Young PPCs, week 2: Nick Varley

8th February, 2010 by Nick Varley

It’s Monday, which means another instalment of Catch21′s young PPCs blog. This week it’s the youngest Tory candidate at the election, Nick Varley…

On Friday, the Government quietly published data showing that in Gordon Brown’s two and a half years as Prime Minister, the cost of QUANGOs has gone up by£10 billion, and that they’ve managed to recruit another 15,000 people in that same period. I can’t help but wonder what all these people are doing; the number of QUANGOs has actually gone down. I know “quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations” aren’t really an interesting subject, so I won’t bleat on about them for too long, but to me the figures released last week are proof of the fact this Labour government can’t be trusted with Britain’s debit or credit card.

Think about what happens when you get paid. I’m guessing you get paid at the end of the month. You see how much you’ve got going out for phone bills, nights out, rent and so on, and if you had more going out than coming in, you would cut back, right? Well that’s what I would do, because it’s sensible. So following that logic, Gordon Brown and his Chancellor should look at the ation’s tax income, realise that there’s more going out than coming in, and then cut down on their spending to avoid increasing Britain’s debt, yeah?

But in fact, what Labour have done is the equivalent of you realising you’re absolutely skint, and then deciding the sensible and entirely logical  thing to do is to spend an hour a night ringing your mate in South Africa on her gap year at £1.20 a minute. If us ‘youngsters’ can see the stupidity in spending £10 billion you don’t have, then why can’t this Labour Government? In fairness, though, let’s not forget that the Chancellor couldn’t do his own tax returns and had to use his expenses to get someone else to do them for him.

I was planning on talking about politics in this blog, but I’ve read Emily Benn’s from last week and it appears she spent 600 words talking about herself, so I’ll tell you a little bit about myself. I’m the Conservative candidate for City of Durham constituency, which is the seat I’ve lived in since 2006. I grew up in the neighbouring seat of North Durham, which is also where I went to my local comprehensive school. I’m about to graduate University (hopefully) with an LLB in Law.

I was selected as the PPC in November 2008 and have been campaigning on all sorts of local issues since. A lot of the things I’ve campaigned on are pretty unglamorous, to be honest; I ran an anti pot-hole campaign (Durham’s roads are terrible), ran a campaign opposing a huge rise in council tax, and a campaign to support local retailers. It is unglamorous but it’s important!

Unlike Emily Benn, none of my family have ever been in the Cabinet, and in fact, I don’t think my step-father has voted since the 1980s! My family aren’t political, but I couldn’t think of a greater honour than to represent the place I’ve grown up in Parliament.

It would appear that democracy has been dealt a heavy blow by allowing discrimination to become a key element of how representatives are elected.  Even if we were to believe that the outcome of positive discrimination is beneficial, in a system where we value due process, should we ever endorse a method of selecting candidates that is oxymoronic to the very nature of democracy?

Our political system relies on choice. Imposing all women shortlist removes voter’s choice. Regardless of how voters select their representative, we should respect an individual’s right to chose. Without a full choice of candidates we being to embrace dictatorial methods, tainting the results regardless of how legitimate they may appear.

All women shortlists simply allow discrimination by the back door. Should anyone suggest all male shortlists there would be public outcry. Arguments for female equality reek of hypocrisy if we are prepared to allow men to face the same oppression with a respectable facade. By preventing male candidates from standing we risk suppressing people who may be best for the job. A fair playing field where both male and female candidates compete against one another will ensure that the best person prevails, not the best women or the best man.

To select a candidate merely because they are women not only does a disservice to our political system. It is a disservice to women who are selected. People should be judged by their merits. Politicians should be judged by their words and their actions. On these grounds we can hold the people who represent us accountable. We cannot hold someone to account simply for being a woman. For those candidates who do make their way to the House of Commons, they should be able to feel a sense of pride in their achievement. But who can honestly feel proud to be selected simply because of their gender. To allow all women shortlists, we dismiss female candidates as being unable to compete fairly, we reinforce stereotypes that women are in need of help and
quite simply we patronise them.

As women prove themselves to be just as capable as men, the numbers of female MPs should theoretically be equal to those of male MPs. Change is often slow. But that does not mean that forcing such changes would be better. Positive discrimination is damaging to voters, damaging to the women themselves and crucially damages democracy.

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