Uncategorized – Page 2

On Tuesday I took a day trip to Bristol where I met Heather Mack, a Green Party candidate and Extinction Rebellion activist. The Greens are campaigning hard to get a second MP in Bristol West. I’d been helping out with their campaign over the previous week. While I think the most likely outcome is that Labour hold the seat, what I saw on the ground suggested that a surprise Green gain isn’t as far-fetched as you might think.

Heather and I also talked about her work with Extinction Rebellion, and her decision to get herself arrested to highlight the climate emergency.

After meeting Heather I got back on the train and headed to London for the protests against Donald Trump’s visit to the NATO Summit. I wasn’t impressed by what I said there. The protest had been advertised as being led by NHS doctors and nurses. When I got there it became clear that it wasn’t anything of the sort. It was actually led by the usual collection of clapped-out Trotskyist microsects. This prompted me to muse about why Extinction Rebellion has been so successful while other protest movements have been active for years and failed to achieve a thing.

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David Hughes is a lawyer practising in Cardiff and Gibraltar, and an active campaigner with Cardiff for Europe. Until 2018 he was also a card-carrying member of the Conservative Party. He resigned because he no longer felt the Tories had a home for his liberal, internationalist views.

I was curious as to who he’ll be voting for on December 12th. As well as the election, we also chatted about the plight of EU27 citizens living in the UK, and the effect of Brexit on Gibraltar.

And then we got a little indycurious together.

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On Monday I attended the general election launch of the Wales Green Party. I spoke to Wales Green Party leader Anthony Slaughter and Green Party of England and Wales deputy leader Amelia Womack about the party’s hopes for an electoral breakthrough in Wales.

The episode also contains my thoughts on the Brexit Party’s decision to stand down in Tory-held seats, as well as a rant from me about racist responses to a Plaid Cymru tweet featuring a Muslim woman.

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In this episode I talk to Sally Stephenson. A shopkeeper in South Wales, she was prompted by Brexit to form the campaign group Vale of Glamorgan for Europe. In the European Parliament elections she was the Change UK candidate for Wales, and in the general election she was selected as Liberal Democrat candidate for the Vale of Glamorgan.

The contest in the Vale of Glamorgan is turning out to be a hard-fought one. The incumbent Tory MP Alun Cairns has been hit by a scandal in which a colleague of his apparently sabotaged a rape trial.

Two days before we recorded the interview, Sally was stood down as a candidate under the Unite To Remain initiative. This is an electoral pact between the Lib Dems, Greens and Plaid Cymru in which candidates are stood down to make way for a single pro-Remain candidate.

We talked about Sally’s journey from being a shopkeeper to a campaigner, and then a candidate. We also discussed the rape trial scandal, and what the apparent need for pacts like Unite To Remain say about our first-past-the-post electoral system.

This episode includes discussion of sexual assault, which some listeners may find distressing.

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On Tuesday evening, just as Parliament was voting for a general election, “reluctant Leaver” David Benton and I sat down to ask a question. In a nation hopelessly divided over Brexit, how the hell are we going to reunite Remainers and Leavers?

Listen to the episode on Audioboom.

Just taken delivery of some recording equipment – mic, USB interface and headphones. I need to lay my hands on a mic stand and pop filter too.

The next job will be to set up social media feeds – oh yeah, and actually record some content too. That might help.

Category: Uncategorized

Episode 5: The Green Party, Extinction Rebellion and the Stop Trump protest

Episode 4: Where Do the Liberal Tories Go?

Episode 3: Wales Green Party general election launch

Episode Two: The Shopkeeper Who Became a Politician

Episode One: Can Remainers and Leavers listen to each other?

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