Cllr Yousef Dahmash is the Conservative candidate for Rugby and Bulkington and a councillor on Warwickshire County Council.
When I made my pitch to the members of the Rugby Conservative Association in July 2023, I was clear: the next general election will be very difficult, and it will be hyper-local in focus, so we must have a local candidate. Rugby Conservative members agreed.Â
We can already see that more than in previous elections, each contest will be different. The battle in Clacton will be different from that in Chingford and Wood Green, and the battle in Esher and Walton will be different from that here in Rugby.Â
For too long, Westminster has not paid enough attention to provincial potholes or the state of local Accident and Emergency units. In truth, voters in Rugby & Bulkington and elsewhere rightly want to know about things that materially affect their everyday lives. It’s no good telling Rugby residents that there are 37,800 more doctors since 2010, if they can’t see one when they seek urgent treatment at the Hospital of St Cross. Instead, Rugby residents have to travel to Coventry for anything even remotely serious, and without a doctor based there, the urgent treatment centre at the Hospital of St Cross cannot see under 5s for even minor concerns.
Mark Pawsey has represented Rugby since 2010, and he is relatively unusual among MPs in that he has represented his hometown. In selecting me as their Parliamentary candidate, Rugby Conservative Association chose to maintain this tradition – I grew up here, my parents met when working at the local hospital, and I’m raising my family here. I also have the benefit of more than ten years’ service as a local councillor and all the local knowledge and campaigning experience that comes with it. I can confirm this experience is not limited to pointing at potholes while looking glum – I’ve served as the Chair of an Overview and Scrutiny Committee at Warwickshire County Council and am a member of the Cabinet.Â
It’s also the case that the penchant for selecting perceived high-flyers from London is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. Take Rugby. Fifteen MPs have served Rugby in the period 1885- 2024. Of those, only three have been truly ‘local’ – Mark and his father, Jim Pawsey, who served from 1979-1997, and Richard Verney who served from 1895-1900. A few more had local connections – Jeremy Wright, William Price and James Johnson all worked in the Midlands before representing Rugby. The other nine had no obvious local connection at all.
By contrast, in the years between 1832 and 1885, three out of the four MPs had significant local connections. If you look at the names of the MPs representing the seats which included Rugby before 1832 right back to the beginnings of Parliament, they are almost all from notable Warwickshire families: the Dugdales, Comptons, Shuckburghs, Lucys, Archers, Newdigates, Cravens, Grevilles and Throckm
I’m not advocating a return to rule by local aristocrats, but it is right that MPs represent the interests of their constituents, and that Ministers respond to the reality voters face. Too many voters feel completely disconnected from their representatives, and fear that their priorities lie with those of perceived ‘elites’ in London. It is for this reason that voters are increasingly focussed on their candidates’ local credentials. If we really believe, as one former leader put it, that ‘talent, skill & genius is distributed uniformly across the UK, but opportunity is not’, then we should keep that in mind when selecting parliamentaryÂ
I’ve never much liked the phrase ‘local champion’, or at least, not since it has seen gross overuse. Our nation is made up of myriad aggregated localities, and all have their own distinct needs. It is also the case that these needs often overlap. Take the state of Rugby’s local Accident and Emergency Unit. It’s not just an issue for Rugby that the NHS bureaucracy fails to adequately respond to what people actually want and need, but for the whole nation. And potholes are not just an issue for drivers in Rugby & Bulkington given that each winter, our road surfaces take on the appearance of a Swiss cheese. The impact on our road network of heavier vehicles and increased freight affects everyone.Â
So, in the words of the British Beer & Pub Association: Long live the local.Â
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