This event lived up to its billing with well over a hundred people present. The three main candidates delivered a 5 minute speech and then faced audience questions – with a minute each to answer.

I must confess I find it a tall order to answer questions on important issues within a minute, but I did my best.

We faced a set of far ranging questions covering many aspects of party policy, the economic situation, Fair votes, immigration etc, but what was most interesting was that one of the questions generating some of the most interest from the audience and the liveliest responses between candidates was a question not about big national issues but the future of the derelict former Whitefield Town Hall. It just shows at the end of the day all politics is local politics when it comes down to it.

There was some upset at the end when English Democrats supporters protested that minor party candidates had been denied an opportunity to get there message across as they hadn’t been invited to speak. I think perhaps if there had been say 4 candidates it would have been difficult to ignore that candidate, but with seven candidates we wouldn’t have got through nearly as many questions as we did.

My congratulations to Laurie Bullas and the Methodist Circuit for organising what turned out to be the best attended event of the campaign.

If you want to read my speech you can do so here:  methodists_speech.pdf