Nailsea Hustings

Nailsea Christians have a reputation for putting on one of the hustings events which candidates absolutely must take seriously. So it was good to welcome all five to Nailsea School last night for a well-tempered, decently-chaired event.

In my experience it is usually the audience who are badly behaved and tonight was no exception. One questioner hid a comment in a question and segued from the minimum wage to gay marriage in two sentences. The chair, wisely, ignored him altogether.

All of the candidates were middle-aged white men. All wore jackets. Two wore ties (Labour and UKIP).

Four of the five seemed to speak human and would, in my judgement, have the interests of all the constituents at heart if elected, whether we voted for them or not. The UKIP candidate worried me that he might have a kidney in a jar in his bag and a set of surgical knives. No idea where that thought came from.

Liam Fox (Conservative and sitting MP) is incredibly smooth, a nice bloke and knows how to appeal to the audience. He got more rounds of applause than anyone else. That said it is a true blue constituency so he would have to go some to lose the seat. He chose not to respond to criticism but to leave it dangling and not to get embroiled in a discussion about the ethics of MP behaviour. In fact since all he could do was lose he chose, probably wisely, to be quietish.

The LibDem was proud of the work of coalition, or at least used the party line that he was. I think they're stuffed here. Last time they came a good second 27,000 to 20,000. This time they'll be lucky to get five figures.

The Green candidate wore green but had little chance to shoehorn green issues in. In fact, with five candidates each giving an opening and closing statement and commenting on all the questions, plus feedback from the audience, it is amazing how few issues we discussed.

Questioners were concerned about keeping our overseas aid budget as it is or better but only UKIP wanted to shrink it.

The discussion boiled down to whether we prioritise the poor or opportunity. It matters not how many times you aspire to be a culture where anyone can succeed; you still have to work out how to act appropriately towards those who don't. It matters not how kind you want to be to those who don't succeed; if there is no revenue, government cannot pay for it so some people must make money and pay tax.

We have had a yo-yo (see-saw better?) approach to this over the years. A coalition has prevented it going too far in one direction this last five.

In our constituency we would only (possibly) get a non-Tory MP if all the opposition candidates withdrew bar one.

It was good to hear all the candidates but in our democratic process it is tough to not be blue in this part of the world. You don't feel your vote really counts. Still, you don't want any other voting system since first past the post gives you strong government. Eh?

The people always win. A good and worthwhile evening, ably chaired by my colleague James Pennington.