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iFAQs: Protesting on the peninsula

For inFrequently Answered Questions this week, we decided to take the pulse of the Hoo peninsula. With increased development, local discontent tends to be building, with a protest – led by political upstarts Medway People’s Voice – even being held to demand better infrastructure.

With Peninsula being the ward with the largest number of announced candidates, we decided to contact them all to get their views of the situation in the area, as well as their thoughts on the protest.

As usual, all responses are posted below entirely unedited. In a break with convention, Cllr Pendergast decided to post his responses on his Facebook page last week, so apologies to both readers who may have already read them there.

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The Week in Westminster, 12 Jan

Tracey Crouch, Kelly Tolhurst and Rehman Chishti all voted.

Tracey Crouch, Kelly Tolhurst and Rehman Chishti all voted.
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Much ado about Labour

This week we are interrupting our regular schedule to bring you an examination of how each local political party appears to be preparing for the May 2019 elections. 
To finish the week, we are taking a look at Medway Labour.

On paper, the omens should be pretty good for Medway Labour heading into the 2019 local elections. With a confusing national picture that has seen them polling roughly equally with the Conservatives, a string of council blunders, and facing a set of councillors that seem tired, Medway Labour should be well placed to mount a challenge to control the council.

The problem is that we’ve been here so many times before. 2011 and 2015 should have been fruitful years for the party for similar reasons to those above, yet Labour rarely seem able to capitalise to improve their standing. As such, a few minor seat fluctuations aside, Medway Labour have held pretty much the same number of seats on Medway Council for the past 16 years.

Could 2019 be their breakthrough year?

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Much ado about UKIP

This week we are interrupting our regular schedule to bring you an examination of how each local political party appears to be preparing for the May 2019 elections. 
Today we are looking at Medway UKIP.

The four years since the 2015 local elections have not been kind to Medway UKIP. Riding high on Rochester and Strood MP Mark Reckless’ defection to the party and subsequent by-election victory, the omens looked fairly good heading into the last set of elections. Yet, despite the results not being as strong as some faces within the party were expecting, they won a solid four seats on the council, immediately placing themselves as the third party in local politics.

This success lasted a matter of weeks, given two tactical errors that undercut them from day one. The leader of the group, Chris Irvine, a sitting councillor in Peninsula, decided to fight for a seat in Rochester East instead and lost. More devastating was the loss of Mark Reckless as an MP. These two issues immediately destroyed any momentum Medway UKIP had, and others in the party quickly began to fall away. One of their councillors, Mark Joy, declared independence from the party in no time at all, before eventually joining the Tories. A second, Catriona Brown-Reckless, resigned and moved to Wales. Most recently, Cllr Mick Pendergast resigned to sit as an independent, and has since formed his own group to fight the 2019 elections.

Ostensibly, this leaves only Cllr Roy Freshwater as both the leader and the entire membership of the Medway UKIP group.

Where can the party realistically go from here in Medway?

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Much ado about Liberals

This week we are interrupting our regular schedule to bring you an examination of how each local political party appears to be preparing for the May 2019 elections. 
Today we are looking at the Medway Liberal Democrats.

The story of the Lib Dems in Medway is not a particularly happy one. When the unitary authority was formed in the late nineties, they were the second largest party on the council, but it was not to last. They quickly fell to third party status and spent the next fifteen years on a slow decline into oblivion.

In 2015, they were wiped out from Medway Council completely.

So are they prepared for the coming elections in May?

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Much ado about Tories

We are interrupting our regular schedule for the rest of the week to bring you an examination of how each local political party appears to be preparing for the May 2019 elections.
We begin today with the Medway Conservatives.

The Medway Conservatives have been in control of Medway Council for 16 years of the 21 years that it has existed. Since 2003, they have held an unbroken run of running the council. That level of success can very easily breed complacency, and complacency can breed incompetence. Could the party be heading for a reckoning in May?

From the signs coming from within the local party, that may well be the case.

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