Tag: Politics

Digital Age Dilemma

There was a time when most of the political parties in the UK would object to mass surveillance and the State having a watchful eye on every one of its citizens. The influence of the Magna Carta, that 800-year-old document, was a keystone of thinking in this country. Although it was aimed at the privileged when first placed in front of a Monarch, it embraced the idea of liberty. It so upset the establishment that a Pope denounced it.

Ideas endure and those contained in the Magna Carta went on to inspire the framers of the constitutions and legislation in many countries. It doesn’t sound so strange in modern times that a person should be able to go about their lives without an overbearing State impinging on their liberty. Well, at least in theory.

I remember the intense debates that took place in the mid-1990s. The subject being the introduction of identity cards in the UK. Technical arguments were made of how such a measure would simplify lives in the coming digital age. Those agreements paid little attention to the erosion of fundamental rights that the centralising personal data on citizens would bring.

What’s happened now, through a process of stealth, is that people have given away vast qualities of data to international commercial entities without batting an eyelid. The legal device that has been used is a contract that few people ever read. The End User License Agreement (EULA). This detailed fine print addresses data collection and aims to protect software providers from liability.

I suspect that Conservative politicians have observed how little attention people are paying to the erosion of their rights that they feel emboldened to abandon any commitments to liberty. For some time now the Conservative mantra of has been to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This is based on a gamble that most people will not have read the document. It’s a bit like the snatch and grab that the typical EULA has become.

Now, the Conservative Party has doubled down on a shift to the right of politics by inviting the prospect of mass surveillance. There’s a reasonable argument for the police to excurse powers to delve into the digital world when investigating crime. In fact, how can they not do so. However, this should be done so when there’s reasonable basis for doing so. Not everyone is a suspect of criminal activity. The law of the land still upholds the idea that guilt must be proven.

Computational tools are getting ever more powerful. I could joke that the number of articles on AI would reach to the Moon and back, but I wouldn’t be far wrong. One of the powerful software tools that’s accumulating uses is that of digital facial recognition. We’ve advanced from the days of inky fingerprints, although such prints are still valuable identifiers.

Where do we have a problem with liberty? The framers of many longstanding constitutions didn’t have to think to hard about what liberty meant in a world devoid of digital cameras. Now, any citizen’s image is going to be caught hundreds of times through the day. Maybe thousands of times. That instant image can be present on storage devices across the globe.

Who owns that image of me or you? Can it be used by anyone? Tricky questions given phones, traffic cameras, doorbells and home and business security cameras are subject to EULAs. On a superficial basis, requiring police forces to extract digital images and run them through a national database can sound like a good crime fighting idea.

The problem is where is the line drawn? Mass surveillance? Where everyone is an immediate suspect until proven not guilty? Not guilty by virtue of the calculation of an algorithm. Widespread digital camera coverage does put this in prospect. Images stored all over the world. Do we need to reframe the Magna Carta for the AI age? Now, there’s a thought.

Call for Action and Change

When I hear promising ideas, I instinctively say to myself – don’t be negative. Try and see the plus side of these proposals. Afterall the proposer is doing their best to solve a problem. I hope. Same with the recognition of a problem, even if solutions are nowhere to be seen. Just saying it or writing it out is an acceptance that something needs doing. Action needs to be taken. As is often said, every journey begins with the first step.

It ‘s easy to be cynical when so many first steps have been taken before. Well-meaning, and not so well-meaning, individuals have stood at lecterns saying what needs to be done. So, tackling the troubling situation of social care in the UK is a great ambition for a Prime Minister to have. A good task to set before a new Cabinet. Where they will go with it, no one knows, at the moment. Making a commitment, in public, is a good place to start.

That’s not what I’m going to write about this morning. There’s a ghastly term that has entered discussions of recent. I say ghastly because it’s a faceless product of statistical analysis. Carved out of a pile of numbers it proports to describe a whole group of young people as if there were a homogonous lump.

