‘I pulled up my socks and got in political ring for young people’
In his latest Martin Shipton Meets podcast, our chief reporter talks to Wales’ youngest MP, Ben Lake, about getting elected unexpectedly, political churn and the daunting responsibility of his role...
WALES’ youngest MP has told how he only decided to seek selection as a candidate two days before the hustings meeting at which he was chosen.
Plaid Cymru’s Ben Lake created an upset at last year’s General Election when he ousted Liberal Democrat Mark Williams from the Ceredigion seat he had held for 12 years by just 102 votes.
Speaking on a Martin Shipton Meets podcast, Lake, who was 24 at the time and is now 25, said there had been a combination of factors that prompted him to put his name forward.
He said: “One was if I ever was going to put myself forward for elected office, it would be for Ceredigion. It’s my home county – it’s Ceredigion or nowhere. There wasn’t a Plaid candidate at the time.
“And at the back of my mind, perhaps I was thinking if I don’t put my name forward now, by the next time there won’t be a chance of being the Plaid candidate again.
“But also I was finding myself getting quite annoyed that I was only complaining and moaning behind the scenes, and thought to myself, if you truly believe in what you’re saying and feel strongly enough, well, pull your socks up and get in the ring.”
He didn’t, however, think he had a chance of winning the election.
He said: “It was, I think, accepted by everybody that it was an exceptional election. We weren’t prepared for it, I think it’s fair to say, either on a local or a national level.
“We are a small party and elections are very costly to run. We just don’t simply have the resources, or the members really, to be able to conduct so many elections in three years: two general elections and an Assembly election.”
Although the seat was notionally a target, having been held by the party between 1992 and 2005, there had been no Plaid candidate in place to build up a profile.
Lake said: “When we started the campaign we were talking about getting certain percentages of the vote and coming second, and seeing either the majority reduced or our vote going up, so it was then prime for the next round, whenever the next election came along.
“If I’m to be quite frank, we went a little bit under the radar. We stayed away from most of the media attention – we just worked on the ground.”
Lake said he had been very keen to engage with young people during the campaign: “I know this sounds silly, but if not voting for me, getting them to get involved in politics.
“I do believe that even in rural areas – or maybe especially in rural areas, where we do have far too many of our young people having to leave – there should always be a choice.
“Everyone should have a choice, but conditions are such that people are forced to leave for work or a career. I was very keen to get them on board, and very lucky that they did.
“So as the campaign went on, we saw from different canvassing sessions that we were getting more and more people coming to join us.
“We had a lot of fun. And it was a chance to learn what people were really concerned about. At the time Brexit wasn’t discussed as often as you thought on the doorstep.
“It surprised me – it really did. It was far more about domestic politics: that always was the priority for people when you were knocking on the doors. The state of public services in general and the funding of them.”
There was a sense, he said, that people felt they were “putting into the pot” without getting much out.
“I think the election last year was truly exceptional,” he said. “People had started thinking ‘what would Wales’ relationship be with the UK in a post-Brexit setting?’ They started to re-evaluate their opinions, I think, on most things.
“I have no doubt – I’m pretty sure, actually – that many people who had previously voted for Plaid had gone elsewhere, and people who had perhaps voted Liberal Democrat and Labour and perhaps even Conservative had come over to us this time.
“It was a lot of churn, and I don’t think we will ever really know the specific reasons, other than it was a critical juncture and people were reevaluating their opinions and their positions. Given perhaps that we had quite a strong ground campaign – we were going to a lot of villages, towns, farmsteads, having discussions with them – that did contribute to the result.”
He said it had been “daunting” at such a young age to have the responsibility of representing his constituency at Westminster: “For months afterwards I can’t say that I could sleep very easily, because I was very aware that people had placed a great deal of faith and entrusted an incredible responsibility in me that I had to repay them.
“And I was very eager to do so and very conscious that I wasn’t able to repay them as much as I wanted to straightaway.
“That kind of tension in my own mind meant there were many sleepless nights for the first few months – at times even now when certain issues arise and I realise even as a Member of Parliament unfortunately there is no magic wand and you can’t fix everything as you would like.”