I went to my first ever local hustings today. Organised by Langside Church, it took place just down the road and so seemed like a good opportunity to help me decide how to vote.
I really didn’t know what to expect, and spent most of the evening having what expectations I did have confounded. I expected a low turnout, and got a hall with at least 60 people in it. I expected to be the youngest person there, and though there was a preponderance of grey hair, there were definitely people far younger than me. And I expected the politicians to be full of windy cliches and in favour of nothing more definite than kittens and chocolate, and while there was a bit of that, there was a lot more detailed policy than I’d anticipated.
There were six candidates who are all standing in Glasgow South. To save you clicking the link, they are Tom Harris (Labour), Marie Campbell (Greens), Davina Rankin (Conservative), Malcolm Fleming (SNP), Brian Smith (Scottish Trade Union and Socialist) and Shabnum Mustapha (Lib Dem).
We were asked to submit written questions as we arrived and the chair then selected those that occurred most frequently, which is a sensible way of doing things but did mean that quite a lot of topics went uncovered in the 90 minutes we had. At the start, the candidates were given the traditional two minutes to set out their stall, so here’s the Shoogly summary of their wares, in the order that they spoke.
STUS – capitalism is at the heart of our problems, and we need a different way which involves taxing millionaires, “going after” big business and shutting down tax-evading companies.
SNP: the choice in Scotland is between Labour and the SNP. Lots of differences between the two: Trident, Iraq, 10p tax rate.
Conservatives: Defend public services, more family-friendly policies, clean up politics.
Green: political decisions have consequences, protect public services, Robin Hood tax, tax the wealthy, scrap Trident.
Labour: internet has galvanised election, Twitter and blogosphere are important, politics is about jobs, glad Gordon Brown was in charge when banks almost collapsed.
Lib Dems: against Iraq, it’s a two-horse race between Labour and Lib Dems (bit of audience dissent here), fairer taxes, green jobs, clean up politics, fairer voting system.
As concisely as possible, here’s who said what during the debate:
Trident
Lib Dems, STUS, Greens all against, Lib Dem candidate was personally against it but quoted Lib Dem policy of seeking strategic defence review, Conservatives supported review but said would renew Trident, Labour firmly in favour: Tom Harris upset some sections of the audience by saying “Nuclear weapons prevented nuclear war for 50 years”, adding that nuclear weapons have been reduced in number under Labour and concluding that if you are in favour of unilateral disarmament then “I’m sorry – you’re wrong”. Greens and STUS both said that nukes are pointless because you could never use them – I’m no nuclear apologist but thought this was silly, the whole argument is that they are a deterrent because they are so terrible that you could never risk using them. Whether that argument makes sense or not is of course entirely debatable.
Asylum-seekers
When the chair announced the topic of the next question my heart sank, having been so thoroughly indoctrinated by the right-wing press that I assumed the question would be how can we most conveniently force all asylum seekers to go home. Instead it was a request from Citizens for Sanctuary for the politicians to sign a pledge supporting asylum seekers’ right to work, children’s right not to be detained and some other points that I didn’t catch. All supported this except Tom Harris, who risked further audience ire by saying that he didn’t think asylum seekers should be permitted to work as this sent out the wrong signal internationally, and that children should only be kept at Dungavel for a couple of days but that it wasn’t as bad there as the media said. We spent quite a long time on this issue as the church seemed to be involved in it and the chair was quite determined to get them all to sign the pledge, which didn’t seem like quite the best use of time, but then they did put the hustings on so I suppose it’s only fair that they got their issue covered.
Principles
It was notable at this point that some candidates had said things that didn’t accord with their party’s policy (Shabnum on non-renewal of Trident, Davena on closing Dungavel and letting asylum seekers work) so I asked whether candidates, if elected, would vote according to their principles or their party if they found themselves opposed to party policy. The STUS candidate responded that this shouldn’t happen too often if you’re in the right party, but that if it did you’d have to go with your principles. The chair rather let the rest of them of the hook by asking if it was fair to assume that they’d all agree with that, which they did, but that’s good to know: now we have a public commitment from all the candidates that they’ll vote against their party if the need arises.
Climate change
Everybody agreed that climate change was terribly important and took the opportunity to flaunt their party credentials on it. The Greens were unsurprisingly strong on this, citing opposition to the M74 extension, to subsidising aviation and to commissioning new open-cast mines, and also calling for investment in public transport. The Tory was slightly vague, referring to getting the train from London and doing more recycling, while Labour focused on attacking the Tories, prompting the only real audience heckle of the night, but also did quite a good rant about how profoundly depressing it is that some people still don’t accept the fact of climate change. A noticeable absence of actual policy though. There was then a fairly complicated question from someone who I assume is A Proper Scientist about reconciling opposition to nuclear power stations with a desire for low-carbon fuel, plus the usual dull question about how the candidates had personally reduced their carbon footprint. I hate this question, it just gives them an excuse to wheeze on about walking to the shops and growing potatoes.
Potholes
Despite coming under the jurisdiction of the local council, this appeared to be the real issue of the night, prompting a ragged cheer from the audience. The most interesting point about the responses was how the candidates all adroitly shimmied from potholes to their own party’s policies: the socialist focused on funding cuts that mean the council can’t afford to fix potholes, the Lib Dems on Glasgow City Council’s creation of arms-length companies which left them no money to fix potholes and the Greens on the need to create money to fix potholes by scrapping the M74 and additional Forth Road Bridge.