The term is NEET. It makes me cringe every time I hear it. Meaning – the number of 16 to 24-year-olds not in Employment, Education, or Training. A moral panic sets in when people say this is “a lost generation”. It’s as if a million young people had wandered off into oblivion. Makes me think of the 1960s/70s and the moral panic that set in as young people – turned-on, tuned-in and dropped-out. The counterculture slogan of those decades. Like so many situations the truth is a lot more complex. It usually is. Here’s a number of factors that undoubtably come into play.

Yes, that hardy perennial, the decline of “real” apprenticeships. The low value society still puts on training craft and manual skills of a practical nature. Despite the nice words of successive politicians. I’ve yet to see a Minister’s daughter start aircraft maintenance training.

Penny pinching that’s turned local colleges into factories. Pile them high and get them through the door fast. An attitude to young people that’s driven by key performance indicators.

The pernicious side of social media. Past generations may have had their excesses but didn’t have this inescapable attention draining impact on mental health. It’s unrelenting.

Role models are hard to come by unless they are family members. Many potential opportunities appear unobtainable. The media often portrays a future wrapped in glamour and littered with overnight success. Perhaps, Andy Warhol was right.

Lack of orientating to dramatic changes in the future working environment. Pushed by Conservative Minister Gove and alike, education has taken a retro path in emphasising academia and rote learning. Exams as the pinnacle. The wrong path.

The “new” Labour Government must address all of these and more if they want to shift the dial. On this score, I’ll say a word about a past opponent of mine. We were both local Councillors at the same time. In 2017, as Minister of State for Skills and Apprenticeships, Conservative Anne Milton at least tried to shift the dial on this subject. Then that menace Boris Johnson came along, and Brexit took the whole country backwards at a very rapid pace.

I look with optimism. However, the “new” Labour Government is a bit like the “old” Labour Government. Ministers carved out of an Oxbridge tradition. Happy to talk about their illustrious working-class origins but a million miles from real word experience of leaving school at 16 years old and getting a paying job. Supporting themselves through training.

Transforming lives will require focus on multiple issues, as I’ve illustrated, and it would be nice to see actions take precedent over nice speeches. Wittering on about the value of apprenticeships isn’t enough.

POST: Technical pathways for 14-year-olds could build on UTC model

Public and Private Life

What’s public and what’s private? There was a mythical age of the past when the dividing line between these two was self-evident and sacrosanct. Wholy respected by every member of society. A time when an Englishman’s home was his castle. Anything that happened within it’s walls was not for prying eyes or journalistic speculation. Everyone knew their place.

Naturally, this is utter nonsense. At least described in the way I’ve put it. Times change. Those immortal two words. So, the line between what’s public and what’s private has wobbled around over the centuries. I’m not, as you might expect, saying that nothing has changed over time because a hell of a lot has changed. Now, there are factors that make the public life different from past decades. Themes run through the ages along with unyielding change.

It’s very much in the News now. The impression given is that the act of standing-up in public has risks that can be high. Not so much the traditional risks of humiliation, being ostracised or suffering abject failure but real risks to life, in a physical sense.

It would be ridiculous to say that these are more violent times. When I look out of my kitchen window, I am reminded of the English Civil War[1]. Father and son, brothers, uncles, and cousins fought on opposite sides with fatal consequences. The ruined castle on the hill to my North is a monument to that terrible bloody conflict. In the lifetime of my parents the bombs fell from the sky on innocent civilians in this land, as they do in Ukraine to this day.

The tendency to think that we are a much more civilised society in the 21st Century is a liberal and progressive notion. We are better fed and read. There are greater comforts and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are kept at arm’s length. Not disappeared but kept in check. Although the recent experience of COVID did unsettle everyone for a while.

What we do cherish. I hope we cherish, in this country. Is the relative freedom of speech that allows debate to be conducted in public. I use the word relative because the absolutists, who have an anything goes attitude, are not what I mean. Fundamentalist often ride with the four horsemen. Words do matter.

I’m straying from my point. There’s great merit in protecting public life. In matters that are of fundamental importance individuals must be free to stand-up and say their piece. Stifling debate is like putting the heat on a pressure cooker without a safety valve.

