Foundation group to put candidates forward New ‘common sense party’ sets sights on district’s seats

A new party with ambitions of eventually winning seats in Parliament will have “two or three” candidates running in May’s local elections.

Led locally by former Conservative and Ukip councillor David Hirst, the Foundation Party was formed last year.

It campaigns for a hard Brexit, “robust law and order” and a greater number of powers to be afforded to councils.

“It’s a common sense party,” Cllr Hirst said. “It’s a national party and a Brexit party.

“We’re very interested in what I call cleaning up politics and getting politics back onto the sort of footing it was on years ago.”

Cllr Hirst, who has represented the Greenhill ward for eight years, and Canterbury business owner Debbie Barwick are founding members of the party.

It is largely made up of former Ukip councillors and was initially led by the party’s former Sevenoaks branch chairman Gerald O’brien before Chris Mendes took the reins.

Despite calling itself a national party, it will predominantly campaign in Kent in May.

“I’m hoping we will have at least two or three candidates, including me, in Canterbury,” Cllr Hirst said.

“We won’t have a candidate in every ward because we are very new. We’ll be campaigning quite widely in Kent; certainly in Folkestone, possibly in Dover and in Canterbury.

“In the local elections I believe there will be Foundation Party and independent candidates winning seats. We are looking to have a strong team in place by the Kent County Council elections in 2021.

“It’s early days for us, but we believe there is space for us nationally because there is such massive dissatisfaction with the two main parties.”

Cllr Hirst states the Foundation Party will grow markedly once its advertising campaign gathers pace. He says he will be campaigning to increase the amount of social housing across the district.

“The council has borrowed so much money on things that don’t actually improve anything, like the purchase of Whitefriars, when we should have spent it on building some houses and maintaining the ones we’ve got.”

Cllr Hirst and Ms Barwick are also vocal critics of the Business Improvement District (BID) scheme, which asks traders to pay a levy in return for a number of services and facilities.

Cllr Hirst, 70, left Ukip last year following the EU referendum.

He was a Conservative member for 14 years before having the whip withdrawn in 2013.