A Week on the Stump – week 3

You know you’re on the Countdown to an Election when the Hustings start. And you know that Hustings are about to start, because your team suddenly start looking anxious, asking if you’ve “done your homework” and surreptitiously slipping you useful crib sheets on 10 policy promises that you need to memorise, or else…

Hustings season kicked off on Thursday evening, and it was nice to say hello to the other candidates and compare campaign wounds to date. On the campaign trail, you often get to see your fellow candidates for 30 seconds when you’re out and about, but hustings give you a few extra minutes to natter. Just because you’re on opposing teams (so to speak), it doesn’t necessarily follow that you loathe each other and hope that a passing lorry squashes your opponents flat (well, this is my take, others of course may feel differently!).

Everyone has their different styles and approaches to politics, and hustings are a great way to see what a candidate potentially brings to the table as your future Parliamentarian. I have come to think of it as the weirdest job interview that I am ever likely to have. You are basically trying to persuade thousands of people that you can do the job, and that the team you represent will do a good job, when lots of people already have ideas that may or may not be related to what you are actually saying or what your team wants to do in the future. The best thing that I have learnt in my politics job interviews/career to date is that being a good listener counts for a lot, and that understanding where people are coming from is the best way to figure out how to be of use as a politician.

In other news this week, we have been recording videos and attending events to try and highlight how flipping seriously we are taking the Climate Emergency. It is such an enormous thing that if you are anything like me, sometimes it plays second fiddle to the immediate pressures of work and demands of family life. But this week I think that something might finally have clicked – a combination of David Attenborough, the sums of money we are pledging for a Green Industrial Revolution and the fact that if we don’t start RIGHT NOW, then large parts of Worthing West are going to be under water by 2050. Have you seen the map?? I will be honest, at first glance I thought that it had to be a hoax. Ferring flooded? Worthing beach on the Goring Road? But no, the science was there and the models checked out. So for me, this election is about far more than the B words (the referendum or the current blonde bloke), important as they are to sort out. This is about the fact that if we don’t get our act together now, the future of our planet is in serious jeopardy. And that is worth any amount of weird job interviews, to try and persuade thousands of people that if there is one election not to miss for the opportunity to change things, then this is it.

Right, had better sign off now as have to go and find our Elf on the Shelf, who has returned from the North Pole just in time for the 1st December (if you have no clue what I’m talking about, count yourself very lucky indeed). If it’s not too early (and I am happy to agree that it may well be), put on a Christmas Carol and smile at a stranger or two. With just under two weeks to go til the election, a bit of Christmas spirit might be just what we need to get us to that finish line!