The first of the hustings for the General Election on 12th December, which focussed on the issue of Europe, saw only 2 of the 6 candidates present last night (Wednesday).
Attending the event at the Riverside Centre in Newport were Daryll Pitcher, independent Brexit candidate, and the pro-remain candidate from the Green Party, Vix Lowthion. Absent from the event was the Conservative Party candidate Bob Seely, the Labour Party candidate Richard Quigley, the independent pro-link candidate Carl Feeney and a further independent candidate, Karl Love.
Independent Brexit candidate, Daryll Pitcher, who stood for UKIP in the 2017 General Election, claimed that he had decided to stand in the absence of a ‘real’ Brexit candidate, following the withdrawal Peter Wiltshire from the Brexit Party. Daryll argued that Boris Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement did not constitute genuine independence, as it left the United Kingdom under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, did not allow for an independent foreign policy and created a border with Northern Ireland down the middle of the Irish Sea.
Daryll believed that the answer to leaving the European Union was to do so unilaterally, by repealing the European Communities Act, and that Article 50 should never have been triggered. He thought that we should have left on our terms rather than theirs.
For the independent Brexit candidate, leaving the European Union meant freedom and independence. Daryll hoped that leaving the European Union would be the start of constitutional reform, which included proportional representation. He argued that the quality of our political leadership was so poor because we had outsourced decision making to the European Union, leaving our political leadership in Westminster with nothing useful to do.
The remain candidate, Vix Lowthion of the Green Party, who was being supported in the election by the Liberal Democrats, believed the European issue to be the most important at this year’s General Election. She argued that the European Union was primarily a peace project that had brought forty years of peace to the European continent.
She saw the Brexit independence movement as being the tool of disaster capitalists seeking to make money, and that ordinary people would suffer economic hardship as a consequence of our leaving.
Vix also mentioned Russian interference in the referendum campaign, believing the foreign power to have spent £20 million on obtaining a result that it saw as being in its strategic interests. She also claimed that membership of the European Union only cost her personally £11 a year in taxation, which was a very small price to pay for benefits such as freedom of movement: the right to live, love and work across the European continent.
The remain candidate believed that membership of the European Union had brought many benefits to the Isle of Wight, including clean beaches and seas. Although she claimed not to be in favour of a freedom tunnel to the mainland, she thought such large infrastructure projects were more possible through European Union funding.
Daryll Pitcher countered the arguments about the benefits of European funding by pointing out that the European Union does not actually have any money of its own, and that any grants the Isle of Wight received were our own money being returned to us.
the sole purpose of the eu project was to create bureaucratic jobs for those that cannot succeed in any other area, such as business.
They leech off the private sector and sponge off national governments. They only seek to dictate what people, do and demand that they be paid for the privilege of doing so.
They need reminding, that it is the individual who gets up and goes to work each day, sweeping streets, tending the sick, driving the buses, opening up the shop, growing food, collecting refuse, running power stations, running water supplies and many many more not mentioned here, that ensure our society actually functions.
Not some two bit joker, that sits around a table, calling theirselves a politician, leeching as much money off the backs of those mentioned above and doing a lot of talking about how they are going to get the same hard workers to pay more, work more, for less and then take credit for it.
These people who call themselves politicians need reminding – they are where they are because we put them there in a vote, their role is to serve the electorate and run the administrative affairs of this country, not sit there lording it over us like some, up themselves deities.
Spot on .