Will he be PM? Vara in a rapeseed field

Elton village, Cambridgeshire, May 3: Is Shailesh Vara one day going to be Britain?s first Prime Minister of Indian origin, as someone once suggested after he had addressed a Conservative Party rally?

Since such predictions of high office invariably turn out to be self-defeating, Vara, a 44-year-old solicitor who was born in Uganda, laughs at the suggestion.

?My concern is to be elected member of Parliament for North-West Cambridgeshire and to serve my constituents well,? he says carefully.

Nationally, the Liberal Democrats, under Charles Kennedy, are mounting a strong challenge against Labour in the marginal seats ? and a vote for the Lib Dems could hand the Tory leader, Michael Howard, the keys to 10 Downing Street, Tony Blair warned yesterday.

But Vara should do it since he is a Tory candidate standing in a safe Tory seat, where the last MP, the newly ennobled Sir Mawhinney, a former chairman of the party, had a majority of 8,101 in 2001.

Vara came to Britain with his family from Uganda in 1964 when he was nearly 5, went to Aylesbury Grammar School and Brunel University and qualified as a solicitor.

This could be third-time lucky for Vara. He was once up against the doughty Labour MP Clare Short, in Birmingham Ladywood, and last time just missed taking Northampton South by 885 votes. He was nominated a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party in October 2001, with responsibility for attracting people under 30.

Vara and his English wife Beverley and their eight-month-old son, Sam, now live in a village in Cambridgeshire. Their house has an acre of grounds and a deep pond. He has invested in a pair of green Wellington boots for when ?I need to trudge down muddy lanes?. Green wellies (as opposed to black) are also a symbol of middle class, garden-loving Britain.

It would be easy to caricature him as being ?more British than the British?.

His stance on such issues as race, crime, law and order, immigration and asylum, places him on the right wing of the Conservative Party but his views have been long held.

Vara has clearly worked out that if he is to make his mark in national politics as a Tory, he cannot play the ethnic card.

The constituency he is fighting is 60 per cent rural Huntingdonshire ? this was once represented by the former Prime Minister, John Major (who has addressed a joint news conference with Vara) ? and 40 per cent urban Peterborough.

The rural part includes 78 villages, some very picturesque with the apple and cherry blossom now in full bloom, the flat Fens and the hilly areas of rolling English countryside with fields yellow with rapeseed. There is a sign for a ?nature reserve?, with a drawing of a badger. In some fields, farmers have put up large ?Vote Vara? posters. On the doorstep, even those who won?t vote for him are frightfully polite.

?I actually see myself as a British citizen of Indian origin who is a Conservative and who wishes to enter Parliament with a view to serving my constituents in North-West Cambridgeshire and my country,? he emphasises. ?It?s of a previous generation when the ethnic element was at the forefront. Now I am just a British citizen.?

If Vara wins, he could become a Tory role model and help to dispel the notion that Asians automatically vote Labour. He would also be the first Gujarati to win a seat, he points out.

His father emigrated to Kenya from Gujarat at 17 and his mother was born in Uganda. Now they are 80 and 73, and they and his three siblings are all settled in Britain, though none has come to campaign for him. He has visited India ?a few times?, the last occasion being in 2003, when the Indian government took a group of Tories to Delhi, Mumbai and Kashmir.

?Historically, the majority part of the ethnic minority community has supported Labour,? Vara acknowledges. ?The economic migrants who came here naturally gravitated towards Labour because in those days politics was class-driven. The Conservatives were supposed to be the party of the middle classes. Now you have the next generation who are part and parcel of British society and also the class distinction of the parties is much less than it used to be 30 years ago.?

?Who would have thought a Ugandan Asian boy would be here?? he murmurs at one point.

?Here? is the lovely village of Elton, where the birds are twittering in the trees bearing the green of spring, cows grazing in fields on one side, sheep on the other. This is the idyllic England of Bertie Wooster.

The locals seem to have taken to Vara and given him a crash course in colourful local customs. ?Last Saturday was St George?s Day and one of the villagers here had a St George?s Day dinner to which I was invited. Over a hundred people from the village were there.?Vara exudes quiet confidence as he says: ?My ethnic background is not an issue.?

Whether rural England, where there is not an Asian to be seen, agrees will become clear this Thursday.