Newbury Elections

Just got back from the hustings, where all seven local parliamentary candidates took questions from the public.  An interesting event and some illuminating answers!  I’m shattered so this won’t be a comprehensive write-up – might add some more later, took copious notes.

Overall no candidate had a “Clegg” moment and really seized the initiative.  From the occasional applause I suspect the audience – mirroring the constituency – were largely Lib Dem or Tory supporters so I doubt anyone’s changed their mind.  Benyon and Rendel, as expected, were in general the better performers.

Questions were delivered through the moderator and covered the following points:

• Whether it is morally right to sell weapons abroad
• If no party has a majority in parliament, will that be “hung”, or “balanced”?
• Do the candidates support the Westminster Declaration?  If not, what do they disagree with?
• Is it right for government policy to enforce detention of asylum seekers’ children?
• Nuclear weapons, and in particular the candidates position on Trident
• Approach to farming in the UK and food security

I’ll just pick out a few points of the discussion that I found interesting.

I’d not heard of the Westminster Declaration – follow this link for more information.  It’s essentially asking supporters to pledge their commitment to the Christian approach to the protection of human life, marriage, and freedom of conscience.

The candidates were split  – all supported freedom of faith but Rendel, Hollister, Yates and Cooper were concerned about the Christian focus, believing that the Declaration implicitly excludes other faiths and creates divides.  Benyon, Burgess and Black were unequivocal supporters and happy to pledge their support for the Declaration.

The biggest issues I can see coming out of this are those around marriage.  The Declaration’s wording states:

We pledge to support marriage – the lifelong covenantal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife. We believe it is divinely ordained, the only context for sexual intercourse, and the most important unit for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all. We call on government to honour, promote and protect marriage and we refuse to submit to any edict forcing us to equate any other form of sexual partnership with marriage. We commit ourselves to continue affirming what we believe as Christians about sexual morality, marriage, and the family.

There’s clearly some concern for LGBT people about discrimination in there, to say the least!  I wonder if Cameron supports it?

The comments on food security were broadly in agreement and looked at the need to reduce regulation and red tape, and support farmers to actually make money providing good local produce.  All candidates agree it’s crazy to import 40% of our food requirements and we need to change this.  Benyon – having been a dairy farmer himself – was passionate about this and attacked the EU regulations, “gold-plated” by Westminster, that has made dairy farming so tough as a business.

There was the obligatory discussion about nuclear weapons and Trident.  Rendel, Benyon and Cooper essentially made the same arguments as on the radio on Monday – I won’t repeat unnecessarily!  The other candidates were split on the issue, Burgess and Black both supported our maintenance of a nuclear deterrent whilst Hollister and Yates opposed it.

The question about a hung parliament became a discussion of whether this would be a good or bad thing.  Again the candidates from the main parties very much reflected their national party line – Lib Dems in favour, Tory and Labour opposed.  Rendel put the case for making better decisions in a government supported by a majority of the electorate – this went down well and got a big round of applause.

The opening and closing statements from the candidates were all fairly similar – emphasising their local roots, explaining their belief in the power of community and so on.  David Yates broke the mold a little in his introduction by focussing on the financial straits the country finds itself in – I was quite enjoying his argument but in the end he was curtailed by the moderator!

None of the candidates disgraced themselves or made any really awful gaffes that I spotted.  Brian Burgess did very well and I felt some of his views – particularly on the Westminster Declaration and crime in Newbury – went down well with the audience.  Adrian Hollister also made some strong points, particularly on food security.

Probably the most extreme argument of the evening came from David Black, who suggested that with the expansion of European powers this may be the last general election the UK ever gets – and apparently the Queen is no longer the Head of State!  I’d be eager to see some disentanglement with Europe myself, but that was all too sensationalist for my liking.

I think future hustings would be better served by having more driving from the moderator – a bit more like the televised leaders’ debates.  Getting through only six questions plus opening and closing statements in 110 minutes seemed a bit inadequate.

Still – it was a good event and well worth attending!  I’ll probably go into a bit more detail on some of the points discussed when I’ve caught up on some sleep – in the meantime there’s a few more photos of the hustings on my Flickr here.