Who can stand as an MP?  Currently, practically anyone.  And doesn’t it show.  As long as you are not a member of certain professions––the police and army principally––and can stump up £500, you can see your name on the ballot paper.  Some may say this is democracy; I say that it is making a mockery of democracy.

In what other similar job, which carries such a high level of responsibility and commands such a considerable salary, can you be permitted to be a candidate with so few qualifications?

I recently attended a hustings for candidates in my local constituency.  Perhaps wisely, the Tory, Labour, Liberal and Green Party candidates didn’t even bother to turn up.  However, three candidates did, those representing Reform UK, the Heritage Party, and The Workers Party of Britain.

Slightly disappointed by the no-shows, nevertheless, I was interested to see the calibre of the candidates who were present; listen to their arguments; assess their policies.

How naive could I be?  I should have realised that I was not about to witness a virtuoso display of intellectual political debate from the moment that the Heritage Party candidate started her opening address with the words: “Please don’t ask me any difficult questions.”  Good God, what is the job of an MP other than to find answers to difficult questions?  The Workers Party candidate admitted that he had had no intention of ever standing to be an MP until three weeks beforehand, and fended off every question with an aggressively hectoring: “You’re asking the wrong question.”  Of the three representatives, the Reform UK candidate came across as the least amateurish––the bar is not raised high here––and I say this as someone who is in fundamental opposition to every syllable that Nigel Farage has, or will ever, utter.  The entire ‘debate’ was excruciating in its ignorance and ineptitude, barely reaching heights above the level of Biden-senility or Trump-fantasy, and left me feeling embarrassed, disappointed and, moreover, scared by the paucity of grassroots politics.

In the UK, there are 650 MPs in a country with a population of close on 68 million people.  As near as makes no difference, that is one MP for every 100,000 people.  It is a position that should be held in high respect.  And, as such, it should attract the best candidates.  Not necessarily the best educated; not necessarily the physically elite; not even the most charismatic, but, at least the most committed to the role.  I want my prospective MP to appear at their hustings and say something like: “I knew that I wanted to be an MP when I was in primary school.” not “Oh, I just thought I’d stand for a bit of a laugh last weekend.”

As such, I think that there should be a course of training for prospective parliamentary candidates before they can begin to be considered for possible election: a year-long––at the very least––intensive programme of study and activity, which would both thoroughly outline the responsibilities of the duty involved, and also profile the suitability of the potential applicants for a demanding career of public service.  For someone truly committed to serving their constituents and country, it would be of enormous benefit; for fly-by-night, self-seeking wannabes, it would be a timely wake-up call.

It could be argued that the public already make this selection at the ballot box––certainly, I won’t be voting either Reform UK, Heritage Party, or Workers Party after the depressing display of debate, which I witnessed at my local hustings, and this despite––or because of ––the Heritage Party candidate’s pathetic “I hope that I’ve convinced you to vote Heritage.” at the end of her pitiful presentation.  Not that I would have ever wasted a vote on any of them beforehand.  But, candidates are being voted into Parliament on short-term, single-issue emotive policies.  The collective public is not immune to hyperbole, spin and artifice.  And, in an age when generative AI, manipulated by bad actors, underage influencers and foreign powers can provoke knee-jerk prejudices based on totally false media, propagated by deepfake videos and rumour bombs on social media, it is more important than ever to implement a more rigid framework of scrutiny for potential candidates.

The voting public deserves better in the choice offered to it.  A choice based on quality, not quantity.

Imagine a House of Commons where you know that every elected sitting member has been actively schooled in the virtues of sacrifice and service: has been taught how to debate and how to empathise; and has passed at least the most basic qualifications in Maths?  In the words of John Lennon: it isn’t hard to do.  I think that it would result in a parliament with a fundamentally different look to it; with a fundamentally different respect for it.

The job of being an MP is too important to be left in the hands of the self-seeking, the self-important, and the self-delusional.

© Beery Sue

Beery Sue is standing as a parliamentary candidate for the Free Beer Party in the village of Beer, East Devon