Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
For rival candidates
Firth sat down with Lydia Chantler-hicks to make their pitches to readers...
It’s lunchtime, and wintry sunlight streams through the windows of the cosy Chestfield Barn. I’m at the pub to meet with Conservative candidate Anna Firth, who sips a Coke and orders a sandwich as she takes a break from the morning’s door-knocking. Even her opponents can scarcely deny the energetic effort she has made to raise her profile since being named Tory candidate at the end of July.
She tells me this is exactly why she feels she’s right for the job.
“I’ve been told by MPS in Westminster that more noise has been made about Canterbury’s need for a hospital in the last four months than has been made in the last few years,” she says.
“This is the level of representation that is required to put right an injustice. I can’t stress it enough - you’ve got to have someone who is proactive, who is prepared to get on the phone and actually start rattling cages and saying ‘it’s not acceptable - show me the money’.” Asked if she believes Ms Duffield has been a good MP, she says: “I’ve got a clean campaign pledge. I’m not going to get into the business of making personal criticisms of Rosie Duffield. “I would say to voters - come to your own conclusions about who you think is championing the need for this hospital the most.”
Naysayers have criticised the fact Mrs Firth has stood elsewhere previously, arguing the former barrister from Sevenoaks is unrelatable to Canterbury constituents.
But she argues that fighting a losing seat in Erith and Thamesmead in 2015 was “a very good learning experience”, while her career as a lawyer makes her well-placed to represent “ordinary people”. Being a mother-of-three has given her first-hand experience of everyday challenges she adds.
“I am now stuck in the same traffic in Canterbury as everybody else,” she says. “I’m using the same shops - buying my milk in Morrisons, popping into Sainsbury’s to pick up shampoo.”
She tells me of her upbringing - her grandmother a dinner lady, her mother a single parent working three jobs - adding: “I don’t come from privilege. “I really do understand when people tell me on the doorstep they’re having real problems.” Unsurprisingly for someone who has made delivering a new Canterbury hospital their primary campaign pledge, Mrs Firth maintains that healthcare is the chief issue affecting the constituency. “Canterbury is due a new hospital irrespective of any developer contribution,” she continues. “It is currently in the bottom 20 of hospital estates in the country, and according to the chief executive is soon to fall into the bottom 10.
“If 40 other hospitals are being built elsewhere in the country, there must be central government investment here in Canterbury.”
Moving on to Boris Johnson, I ask whether she feels her party leader is trustworthy.
“I have always found Boris Johnson very straightforward in discussions I have had with him,” she says.
Faltering slightly, she continues: “I mean, how do you build up trust in someone? You’ve really got to hear what they’re promising and see if they deliver it. “Whether we can trust him in his personal life and, you know, personal goings-on, in my mind is neither here nor there.
“I want to know that when he promises to spend my taxes in a certain way he delivers on it, and so far he has. His big promise was he would establish a new deal, and he has done.”
On Brexit, the Leave supporter says: “The common theme is that people want us to move on. “Whether they voted Remain or Leave, we don’t want this agony to continue - we just want to find a sensible deal, and to move on to priorities people want dealt with.
“If I’m lucky enough to be elected, we will be out of the EU by the end of January and I will be focusing then 100% on delivering the new hospital, delivering more investment in our schools, and getting the fair allocation of police officers.” She dismisses Yougov’s MRP prediction that she will narrowly lose out on winning the Canterbury and Whitstable seat.
“The response we’re getting on the doorstep is phenomenally positive, and I’m very confident actually that we will win here on the 12th,” she enthuses. “But we have to keep going - we’ll be working around the clock.”
Mrs Firth says she, like Ms Duffield, has not given thought to what she will do if she does not win.
“We are just focusing 100% on getting round and meeting as many voters as we can,” she says. “Since I’ve been selected, I’ve worked non-stop. “I’ve already made considerable progress on policing by lobbying the crime commissioner, getting a commitment that there will be serious investment in that hospital, and on congestion in bringing together key stakeholders. “So I would say to people: judge me by my actions. “It would be the privilege of my life to be the MP for Canterbury and Whitstable, and I would work as hard as I possibly could for every resident.”
‘His big promise was he would establish a new deal, and he has’ ‘I would say to people: judge me by my actions’