TWO weeks on from the General Election, public attention is naturally turning to the new government and what its plans will be.

For myself, I am and will remain eternally grateful for the trust and support that my constituents have shown in re-electing me as the MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire.

Like the legendary Gaulish village of Asterix and Obelix, we stood firm against the invaders, thanks to our magic potion of local knowledge and local community – and I and my team tried to bring some humour as well as positivity to the campaign trail.

But two things came through extremely clearly throughout the election campaign.

The first point is national. Although this country has returned a new Labour government with a huge majority, it is still quite unclear across a whole range of areas what the new government actually stands for.

Will it, for example, treat rural areas as secondary to the big cities, or govern as a national party?Will it seek to demonise farmers, or strike a temperate balance between food security and economic and environmental sustainability?

Even where the new government has started to reveal its plans, there is potential cause for concern. It has emphasised onshore wind power and new housing,for example, and we badly need new affordable housing locally. But if its plans mean covering England in electricity pylons and wind turbines, and a lot of large scale house-building set not by local needs and circumstances but by Whitehall, I suspect it will run into considerable resistance.

There is also loose talk about using more private investment to build infrastructure. But as a longstanding opponent of Labour’s Private Finance Initiative in the NHS – and the only MP in Parliament to have saved millions of pounds on the PFI for his local hospital – I can say with certainty that the last thing this country needs is another very expensive off balance sheet financial wheeze.

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The second point is local. There is nothing like six weeks on the doorstep to ram home key issues of local concern, from the state of children’s services to the river Wye. This is part of the magic of our democracy. But one specific issue came up time and again, from people of every background and occupation, in every part of the constituency: the dire state of our local roads. That is a council matter, but of course a key early priority for me as well.

JESSE NORMAN

MP FOR HEREFORD AND SOUTH HEREFORDSHIRE