I’ve always been struck by the civility of most people. That’s what I’ve found when knocking on doors during political campaigns of one form or another. There’s a core of decency at all levels of society. Now and then, that thread is broken. It does take a lot to paint a different picture. That’s where the proliferation of social media has changed the dynamic.

The printing press was not an evil invention. That didn’t stop it being used for evil ends. The same with social media. Printed media is subject to regulation. A system of regulation that has developed over decades. That doesn’t stop a wide range of views being expressed. The fertiliser of public life. Similar boundaries are set for broadcast media. This is civilisation.

To date, social media is the wild west. It’s become essential to public life. At the same time, it’s a grave danger to public life. When it’s used to stir-up passions that lead to violence the danger is self-evident. Social media is not sacrosanct. Regulation is essential.

[1] https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/the-english-civil-wars-history-and-stories/

Will Andy Burnham Lead a New Era?

It’s not so unbelievable. With the volatility of politics in the 2020s, that a leadership role flips from one person to the next in the blink of an eye. The man tipped to run the country has won one constituency in his hometown. Now, lots of people envisage him in the biggest of jobs, sweeping aside the wows of recent years.

One view of this change is that the decades of past allegiances, that we almost took for granted, have now dissolved. The way we view others in our society has become far more complex.

British comedy is littered with these stereotypes. Comic strip characters. Property owning, upper middle class, broadsheet newspaper reader equates to a Conservative. Open toed saddle, tweed jacket owning teacher who goes on improving camping holidays, a Liberal. Football supporting, factory worker, from a generation of factory workers almost certainly a Labour supporter with Socialist friends. At the margines, long retired colonel who inherited a large countryside mansion and estate may even be a Fascist. These animated cartoon images persist. What’s different is that there are dwindling numbers of them in society at large.

Initialled AB, Andy Burnham, comes to us as a smiling face. Down with the people in a way Sir Keir Starmer found incredibly hard. AB has charm and a warm accent that suggest a relaxed demeaner. He talks with enough wriggle room for a wide swath of people to think that he’s on their side. A good skill to have to be successful in politics. As it is, what he stands for when push comes to shove isn’t so easy to discern.

In know the spelling is different but it’s out there in social media land. The fictional Birnam Wood, a forest near Dunsinane Hill in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. A place of prediction.

[That was one of the texts our teachers chose for us in my school days. Maybe they imagined troubled times ahead. Or wanted to warn us of power’s potential corrupting effect].

Three witches appeared to assure Macbeth that he was a winner. Only seemingly impossible events would defeat him. The message was critic. Bit like the Oracle of Delphi in the ancient Greek world. Nothing like recycling a good idea.

The British media’s prophecy is that Burnham will quickly step into the job of UK Prime Minister and restart the Labour Government with fresh vigour and new imagination. Not to mention better public communication. The constituency who thinks he’s a potential saviour is much bigger than the consistency who thinks he’s a devil in the making.

Will ambition and power’s potential corrupting effect take a hand. Or will the man with the name: “King of the North” have accumulated the knowledge and experience needed to shape history to the country’s benefit. A good sprinkle of luck will no doubt be needed too.

Despite what has passed in our post-Brexit land. UK PM’s coming and going, will Burnham be a force for good? I wouldn’t say past performance is any predictor at all. Making the buses run on time in Greater Manchester is a far cry from being a political party leader and UK PM.

I, as do so many, wish him a fair wind. Let’s hope he and his team can get to grips with the need to adapt, change and even be disruptive where it’s warranted. I hope he will not shy away from big decisions or be cowed by either his own side or the perfidious British right-wing media.

Reflecting on a Decade Post-Brexit: Lessons Learned

The clock has clicked. The pages of the calendar have flipped. Crises have been and gone. And in the UK’s political turmoil continues to exasperate one and all. A decade has passed since UK voters backed a proposal to leave the European Union (EU). The surprise result of the 23 June 2016 vote and the tiny majority for change still haunt the whole country.

