Fylde Hustings: When candidates decided to stand and what was their motivation?
The Blackpool Gazette, Lancashire Post and Blackpool Lead invited the candidates standing for the Fylde constituency at the upcoming general election to a hustings in which they fielded questions from voters.
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given time to answer questions from an audience at The Lowther Pavilion Theatre in Lytham.
Four out of the seven people on the ballot took part in the event with Cheryl Morrison (Alliance for Democracy and Freedom), Brendan Wilkinson (Green Party) and Brook Wimbury (Reform UK) all absent.
In order of appearance on stage:
ANNE AITKEN (Independent)
TOM CALVER (Labour)
MARK JEWELL (Liberal Democrats)
ANDREW SNOWDEN (Conservative Party)
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given time to answer questions from an audience at The Lowther Pavilion Theatre in Lytham.
Four out of the seven people on the ballot took part in the event with Cheryl Morrison (Alliance for Democracy and Freedom), Brendan Wilkinson (Green Party) and Brook Wimbury (Reform UK) all absent.
In order of appearance on stage:
ANNE AITKEN (Independent)
TOM CALVER (Labour)
MARK JEWELL (Liberal Democrats)
ANDREW SNOWDEN (Conservative Party)
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NewsTranscript
00:00Can you tell me when you decided to stand as RNP and what was your motivation for standing?
00:15Okay, to each of you, we'll start with Tom.
00:27I don't know if there was an exact point.
00:33My experience in public services, all of them, was that people often make bad choices because they had nothing but bad choices to make.
00:43And that's not something you can change working in the organisation because too often that comes from policy.
00:50So it's been something that's been on my mind I think for a very long time, probably throughout my entire career in different ways.
01:01Why did I decide to stand here? Well, it was the constituency I lived in and I never thought that I would ever stand anywhere but the constituency that I lived in.
01:10It didn't become the constituency I lived in until the boundary changes, which only came a little while ago.
01:16So when did I decide to stand for Fylde? When the boundary became such that I was in Fylde.
01:24But this is the area in which I've chosen and Melanie, my wife, has chosen to raise our children.
01:32This is where she came from originally. I'm local by choice rather than birth.
01:40There was no great moment where I went, aha, the answer is being an MP.
01:43It's just a kind of dawning realisation that if you want change you have to go to the places where people change things and start from there.
01:53But one of the key things is not that decision, it's the decisions that come after if I'm elected and making sure I never lose touch with this constituency
02:05and making sure that I'm always informed by what you're telling me and what your concerns are.
02:10So I remain from the Fylde and not off Westminster.
02:21I can give you a date and a time. It's the 1st of January 2024 in a fabulous flat not far from Westminster with a group of friends from Lytton.
02:32And I don't know, it sounds exceedingly boring and I don't know why we did it but we decided to look at the voting history of our MP.
02:39Don't ask me why. And I noticed that for four years running it voted to put untreated sewage in the sea.
02:47And from that moment on I thought I have to do something.
02:51So it was the 1st of January 2024 and then there became a general election and I'm sitting up here wondering what am I doing?
03:01But hopefully I just thought I've got to do it for the people.
03:06I'm just a mum and a gran and I want to change things.
03:11I don't think I want to be a politician but I would do my best if I got in.
03:16But I just feel I couldn't have an MP that was voting to put untreated sewage in the sea.
03:21So that's exactly when, date and time.
03:31Such mutual support again in my story and I don't understand it.
03:36I'll answer first of all my entry into politics and then specifically found.
03:42So my entry into politics was quite late. I was quite late in my 30s.
03:46It was during that time with Charles Kennedy. I found him really inspiring.
03:51I looked at what each of the parties stood for.
03:53I liked what we were saying about the falsehood of the Iraq war for example.
04:00I work in the local defence industry. I worked on FOWL for almost 39 years.
04:08And at the last election in 2009 as quite a late candidate I was adopted as the candidate for FOWL back in 2019.
04:19This time we've made a campaign we can be proud of.
04:26And I was adopted formally back in September of 2023.
04:31So my reasons for being here. I've worked here for almost 39 years.
04:36And I wanted really to give the people of FOWL that opportunity to vote for the Liberal Democrats.
04:45And for the policies we have, the values we hold to bring services closer to communities and invest properly in our NHS and social care.
05:00I've been on the approved parliamentary candidates list for the Conservative Party since just after the 2017 general election.
05:08And I could give you a long potted history of my entry into politics from decades ago.
05:15But the question specifically about FOWL.
05:18First and foremost, my family always come first.
05:21I've been married to my wife for 10 years this year.
05:24Together for 15 years we've got a little two year old called Walter.
05:28I was having a little, Ann called me in the car park, having a little meltdown in the car because my wife agreed to let me know Walter had been sick all over the back of the car.
05:36But family comes first for me.
05:38And although I wanted to be a Member of Parliament, I wanted to stand for the values of the Conservative Party.
05:43My wife and I made that pledge that we would not upend to anywhere that we do not have connections to.
05:49To an area that we don't love, to an area that is not known to us.
05:53And therefore, having been on the Conservative Party parliamentary candidate for 2017, I have not stood in any other constituency than Fylde.
06:02Because for me, it is about representing an area.
06:05Yes, in a modern British political system, people move from areas.
06:08People move from jobs in all walks of life because they want to put themselves forward for the best person to do a particular job.
06:15But for me, even in politics, that's got to come with an affection and an affinity to an area.
06:21And therefore, when I was no longer Police and Crime Commissioner in May this year and the final vacancy was advertised, many people got in touch with me to encourage me to go for it.
06:30My wife and I decided to take some time to think about it.
06:34And it was a Saturday evening in May when the very first person I told I was going to Fylde was my wife Caroline, who has been wonderfully supportive ever since.
06:44It's been a very stressful time because we're living separately at the minute, but I campaigned here in Fylde.
06:49Don't worry, you're on the phone to me every night.
06:51Not told of that!
06:54Another Tory scandal!
06:58And the evening takes an unexpected twist.
07:02Don't want to miss the pig on the back there.