I was recently contacted by a Conservative Councillor, exasperated by his party leadership's intransigence over HS2 and failure over the last five years even to change "Labour's" route. He will be quietly retiring from the Council at this year's election and won't be supporting the Conservative party ever again. In many ways this story is a microcosm of the larger problem that the Stop HS2 campaign has faced since that fateful day back in 2010 when the then Labour government dropped its HS2 bombshell on the AONB.

Over the last five years, we've been assured variously that a Conservative led government would do things differently. Our MP spent a lot of time in the run up to the 2010 election and afterwards assuring her constituents that Conservative Ministers would properly consider different options, would change the route, would protect the AONB and provide full and proper compensation to affected communities. In all these areas, the Conservatives and their Lib Dem allies in government have failed miserably, even to mitigate the scheme properly through a precious nationally protected environment. The result is well documented. Shattered communities, rising ill health, people moving out of the area if they can, many more stuck in unsaleable family homes, huge upheaval and year after year of grinding uncertainty for the people having to live on the very front-line of the coalition's HS2 route.

On this fifth anniversary of the HS2 announcement, it's really time for the many people in the Conservative Party who are disillusioned with the actions of their Prime Minister and successive Conservative Secretaries of State to stand up and be counted politically. Far from quietly and privately melting away as at least one Conservative Councillor will be doing at the next election, it's surely now time for people who have spent the last 5 years seething about the actions of their Prime Minister and national leadership to refuse to campaign, to stand for or to belong to any party with a commitment to HS2 in its manifesto and to do so very publicly.

We do not yet know who will be Prime Minister on 8th May, nor what role the anti HS2 UKIP or Green parties may yet play in a possible coalition or hung Parliament, so all is far from lost. This election is our very last chance however to demonstrate that HS2 can and will move votes away from the pro HS2 parties and in so doing strengthen the hand of MPs in the next Parliament lobbying to stop it. The only way that stopping HS2 or significant changes to the route are going to be part of post-election discussions in a hung Parliament, will be if HS2 is an issue that has demonstrably affected the result in route constituencies. It's worth noting therefore that UKIP are targeting Aylesbury and the Greens are targeting ultra marginal Lib Dem held Solihull. Here in Chesham and Amersham voters have long memories and will not easily forgive our MP for her failure to publicly campaign to stop HS2 in the run up to the crucial 2012 Conservative decision confirming the route.

Will voters take this last meaningful opportunity to inflict electoral damage on the main pro HS2 parties? We don't have long to find out.