Voters were told this and that would not happen, prosperity and a lowering of the cost-of-living were just around the corner. We now know that lie after lie piled-up. The mouths of the advocates of the vote to leave spouted pure undiluted nonsense. Yet, the noisy ones show no remorse or shame.

The pace of change can be overwhelming. Over the last decade the world has moved on with increasing speed. It’s self-evident that the 21st Century is becoming an era of accelerating change. Sadly, in adopting the worst kind of Brexit transition the UK has become a lesser influence. A spectator in the world that has changed dramatically.

The first 10-year anniversary of the Brexit referendum is a time to take stock. To be mystified in reflection of the maddening goings on of the years past. I will not repeat pages and pages of analysis that others have provided. A simple conclusion is evident. The nation is poorer by a substantial amount.

I’m not in favour of endless navel gazing. We are where we are and it’s not a good place to be. What must be plotted in a way forward that increase prosperity, builds resilience and unseats defeatism. Political polarisation and the slide to appease the far-right is proving to be disastrous. The warnings of history should be heeded.

The future of the UK-EU relationship has the potential to be better one than ever before. At least we now know that there was good sound reasoning behind our past membership of the EU. Facing global challenges together is a far better way to face the future. Rapidly advancing technology, social upheaval and geopolitical shocks are not going away. The means by which we collectively respond to these challenges will be critical.

This is not a time to relitigate the Brexit referendum. Let the past be the past. We have learned from that past. It’s far better to ask what a better future looks like. Europe has common challenges. It’s an interconnected, interactive and interdependent region. We share a common cultural heritage.

Discussions over the future will never abate. But there’s a need of it to be put on solid and sound reasoning. Not by equating independence with isolation. Weve found that doesn’t work.

The UK and EU must forge a new closer relationship. It’s a win-win scenario.

Brexit Documentary Review

Firstly, a reaction to the BBC documentary that’s telling the story of Brexit. They called it “Brexit: A Very British Civil War[1].” A corny title that plays on titles “A Very British Scandal,” the drama about Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe and “A Very Royal Scandal.”

The “Civil War” analogy is out of place. Ten seconds of reading about any real civil war would have sunk that illusion. The events of 2016 were more a battle for the future. Battles continue to rage as the advocates of Brexit have merely changed their colours and rebranded.

Yes, I agree. The stage was set by the choice that voters took in 2015. In fact, if blame must be allocated then its as much the fault of liberal minds as it it’s the reactionary forces that pounded away at their ambition. The political idiocy of promising a national referendum in a country that rarely, if ever, has referendums was a critical folly. The UK is not Switzerland. UK voters have no idea what it’s like to be that sort of federal democracy.

David Cameron won a majority and his hand were tied. He did have choices, but he plodded along with all the imagination of a dull public-school boy in fear of rejection by his peers. Cameron didn’t see the bus that was about to hit him. Having been pounding away for decades the rag tag but monied pushers of a referendum wasted no time in campaigning. Cameron wasted every opportunity.

Aside from the story that the BBC chose to document is the image of a modern European country run by a strange herd of mostly Tory men, living a privileged life. It’s a searing display of a political crisis made by a few for the interests of a few.

I know it is said by both left and right in UK politics, but what more does anyone need to convince themselves that there’s a chasm between the people in Westminster and the people of the nation. Demographic trends were likely to shape the outcome of a national referendum. It proved to be so in the numbers. An older age group favouring Leave and a younger one favouring Remian. Populism had taken root in the Leave campaign.

The dim-witted organisers of the Remain campaign ran a campaign as if they were changing the name of a chocolate bar with diminishing sales. As if they were stereotypical comic depressed bowler hatted businessmen from the 1950s, Cameron’s crew ignored the analysis and lumbered on. He took a politically suicidal path.

The likes of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove dithered with only their own political ambitions tugging at them to eventually decide as to which way to go. Again, my reflection amounted to – what a bizarre way to run a country. Especially one with the history and traditions of the UK.

I understand the notion that Cameron may have seen this political path as a way of resolving a self-evident Tory split once and for all. Ironically, the outcome is a Tory split the like of which couldn’t have been imagined ten years ago.

