Email: jonathan@therightethos.co.uk | Tel: 01227 639768

Email: jonathan@therightethos.co.uk
Tel: 01227 639768

Weekly Parliamentary Briefing

 

Week beginning: Monday 18th April 2022

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This isn’t what you want it to be.

There are local election results today. Local elections are so very important. The impact they have on people’s lives is huge.

What isn’t so huge is the amount you can read into the results.  Let’s have a look at reasons people vote for candidates:

  • Some people will never vote for a different party. They’re blues or reds or oranges or greens or whatever. That’s just what they’re going to do.
  • Some people will want to send a message to the national parties. Think partygate and beergate.
  • Some people will look at what they know about national policies (mostly because it’s hard to visualise local policies sometimes) and decide on things based on Brexit or the vaccine rollout or Ukraine or whatever else.
  • Some people will vote having had a good look at the local policies and make a decision based on who will provide the best services / lowest council tax / whatever else.

I’ve got to be honest, the last time I voted a friend of mine was standing, so I just voted for him. I guess that highlights that there are personal and varied reasons on top of these.

When we look at a bewildering array of results, there is no way of knowing who has voted for what kind of reason. Would they vote the same in a General Election? We just don’t know. The people in the first bullet will. The rest? No idea.

The news will tell you there is a narrative that we should understand. Maybe they’re right. They normally are. I’d just urge you to take it with a pinch of salt.

The week ahead…

 

Not in Parliament

Sunscreen, ice cream and mental health awareness week.

House of Commons 

On Tuesday it’s the Queen’s Speech and then they’ll have a couple of days debating different bits of the speech.

House of Lords

Same as the Commons, but the Lords have already told us that they’ll be debating Levelling up, communities and transport on Wednesday. We can look forward to home affairs, justice, culture, media and constitution on Thursday.  I wouldn’t expect these debates to capture the headlines.

About The Right Ethos

The Right Ethos was set up after our founder, Jonathan Dearth, had worked in the campaigning sector for 13 years, for campaigning organisations including Amnesty International, Shelter, Liberty and the World Development Movement. It was set up as a response to multi-sector recruitment consultancies moving in on the charity sector, and in particular not recognising that people who work for campaigning organisations are motivated by justice and long term change.