“Money for Lies” - Campaigning in the Midlands

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“Money for Lies” - Campaigning in the Midlands

17.03.2010 // by Ciaran Norris

Last weekend saw the biggest push yet of the Power Pledge in the Midlands. In three days we hit three major cities, one political conference and the radio waves. On Friday, I travelled to Leicester where I was interviewed on the BBC Radio Leicester Breakfast Show about the campaign. After this I spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon campaigning in the city centre, talking to local people about the relationship they have with their politicians.

One man said: ‘It’s money for lies. We pay them a lot, but that’s not enough. They want more so they take it, then they lie to cover their tracks. They don’t all do it but they all stood by whilst too many did. In any other walk of life you’d be a failure for that but in politics it seems to be the only sure-fire way to succeed.’ I’ve taken a few colourful expressions out, but you get the message.

This seemed to sum up the same feeling I’ve been getting across the region: dissatisfaction, mistrust and resentment.

As the rain continued fall in Leicester I made way to my next action, speaking at the launch of a student voting campaign at Warwick University. Just Vote is a campaign to get as many students to vote at the next election as possible. Students started it and I can honestly say that, after six years in the student movement, I have never seen anything quite like it.

The launch event was attended by no less than six Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs) – including one sitting MP – from the local area. A great turnout and all the students present asked sharp questions about the future not just of tuition fees, but of the range of issues that this election will decide.

I said something on Friday that I seldom say in public: I don’t care who wins the next election. I honestly don’t. Because I don’t think any party will have the mandate to do what they’ve said they will do. I said that whoever wins, and whatever margin, are not important to me.

Just so long as the process we go through from here to there be as transparent and engaging as possible, and so long as we have the means to hold those we elect to account. That’s all I care about.

The more I think about what that man said though, that politics is ‘money for lies’, the more I realise that we, as Power2010, have our work cut out for us. He later told me he had no intention of voting, for the reasons he had just said.

It’s ironic that he admitted not all MPs had lied, but that ‘they all stood by whilst too many did’. That cuts both ways, I told him. If voters don’t stand up and be counted in this election, then that’s as bad as standing by in the first place.

Ciaran Norris is the Midlands Regional Campaigner for Power2010.