LETTER: She has made her choice

Maria Caulfield has turned her back on Lewes. Prior to Theresa May's hard-Brexit statement, she was sent on a tour of interviews to parrot the Brexit line.

Conservative Home examined the prospects of a Liberal revival identifying Lewes as a key Liberal target seat. Why then is Ms Caulfield deliberately enraging remain opinion?

A glance at our election results reveals the answer. She polled 19,206 whilst Norman Baker managed 18,123. That left a surprisingly even split of Brexit and Remain voters up for grabs. UKIP 5,427, Labour 5,000 and Green 2,784.

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The Lib Dems will lose Baker’s incumbent strength and her gamble is that as many of the 5,000 UKIP voters will vote for her as Labour and Green will unite against Brexit. Conservatives, she thinks, faced with an alternative like Jeremy Corbyn, are not going anywhere. I hope she is fatally wrong on the last point. I hope there are many decent moderate Conservatives who will withhold their support from UKIP in blue lipstick, but we will see. Either way, she has made her choice. We have an MP who plans to crush Remain with her far right allies. Maria Caulfield does not care what you think; unless you think like Nigel Farrage.

Paul Newman,

Firle Crescent

Lewes