Deciding whether to back Leave or Remain wasn’t the real question. Capturing the future political agenda was the aim. 2016’s national referendum was not a war; it was a battle. The battle continues.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xhvj

Defense Needs

I’m a simple creature. Not too difficult to agree. Controlling a country’s border is one of the fundamental aspects of national security. However, it’s one amongst many and it’s not the single most important. Certainly, I’d put provisioning and training of the country’s military personnel above that of basic border control. It’s possible to carry more than one priority. What’s important is to put those priorities in the right order.

There’s a lot to be said for the notion of speaking softly and carrying a big stick[1]. Possessing strength is as much about perception as reality. But if the gap between the two grows too far then trouble is just around the corner.

Thus, the media obsession with immigration, at a time when it’s clear that the peace dividend that has been taken since the falling of the Berlin Wall has gone too far, is an indulgence. It’s missing the point by a million miles. Putting up more barriers and walls is not a way of building strength. The past should teach us that lesson. Dare I say, a lot of people are being led by the nose in the wrong direction.

Saying that we live in turbulent times can be a predicable line. Turbulence, in one part of the world or another, is a constant. However, in today’s mishmash of geopolitical movements, we here in Europe have been fortunate, at least in the last 40-years.

The Cold War was a clear and present danger to our way of life. That story was played out as I left school. The prospect of an accidental nuclear catastrophe was real. As such the UK invested in national defence along with its close allies. Sometimes not wisely, it’s true, but the threat was well understood. As the threat appeared to diminish so government spending habits changed. For perfectly understandable reasons the end of the Cold War ushered in a period in which society focused less on military provisioning. Government turned its attention to issues that were more at the forefront of day-to-day public demands. Blown by the winds of regular media frenzies.

Yesterday, in the rain, I visited a local arts centre. Greenham Common[2] is now an industrial estate and open parkland. The military runway has long been ripped up. That’s good. What we shouldn’t forget is the history of the place.

Big stick diplomacy is about sober confidence that is backed by an unquestionable capability for immediate action. It seems to me that the UK has slipped a long way from that philosophy. Recent events have tested the gap between words and deeds.

Where does the cacophony of voices about immigration came from? One source is political parties that take money from foreign donors. Another is media organisations who have a track record for backing the wrong people. Another is spokespeople who don’t have the UK’s best interests at heart. Yet, these all get massive amounts of press coverage.

The current US President may have a considerable number of faults. In one area he’s right. It’s not easy to say he’s right. Europe must stand on its own two feet. That’s a Europe that includes the UK. Our national security is only sustainable by working closely with our neighbours.

So, we need to get off a short-term media obsession about immigration.

Start being serious about what we spend on defence and why. The government’s defence investment plan, originally scheduled for last year, needs to be settled and put into action. There’s no point in talking big and carrying a lesser stick. In fact, it’s dangerous.

POST: Industry calls for closer links Fast-Tracking EU-UK Defence Industrial Cooperation: a critical reset – ADS Group

[1] widely attributed to US President Theodore Roosevelt.

[2] https://visitnewbury.org.uk/attractions/raf-greenham-common-crookham-common/

Political Downfall

I’m not sure. Transparency is a good thing. Well, generally that’s the cases. Shedding a light on the dark places leads to better understanding. So, they say. That’s conventional thinking. The assumption being that the public prefer raw trust to a fabricated sort of truth.

The utterings of Peter Benjamin Mandelson are now going to fill more newspaper column inches than the great fire of London. It doesn’t take much looking around to realise that Mandelson has become public enemy number one. And for the British right-wing media cohort, is the Achilles heal of the current UK Labour Prime Minister. Retrospectively seen as the stupidest decision the man in power has made to date.

In bold letters the words “nightmare” and “bombshell” are already out there. Next, we can expect “Armageddon” and talk of nails in coffins. This is where the cynic in me clicks. What a lovely political opportunity to relentlessly attack, knowing that there’s always another twist or turn to add at any convenient moment.

