From the archives: Leaving home to seek a seat in Parliament

Driving down a country lane on his way to his next campaign event, Boris Johnson paused at an intersection, lost again.

“Hmmm,” he wondered, looking at the road signs around him. "Do you think Cray’s Marsh-Wallingford is this way? "

Johnson, a London journalist, is seeking to represent this rural Henley-on-Thames region in Parliament, but he is much more familiar with the streets of London. Johnson is a carpetbagger in Thursday’s national elections, following a time-honored British tradition of seeking office far from home. Unlike the United States, Britain has no residency requirements for candidates, and often little pretense that candidates understand local issues.

Here, many candidates have jumped from seat to seat or have been parachuted into distant districts by the political parties’ central offices in London.

Voters usually accept it, and rarely does the phenomenon become a campaign issue in national races.

“Most people don’t know who their local MP [member of Parliament] is and could care less,” said Patrick Dunleavy, professor of political science and public policy at the London School of Economics. “They’re voting for the party.”

Out on the hustings, that was clear from many of Johnson’s 70,000 would-be constituents in the overwhelmingly Conservative region. He is already a minor celebrity from his weekly newspaper column and appearances on a current-events television program, and is well-known for his rumpled suits, unruly peroxide-blond hair and clever repartee. To voters, it did not seem to matter that he was born, raised, educated, and spent all of his working life in places such as New York, Somerset, Eton, Oxford and London.

A columnist for the Daily Telegraph and an editor of The Spectator magazine, Johnson, 36, moved here at the request of local Conservative leaders two months ago, leaving his wife and four young children behind in London.

Besides name recognition, Johnson has the South Oxfordshire Conservative Association’s backing for a “safe seat” that yielded a resounding 22-point Conservative margin in the last election four years ago. He says he has been studying local issues since his selection last summer and has concluded that the Henley constituency is "a prosperous area which has the problems of prosperity.

"So, he has pledged to increase the number of police officers to fight rising rural crime rates, improve road maintenance, help farmers, and reduce gasoline taxes. He reflects the national Conservative Party opinions - including staunch opposition to joining a single European currency - that so many local voters support.

Pat Bartrum, a voter in nearby Whitchurch, told Johnson he would not support him because he disagreed with Conservative policies. Afterward, Bartrum said that Johnson’s residency was irrelevant to his decision.

“It doesn’t matter to me much, honestly,” Bartrum said. "I want MPs who will use their common sense in Parliament.

"Only Labor Party and Liberal Democratic Party activists make an issue of Johnson’s recent arrival. Their previous MP was Michael Heseltine, a former deputy prime minister and wealthy Welsh-born publisher who was elected here in 1974 after representing Tavistock, 200 miles away, for eight years. Heseltine has lived principally in Northampton, more than an hour away, but kept a residence just over the constituency line and is stepping down after 27 years in the Henley seat amid controversy over his pro-Europe stance.

“Boris has been shipped in here by the party because he supports [Conservative leader] William Hague’s anti-European and rather right-wing views,” said Martyn Jordan, the parish clerk in Woodcote.

But Jordan said all the parties ship in candidates because local officials have difficulty finding qualified people willing to run for office.

Up in the St. Helens South constituency, near Liverpool, the Labor Party of Prime Minister Tony Blair has done the same thing. Labor brought in Shaun Woodward, who defected from the Conservative Party two years ago after he was stripped of a leadership position.

Woodward is having a much tougher time than Johnson in gaining local acceptance. St. Helens South is an impoverished former coal-mining region, very unlike the posh community of Witney, 120 miles away, that Woodward previously represented.

Class issues are partly at work. Woodward usually resides in a 10-bedroom, 17th-century mansion near Oxford but has been living in a $65-a-night hotel room in the St. Helens district during the campaign. His wife, Camilla, is heir to a $150 million fortune from the Sainsbury supermarket family, and Woodward once bragged that his butler had a butler.

His Conservative opponent, Lee Rotherham, has called Woodward a "champagne Socialist. " The Sun, a pro-Labor London tabloid, published a list of 20 reasons not to support Woodward. The newspaper ran a contest for St. Helens residents, in which it gave away a chance to live like Woodward for a day - complete with butler, gourmet chef, a chauffeured Jaguar, and plenty of champagne and Cuban cigars.

Some local Labor activists have quit the party, including firefighter Neil Thompson, who told the BBC, "The Labor Party are treating the people of St. Helens with arrogant contempt. " A local councilman, Thompson is opposing Woodward as the Socialist Alliance candidate.

Woodward has promised to buy a home in the district if he wins.

Neither should be hard for him. Labor candidates usually win handily in the district, and nationwide the Labor Party has a 20-point lead in the polls.

And the average home price in the district is less than $50,000.