VOTERS DENIED RIGHT TO HEAR EXPERIENCED MP DEBATE
Last night I attended my local hustings in the constituency of Sutton Coldfield, an area that has been a safe Conservative seat since 1945. I saw a listing on the internet for the Sutton Coldfield Candidates Debate and, as my local MP, Andrew Mitchell, is the shadow-cabinet spokesman for International Development, (and former Conservative Party Whip and Minister for Social Security), I was keen to hear what he had to say in a debate with other candidates for this area. I also wanted to hear what the other party candidates had to say about the local issues I find concerning, but I was particularly interested to hear from Mr. Mitchell.
On arriving at The Fellowship Hall I was greeted by two Tory campaigners who gave me a quite a negative flyer full of reasons not to vote Labour, nothing I didn’t already know. I assumed as his party members were there this meant that Mr. Mitchell would be in attendance.
The event was organised by the local Labour Party, but was chaired neutrally, and all prospective parliamentary candidates for the constituency were invited to speak. Audience members were asked to write down their questions, which were handed to the chairman, and each candidate was given equal time to answer, strictly adhered to with the aid of a stopwatch. A very fair and balanced way of conducting the debate, much like the format for the recent Prime Ministerial Debates on TV.
At the beginning of the meeting we were told that Andrew Mitchell would not be attending. He had refused to attend the meeting because it was organised by the local Labour Party, an excuse I found very annoying, childish, and nowhere near the messages I was getting from the Tory party manifesto. Andrew Mitchell was refusing to debate with his opponents in front of his electorate, whilst at the same time his Party Leader, David Cameron, keeps saying he promises a “big society” and MP accountability like we’ve never seen before.
This election is about change and engagement in public debate, an agenda that I feel is being laid out by the voters and not the politicians. After the expenses scandals, banking scandals and economic crises of the past few years the electorate want a much clearer picture of what their MP stands for, and above all they want reassurance that they are not being taken for granted.
We were also told that the meeting was originally supposed to be chaired by a member of the local branch of the politically neutral Amnesty International, but that one of the candidates for the constituency (who wasn’t named) had spoken to Amnesty International HQ and stopped that from happening the day before the debate. This smacks of someone trying to scupper the entire event. For me this was just more boring old-style politics, playing tactics and games with the voters democratic right to hear their prospective candidates debate on the issues that concern them.
The debate got off to a lively start. Councilor Peter Howard (Conservative, Four Oaks Ward), stood up and in an unnecessarily loud voice started “illuminating” the audience that the reason Andrew Mitchell wasn’t there was because this was a biased event. Cllr. Howard annoyingly refused to sit down and be quiet to allow the debate to commence and was asked to leave. As he left the room he oddly shouted “The tail will not wag the dog!” I assume by this he meant that Andrew Mitchell was too big to debate with other candidates in front of the electorate, and would not lower himself to bow to a public need to hear him speak on local issues.
I started to realise that despite often being impressed by David Cameron, his Sutton Coldfield representatives, at council and Westminster level, seemed to me to be far from desirable and certainly don’t appear have the interests of their constituents at heart. It is as though they feel that Andrew Mitchell’s re-election to Westminster is a foregone conclusion, and that local people will vote Tory regardless.
The meeting was indeed carried out in the fair manner that the chair had described at the beginning. The Labour candidate and the Lib Dem candidate both seemed passionate about our area, they seemed to evaluate the local issues well and were familiar with what’s going on here. Both agreed the town lacks the identity of other locations in the area, such as Solihull and Lichfield. A point I whole-heartedly agree with – this is an historic town with a notable past. Sutton Park was the holiday hunting ground of Henry VIII, most of the park has Scheduled Ancient Monument status, and English Nature have designated it a National Nature Reserve. The nearby town centre seems fractured and disjointed however, a hangover from 70’s town planning when many historic buildings were demolished to make way for the concrete monstrosity of The Gracechurch Shopping Centre.
National and international issues were raised and debated in a civilised way during the two-hour debate, including the economy, immigration, education, Europe, care for the elderly and electoral reform. I will not list the answers of the candidates here, as I am an individual concerned about the future of our society and I do not want this article to be seen as a piece of electioneering for any particular party, but I did want to voice my contempt for Andrew Mitchell’s failure to attend.
After a bit of ‘googling’ when I got home last night I discovered Andrew Mitchell has been on the campaign trail in London and Worcestershire. I can find no evidence he has even been to Sutton Coldfield since the beginning of this campaign. I also discovered that on the website www.theyworkforyou.com Andrew Mitchell is the only candidate in Sutton Coldfield not to have completed a questionnaire which allows voters to clearly compare what each candidate stands for.
UKIP and The Green Party are also both fielding candidates in Sutton Coldfield, but neither were in attendance at last nights debate, although they had been invited.
I think this really illustrates a need for electoral reform, then maybe ‘safe seat’ politicians will be accountable to their electorate, and hopefully we’ll bring an end to MPs who feel they are so safe they don’t need to bother with public debate. It is akin to assuming you will get a job you applied for without even showing up for the interview, and to me it is nothing short of arrogance.
