Independent voices starting to be heard

Gloucester Citizen, 16 May 2024, p. 23 [also in the Glos Echo]

The mainstream media and many academic studies report that disillusionment with the conventional party political system is at an all-time low – something I regularly hear in my own campaigning conversations.

This phenomenon was very evident in the May election results.

Turn-out was very low – surprisinglyly so, given how much the voters clearly want change.

Nationwide, the number of elected Independent councillors was up by a remarkable 69 per cent, from 135 to 228.

And the non-mainstream Greens also increased their national total of councillors by 69 per cent.

In Gloucestershire, the Independent Matthew Randolph gathered over 10 per cent of the vote in the Police & Crime Commissioner election with virtually no campaigning resources; and in the recent Rochdale by-election, the local independent won more votes than Labour and Conservative candidates combined.

With new websites appearing like breakpartypolitics.co.uk, and with two high-profile Independent MPs in Parliament who both attract great popular support – Jeremy Corbyn and Andrew Bridgen – a new kind of politics is now possible, with ever-more independent, free-thinking voices displacing the clown show that is the conventional party politics, and which so many of us are heartily fed up with.

Dr Richard House

Stroud

 

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