IT wasn’t long ago that Dorset saw David Cameron at a barbecue, Nick Clegg at the shops in Broadstone and Gordon Brown in Asda.

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But the county seems to have dropped off the map as far as party leaders are concerned.

It was in 2015 that prime minister David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat deputy PM, Nick Clegg, visited the seat of Mid Dorset and North Poole. The constituency had been held by the Lib Dems since 2001, but fell to the Tories as part of a strategy to snatch seats from their coalition partners.

South Dorset became a Labour seat in 2001 and attracted visits from high profile figures including prime minister Gordon Brown, whose backing wasn’t enough to see off a Tory push in 2010.

Neither of those seats are far enough up the list of target constituencies to merit leadership visits this year.

For activists, leadership visits can be a mixed blessing, demanding a big turnout by volunteers and taking up time that could be spent knocking on doors. But their absence makes life duller for politics-watchers.