in a post tomorrow.

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