In mathematics, the Mandelbrot set acts like News of Mandelson[1] and does not diverge. It’s complex but repetitive. I expect the thousands of pages of correspondence dumped on the public will take that path. Complex but repetitive. Sadly too, the juicy bits, like criticism of the administration in Washington DC may be redacted.

There’re immortal themes in the story of political downfall. As if the plot of Star Wars were brought to life. A dark lord strides confidently across a stage set for his demise.

In what I’ve written above, make no mistake. This is not an argument for sweeping stuff under the carpet. None whatsoever. In this modern media age, we must get used to the drop of more than 1,000 pages. If nothing else, it gives good investigative journalists a lot of work to do.

The thing is, I wonder what we will learn that may turn out to be really useful in future. I mean, surly the point of these exercises in public transparency are to ensure that corrective action is taken to avoid the same mistakes being made again. That maybe where the problem is centred. We’ve gone from the ludicrous times of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and yet I wonder if learning from mistakes is in our DNA. If learning from real mistakes was intrinsic, then no one would be contemplating voting UK Reform.

Yet, if they are to be believed, that extreme UK political party has a high opinion poll rating. Our love of words like “catastrophe” and “apocalypse” are so great they seem to trump common sense. It’s as if a major hole has appeared in the heads of a potential electorate. The simplistic, flat, two-dimensional, world of UK Reform gets its appeal from people not wanting to engage with stubborn complexity. Those who utter simple solutions, even if they are obviously wrong, get the press attention. From here to infinity by way of nonsense.

Back to Mandelson. He got jobs that others strive for without hope of getting. His confident personality, guile and cunning got him places. There’s the lesson. All that glitters is not gold. Much as people might want to believe in political magic it’s extremely rare. Ten to the minus nine at least.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/27/peter-mandelson-questions-vetting-clearance-mitigations

A New Era of Disruption

Where is it all going? Now, there’s a question to ask. Through the media pages there’s the signals of unprecedented change. It’s not as if we are sailing through smooth air, on a clam Sunday afternoon. No, it’s turbulence all the way.

Disruptors are getting the headlines. They don’t have to be clever. They don’t have to be honest. I’m expecting a headline along the lines of: “Everything you knew about spiders is wrong. They are from Alpha Centauri”. It’s only a matter of time. 4.3 light-years away is nothing, after all. Elon Musk will be there at the drop of a hat. Technology permitting.

My prediction maybe a bit off the wall but it’s to illustrate the point of media frenzy that is absorbing the public space of the moment. Much as we might see ourselves as a sophisticated species where a forum is a place of philosophical debate. Where thinkers and politicians test their theories in an open public space. We have the front page of the likes of the Daily Mail instead. Stories about reality shows gone wrong trump concerns about real reality.

It’s a new age. That said, it’s always a new age. In the world of politics and governance we have been here before. To an extent. Type the letters “SDP” into a popular search engine and it’s likely to come up with the Social Democratic Party (SDP). It’s a defunked political party. Or is that just my search engine? In 1981, a spin-off of the Labour Party, the “Gang of Four” showed great promise. Suddenly a step change in the UK’s political terrain seemed possible. A small group of seasoned politicians started to articulate a set of policies that people appeared to like.

To cut it short, that political experiment was absorbed and didn’t lead to the radical change of the landscape that was expected. Over the last 35 years the ideas spoken of by the SDP have not gone away but they have been absorbed and diluted. This does lead me to wonder if the schism between conservatives, those on the right-wing of UK politics, will not eventually melt away. The great big sponge of institutional lethargy will swallow up the dissenters. Loud disruptors on the make will merge with the elephantine traditions of past generations.

What I now think is that such thinking is dangerous. It’s all to do with the rapid nature of change. It’s to do with historic analogies becoming less relevant. It’s to do with an unparalleled speed of interconnection, interaction and interdependency. The landscape has changed.

The media is so important because we need stories to make sense of the world. Our place in the world and possible future is shaped by the results of a mass of interconnection, interaction and interdependency. Dare I say – No man is an island.

Usually when we experience a disruption to a commonly accepted narrative there’s a push back. An innate caution resides in us all. It maybe primitive. A tribal instinct.

