Riding conservatively

Ever since intellectuals like HG Wells and Bernard Shaw, cycling has been associated with the socialist left. George Orwell wrote of the spinster riding to evensong - later referred to by John Major.

Since 1997, Labour has introduced the £43.5m National Cycle Network. John Prescott, often called 'two Jags', oversaw transport reforms that were meant to double cycling journeys by 2010.

To many, bikes represented poverty. Norman Tebbit, a minister under Margaret Thatcher, was famously misquoted as telling the unemployed to get "on yer bike" and look for work.

But Conservative MPs are shifting away from the chauffeur-driven car and onto the bike. Conservative leader David Cameron apologised after cycling the wrong way up a one-way street...

...and Boris Johnson wrote in 2006: ¿When Cameron's Conservatives come to power it will be a golden age for cyclists and an Elysium of cycle lanes, bike racks, and sharia law for bike thieves."

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