In a parliamentary democracy, we should not expect our MP to bend to favour whichever way the wind blows; we elect an MP to carry out the policies which he or she has declared prior to election.
However, if there is strong movement to support something and little real support coming from the local MP, maybe it is time to consider forming an alternative party (STOP HS2 Party would be pretty clear) and field a candidate at the next election.
The main purpose of this post is to encourage discussion to see whether this is a sensible way of fighting against HS2.
The writer has little knowledge of such things so there may be errors in what is written - however, it seems that the costs are relatively low. Maybe £150 to register a new party, £500 as a deposit plus, of course, the cost of running the campaign - but with the anti HS2 support that exists, maybe a lot of that could be donated by volunteers and supporters. There are, of course, benefits to the winning candidate; firstly, the joy of being able to put forward coherent opposition to HS2; as everyone is aware, there are expenses available so that the winning candidate need not be out of pocket; the pay is currently over £65k a year; not sure if a small party could claim the whip additional pay of some £26k for its whip(s).
More effective than waving a banner?
Please visit our website:
http://www.lichfieldagainsthighspeedtrains.org.uk/
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