Banks
Final question of the night was about the bankers’ bonuses. Both the Greens and the Lib Dems talked of separating high street banks from the high-gambling investment banks, and spoke of the Robin Hood tax, which the Greens support and the Lib Dems nearly support. The STUS said we should nationalise banks, which I thought we had basically already done, while Labour called for banks to repay every single penny they had received from the taxpayer and expressed relief that Gordon Brown had been the man in charge at the time of the crisis. The Conservative spoke of there having been too much light touch regulation, which doesn’t sound like typical Tory policy to me but shows what topsy-turvey times we are living in.
Conclusions
So what, if anything, did I conclude? Well, I concluded that it’s tough to be the sitting candidate: the audience seemed pretty hostile towards Tom Harris at times, and I suppose it’s not surprising. It’s much easier for candidates than sitting MPs to sign up to whatever pledges are put in front of you, knowing that unless you’re a high profile candidate, none of the media is that interested in your position. Tom Harris gained some respect from me at least, by not trying to play to the crowd and being really quite firm on occasion, even when it was clear that the audience was against him.
It also made me think about our voting system. In some ways it’s ridiculous that candidates without a hope of winning got exactly the same amount of time as the front-runners, but it’s really the only fair solution: you can’t start prioritising candidates, otherwise they get an unfair advantage. Yet another argument for electoral reform, I think.
And finally, I concluded that everyone who puts themselves up for election, whether they’re standing for a mainstream party or a total far-out fringe group, or indeed an independent (in fact especially an independent) deserves some respect. Even if their policies make no more sense than a bucket of barking badgers, it’s not easy to stop moaning and actually take responsibility for fixing things, and those who do should be admired. I thought all of the candidates spoke well at least some of the time, and in fact I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the whole affair.
But the million dollar question: did it help me decide who I’m going to vote for? Well – no. More on that later, I’m sure…
April 26th, 2010 at 9:15 am
Thanks for coming along last night, Carolyn. I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to answer your question directly, but actually Brian (Trade Union Socialist) said almost exactly what I would have said. Hope you enjoyed the evening. I’ve written about it on my own blog.
Really like your blog, by the way – and I’m not just saying that because you’re a voter in Glasgow South!
April 26th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
“There was then a fairly complicated question from someone who I assume is A Proper Scientist about reconciling opposition to nuclear power stations with a desire for low-carbon fuel”
How dare you! I’m an engineer, not a scientist
I thought it worth making the question quite detailed because otherwise I knew the answer would undoubtedly be “renewables will replace them” from everyone bar Labour and the Tories (which is a nice idea but not a technical reality).
I ended up having a rather lively discussion with the Green candidate and her boss afterwards when I tried to explain to them why they need to accept there is only a least worst option between nuclear and coal/gas. They were not to be swayed into looking at the reality of the situation however and maintained they would only consider nuclear after trying every single other possibility, a luxury any government doesn’t have when you consider how long it takes to commission a large power station.
Oh and like you, I felt in the minority for being politically non-aligned. I have to give Tom Harris credit for at least sticking to his guns and not pandering to the ‘mob’, but to be honest I’ll probably end up voting for the party I dislike least out of them all…
April 26th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Thanks for the response and the compliment Tom. GIven how confused I am about this election, kind words about my blog might just be the deciding factor in securing my vote!
Alan, I do apologise for confusing you with a scientist: what was clear that you knew far more than I did about the subject – it was quite reassuring to know that there are people taking an interest who do actually understand the science of it all.
I did get the sense that quite a lot of people there had already made up their mind, but judging by the conversations I heard on the way out, there was also a fair few who were still deciding, so perhaps last night will have swung a few folk one way or another.
April 27th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Tom is the ideal candidate if you have father issues and need a stern authoritarian as your Great Leader.
Have a look at his voting record, though – it really is appalling. Despite his waffling on about green issues, he has voted against them every time, or been absent.
He also opposed the acceptance of the Goldstone report into Israel’s assault on Gaza, was very pro-Iraq war, and very anti-inqury into the war.
He shouldn’t be in the Labour party.
I likes Malcolm and Marie the most.
April 28th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Did the SNP candidate not speak? You have made no reference to them at all after the candidate 2 minute speech summary.
April 28th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Neither I have – it’s not a deliberate omission. Malcolm did, obviously, speak quite a lot. As I recall he supported the pledge on asylum seekers, wasn’t in favour of Trident, thought much action was needed on potholes and I forget what he said on climate change.
April 30th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
The SNP guy was pretty unmemorable to be honest. I felt that so many of the candidates just pandered to the crowd, ‘sanctuary seekers’, nuclear weapons etc. They knew the audience position and seemed loathe to get booed.
I was ready to question the SNP guy about his election leaflet though. They had a very selective use of voting statistics to show that the SNP were second in Glasgow South, even though in the last election they were 3rd behind Labour and the Lib Dems (and almost 4th behind the Conservatives!) and so his statement that it was a clear choice between Labour and the SNP was total bollocks (statistically at least)
From what I can make out they took the votes from the council/scottish/european elections (which have different boundaries) and used this voting record to extrapolate one for Glasgow South. Of course, their leaflets contain no sources for this data so it’s hard to work out where it came from. But why let facts, sources and transparency get in the way of a nice graph
Then again, they wouldn’t want to highlight that the last time Glasgow South voted for its MP they were down in third…
Anyway, bit of a tangent there (I’m just a pedant)… I just found everything the SNP bloke said to be pretty unmemorable. While there is no way in hell I’m voting for Tom Harris (I disagree with far too much of his scary right-wing mantra), he was the only candidate that actually came across as an individual and not a party mouthpiece. I really do, honestly want to vote for a candidate, not for a party, but when they’re all just reciting the party line and referring to their party leader or their party policy I just phase out.