Where are the lawyers of Eastleigh? Or more specifically, as Chris Huhne’s former constituency, site of a coming by-election, has 50 law firms within 4.5 miles of the town centre, why is no candidate in this election paying much attention to legal issues or the law?

Even at a cynical electioneering level, 50 local employers looks like an industry to me – yet I can’t find a single candidate’s mention of a serious legal issue.

No appeal to this lawyerly mini-constituency’s interests. Nothing on civil justice or legal aid. Zip on human rights - or indeed any rights. Nada on local government powers. Rien on employment law. A search for intellectual property issues mentioned in this election would be long and fruitless one.

Planning law gets a bit of a look-in, as the green belt is a contentious issue locally.

I don’t expect legal issues to dominate an election – but their absence contributes to the sense that this an election that’s dead from the neck up.

The Labour candidate brings a bit of authorial glamour to the election, and writing in the Guardian, has mentioned poverty. But that’s about it for any interesting content in a by-election that falls bang in the middle of some very turbulent times.

The Lib Dem candidate is local, safe and concerned about the green belt. The Conservative is local – and, someone has decided, somewhat unsafe as she is largely guarded from the media (a complicated exercise, as various clips on YouTube show). She would like the abortion limit lowered, and is worried about the green belt – and presumably UKIP.

UKIP are, in addition to the obvious issue of EU membership, concerned about the green belt. Immigration will probably get a look-in – but mostly in a pretty binary way, and not in terms of the principles of immigration law.

I’m obviously simplifying things here – but not by much. Even more than at the peak of my own political activism in 1997, this sort of politics has become about incredibly simple and safe messaging.

It isn’t that I expect every candidate to sound like FE Smith or Helena Kennedy.

But surely the times we live in call for candidates with a bit of a grip on issues around citizens’ rights, businesses’ rights, the terms on which we settle disputes as families, and with or between organisations – how we make agreements, protect inventions, and guarantee a free press, or our personal privacy?

But here’s a chance for the lawyers.

In the gaps between the free-ranging journalists the minders are trying to avoid, and as they travel between stage-managed events, the candidates will be walking the streets and trying to meet people.

So wherever you sit on some of the issues I’ve mentioned, if you work at one of those 50 firms, and a candidate comes towards you, hand outstretched, wanting a brief chat, why not tell them the law matters?

Eduardo Reyes is Gazette features editor

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