Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
It’s fever pitch at hustings
The four people vying to become the next MP for Canterbury and Whitstable went head-to-head at a fiery hustings on Friday night. Alex Claridge reports
Hustings, we are told, exist to allow us to hear and challenge those who ask for our vote.
Friday night’s offering at Canterbury Christ Church University felt and sounded more like a football match, with supporters cheering on their candidates.
At the start of the evening in Old Sessions House, I surveyed the audience and could comfortably tell you – because I know who they are – the political persuasions of around a quarter of the attendees. By the time it was over I reckon I would score 80%.
Your pre-game announcers were pro vice-chancellor Mike Weed and Dr David Bates, the enormously affable political scientist who has done so much to bring intelligent discussion to the city.
Dr Amelia Hadfield, your referee, got the match under way by allowing Labour’s Rosie Duffield to kick off proceedings to whoops and cheers.
Clearly nervous, she had got no more than 20 seconds into her opening foray when Cllr Neil Baker, the Conservatives’ local vice-chairman, decided he would heckle her. But two barracks in and he was out – ejected from the arena by a steward.
It allowed Rosie to get into her stride as she made a foray down left-field: “The Canterbury constituency is not Conservative and if you elect me as your first Labour MP then we will be on course to elect a Labour government.
“We will invest £30 billion into our NHS – but it’s not just about spending money, it’s about how we spend it. A Labour government will scrap the Tory and Lib Dems’ Health & Social Care Act and reinvest the up to £10bn currently spent on commissioning.
“We may then even be able to afford our desperately needed new teaching hospital.”
The red sections of the crowd lapped it up before it was time for the yellow team captain, James Flanagan, to dribble the ball.
“This is no ordinary election,” the Lib Dem midfielder said. “We are living through a time Sir Julian Brazier
when public services are being cut back and the NHS is being starved of funding.
“You can see this with the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, which is potentially losing its urgent care centre and other services.
“Overlaying all this is the spectre of a hard Brexit which is going to have major repercussions to our city and our universities which rely on EU funding.”
Conservative Sir Julian Brazier took to the podium and didn’t waste any time embarking on a typical politician’s monologue – defending his government’s policies
“The ghastly events of Manchester remind us just how fragile our way of life can sometimes be,” he said.
“I’m proud to belong to a party which believes in strong defences and which believes in a generous aid programme because aid is crucial in restabilising the areas which so much of this instability comes from.
“And I’m also proud to come from a party which has just passed the Investigatory Powers Act which gives the security services the powers they need to cope with the use by terrorists of social media.”
Sir Julian was heckled and booed during his opening remarks, a theme which would persist but resulted in no one else being ejected.
Groundsman Henry Stanton decided he’d open this hardboiled hustings by dropping a cute bomb into the auditorium.
The Green Party candidate told us he loves Canterbury, loves Toddlers Cove and that his favourite street is Castle Street, where he first kissed his wife, Sarah. Awww, Henry. I must declare that Henry is a friend of mine, but I know I wasn’t the only one wondering just where he was going with this.
The answer came soon enough: “I’m a local lad and that’s why I’m standing up for what matters for Canterbury, because we have a jewel of a city, but we are