Last week we published profiles of the Conservative and Labour candidates in next week’s election. This week we are going to have a look at the Lib Dem candidate and the UKIP candidate. There is no Green party candidate standing in Hastings and Rye on this occasion.
Keeping on fighting
Nick Perry is a Liberal Democrat who has spent the past 10 years campaigning in the constituency and lives in Hastings.
Along with the Lib Dem official policy, he is passionate about our membership of the EU and fought hard to try to obtain a “remain” result in the referendum. Since Brexit became a reality, he has continued to campaign against a “hard” Brexit which will, he believes, hit the poorest hardest. Jobs and incomes need to be protected by remaining in the single market and only the Liberal Democrats, he says, are challenging the Conservatives over this.
Apart from the Brexit question, he has two other main planks to his campaign: the NHS urgently needs additional investment and his party would provide this together with the extra care services that are also required. As he puts it: “We are going to stand up for the NHS.”
Schools are the other problem area that has to be tackled. Across the whole of the constituency schools are having their budgets cut and the government, he believes, has stopped listening to local people. This needs to be reversed, with proper and adequate funding for all our local schools.
UKIP still needed
The UKIP candidate is Michael Phillips. Coming from a family of Scottish miners, his working life has been spent in the Civil Service and although not a long-term ‘local’, he has served as a UKIP East Sussex County Councillor for four years. If you voted Leave, he says, but do not want to vote Conservative this time, then a vote for UKIP will send the same message to Brussels.
We need a cut in immigration and stricter controls in future together with improved coastal security, more police and soldiers and our armed forces rebuilt. On the NHS, foreign aid should be diverted to fund more nurses and GPs, and hospital parking fees scrapped.
British culture needs to be protected, with one legal system for all, and a complete Brexit with a full divorce from the EU. Abolition of the House of Lords, an English parliament and proportional representation are also on his list.
Along with the other candidates, he has accepted the invitation to this Saturday’s hustings, but has added the proviso that he “hopes to be there”.
Photos: library images
It’s interesting that Rye News has airbrushed out the fifth candidate, Nicholas Wilson, who is standing on an anti-corruption ticket. Arguably his views are the most coherent and relevant of all the candidates. Any reason you’re hushing him up? Is he onto something?