THE major parties are all expected to call up their big names to visit the key South East Cornwall constituency in the run up to the General Election on June 7.

First to arrive next week will be Ian Duncan Smith, Shadow Secretary for Defence who is to visit Torpoint to support Tory candidate Ashley Gray. It is likely he will be followed during the campaign by Shadow Chancellor Michael Portillo, agricultural spokesman Tim Yeo and Shadow Foreign Secretary Francis Maud.

Tory Leader William Hague is also expected to tour Cornwall as a whole in a bid to help regain all the Tory seats lost to the Lib Dems, and to Labour at Falmouth/Camborne, the first time in its history that the county has not had a Tory MP.

But the LibDems will be fighting their usual tough campaign, and Colin Breed, who became the party's agricultural spokesman during the last parliament, can be sure of strong support from leader of the party Charles Kennedy, who is expected to roll into South East Cornwall's towns aboard his 'battle bus'.

Youngest

Labour's candidate, and the youngest at 26, will be former Plymouth councillor Bill Stevens – his party received a visit to Cornwall from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott on Wednesday. He stopped at Falmouth/Camborne but bypassed South East Cornwall to go on to the Plymouth Sutton marginal.

Other candidates in the field are the UK Independent's Graham Palmer from Yelverton, and Mebyon Kernow's Dr Ken George, a university lecturer who lives with his family at Seaton.

As well as the government seat, constituents will also have electioneering from candidates standing for the Cornwall County Council elections taking place on the same day. The LibDems are fielding 13 candidates, but are being matched by the Tories for the first time who also have 13, Menheniot being the only district out of the 14 where they are not officially standing. There are 10 Independents, four from Mebyon Kernow and one Labour.

At the 1997 general election campaign the Tories were stunned when the local seat, which had been held for 25 years by retiring MP Sir Robert Hicks, was gained for the LibDems by former Saltash mayor, Colin Breed.

Determined to regain the seat for the Tories is their candidate Ashley Gray, a married father of three who has been living near St Dominic for the last year.