In 2015, Kent was at the centre of the general election campaign with a ferocious battle in South Thanet as the Conservatives sought to stop Ukip leader Nigel Farage becoming MP.

Two years on, a very different campaign is taking place in the county. Paul Francis reports.

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In 2015, the Mayor of London Boris Johnston caught a train from London to Ramsgate.

It was not a traditional seaside visit and you wouldn’t have expected it to be. He didn’t roll up his trousers and dip his feet into the muddy waters of the sea or hire a deckchair.

True, he did have an ice cream - in a rather lurid blue hue - from the Sorbetto ice cream parlour on the harbour front.

But he did so while being mobbed by camera crews and journalists as bemused shoppers looked on.

It looked chaotic. It was.

Ukip supporters jostled with Conservative activists as Johnson marched at a military pace around the streets of Ramsgate, pressing leaflets into unsuspecting hands and uttering that the Conservative candidate Craig Mackinlay had a five-point plan to “rescue” Ramsgate.

His whirlwind visit - done and dusted in less than hour - encapsulated the frenzied battle for South Thanet between Conservative candidate Craig Mackinlay and the then leader of Ukip Nigel Farage.

It is unlikely - outside a byelection - that any constituency has seen such an attritional fight for a seat in Parliament.

Depending on how you look at it, it did mean that voters in the constituency appeared to have the ear of those aspiring to power in an unprecedented way.

There was an arms race over who could deliver a rescue package for the former Manston airport.

Whatever Ukip pledged to do to re-open it, the Conservatives sought to trump it. Both parties insisted that only they had the answer and the means.

Chancellor George Osborne more or less confirmed that if the Conservatives returned to power, Ramsgate would be in line for a generous slice of money from a new coastal communities fund. There was to be no austerity for South Thanet.

A more circumspect Theresa May warned voters not to “throw it all away” in the election, appealing to floating voters to give the Conservatives “five years to finish the job.”

On Manston, she said “at senior levels, we recognise the importance of Manston airport to this part of Kent."

So why, when Kent was the epicentre of the election battle in 2015, is it being given the cold shoulder in 2017?

It was inevitable that the media were drawn to the high-stakes drama being played out in Thanet.

Farage threw himself into the campaign and was convinced he would win at his seventh attempt to enter Parliament.

His hopes were dashed by a late Conservative surge. Defeated, he made an instant resignation statement that, bizarrely, left open the prospect of a return to the role.

As polling day approaches, Thanet has dropped off the radar - at least so far as the national media and party big hitters are concerned.

And it is not just that corner of Kent.

To date, the county has hosted not a single party leader on an official visit. Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, came closest when he came to Gillingham - for a recording of BBC’s “Question Time.”

There have been no sightings of either Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn.

Professor Tim Luckhurst of the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent, says the parties have switched their attention to other battlegrounds.

“It feels like an invisible campaign. Part of it is to do with the state of the opinion polls.

"In 2015, there were genuinely marginal seats, particularly in the Medway towns, all of which Labour regarded as potential targets.

"It looks now as if Labour has almost reached the conclusion that they do not have any chance of winning seats in Kent.

"It is concentrating its resources in the Midlands and the north of England, where it feels it is vulnerable.”

“Even the Conservatives, who appear to think they are cruising to victory, seem to think the best way to do that is to do very little.”

Of course, VIP visits and keynote speeches are strictly controlled events, with usually precious little genuine engagement with real voters - unless you are someone like Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson.

The media access is often restricted - with journalists often told they can ask two or three or questions at best. At worst, none at all.

No leader likes to be ambushed and caught out by a question they had not anticipated. VIP walkabouts are protected by supporters surrounding them like Praetorian guards.

But these events are nevertheless seen as a measure of how important an area is viewed by the campaign managers.

Whether they shift any votes in a constituency is a moot point. The principal aim is to create a feeling that the politicians care - particularly in marginal constituencies.

Kent in 2017 has no such seats.

And for those suffering election fatigue, that might just be a blessing.

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The electoral roll call from 2015:

Conservatives:

Boris Johnson (Mayor of London)

Theresa May (then Home Secretary)

William Hague (former party leader)

Iain Duncan Smith (work and pensions minister)

Michael Gove (education secretary)

Jeremy Hunt (health secretary)

Philip Hammond (foreign secretary)

Grant Shapps (party chairman)

Patrick McGloughlin (transport secretary)

Chris Grayling (justice secretary)

John Hayes (aviation minister)

Michael Howard (former party leader and Kent MP)

Labour:

Labour struggled to get any of its leading party figures to visit apart from Diane Abbott, but did enjoy two celebrity endorsements: the celebrity cook Delia Smith and the actor and TV presenter Ross Kemp both came down to offer support to candidate Will Scobie.

Lib Dem:

One: Nick Clegg - Maidstone

The electoral roll call from 2017:

No-one.