This is where the digital world has changed our experiences. For all time. If every day (every hour) there’s a minor disruption, say a story about UFOs, the ground on which we stand starts to shift. Our shared sense-making starts to question and before we know it the fringe belief becomes common place.

Traditional institutions will confront disruptive change with opinion polls, spreadsheets, detailed analysis and studies. Interestingly, enabled and enhanced by digital technology. However, they are like the fire truck that turns up after the house has burned down.

Brexit was proof to me that a step-change can be driven by manipulating information. A political rupture can be advanced. A collapse of trust can be engineered. Now, that is frightening.

Reflections on 30 Years as a UK Parliamentary Candidate

Politics in the UK is as volatile as ever it’s been. Although, that’s maybe overstating the situation. It doesn’t take much to revisit past years to remember that dramatic moments occur more often that we might think. A constant media frenzy is not so uncommon.

My experience of standing as a UK Parliamentary Candidate in a General Election goes back to 1997. Now, that was a dramatic year in the life of the UK. It was part of the ding-dong of the passing of political power between two major political parties. And the change was one that the whole country felt was coming. However, the Labour landslide result was a surprise.

My hopes of success in the constituency of Epsom and Ewell were somewhat ambitious. At that time in the county of Surrey, it was truly an era when a donkey could stand for election wearing a blue rosette and it would get elected. Having established myself in that part of Surrey, I had a second go at Epsom and Ewell in 2001. My main opponents had changed but the lay of the land wasn’t so different. The shoe-in Conservative candidate wrapped themselves in the Union Jack flag and worshiped Margaret Thatcher[1]. That’s all they needed to do.

My next outing as a UK Parliamentary Candidate was in 2010. That’s quite a gap. In those years my professional career was moving fast so the time for politics was limited. I arrived in Crawley in West Sussex, without any possibility of winning and becoming a Member of Parliament (MP). On the upside, I did know the town and a lot of the issues that impacted the place. In this town the competition was part of that ding-dong of the passing of political power between two major political parties. The result swung from Labour to Conservative.

My next outing as a General Election candidate was in the constituency of Runnymede & Weybridge in Surrey in 2015. It was the second one with a tangible aviation connection[2]. This time, I was up against a government minister. A chancellor. However, it was politics of the same long standing Surrey County kind. The most interesting public meeting on this occasion was the one held at the Royal Holloway[3]. Like irritating nits, the university’s Labour students made themselves evident.

I went back to Runnymede & Weybridge in 2017. Same location but a different flavour of election campaign. Brexit had thrown poison on the campaign trail. One well attended public meeting at Strode’s[4] I shared a platform with another Conservative man who was to become chancellor. A highly unsuccessful one.

You would think that I’d have got the message by now. Surrey has been a baston of Conservative support for decades. Even centuries. Shifting that position was to require decades of effort.

In 2019, for the first time, I stood for a national election in the place where I lived. The small town of Reigate in Surrey needed to change. I wanted to bring about that change. Again, the reversion of the local electorate to patterns of voting passed down the years was not going to be shifted. They re-elected an MP that subsequently they must have regreted doing so.

I mentioned Margaret Thatcher. Her influence was certainly hovering over my next outing. Grantham and Bourne saw me on the ballot paper in 2024. Entering the lion’s den turned out to be much more pleasant than I’d anticipated. Getting to know Stamford[5] was a pure delight. Sadly, my election results were the worst I’ve delivered so far. No regrets. It’s only by doing these things that I’ve accumulate some unique experiences.

What’s it like to be a parliamentary candidate? For all the ups and downs of these 30-years it’s an opportunity to be cherished. Fine, I’ve not changed the world. I’ll not be sitting in the Palace of Westminster. Those campaigning efforts have been forgotten by most people.  

Let’s go back to Epsom and Ewell. Imagine the smile on my face when at the last General Election, the Liberal Democrat candidate won.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/margaret-thatcher

[2] https://www.brooklandsmuseum.com/

[3] https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/

[4] https://www.strodes.ac.uk/

[5] https://www.visitlincolnshire.com/destinations/stamford/