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Your last chance to vote for a County Councillor

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Tomorrow you have the chance to vote in one of the most historic elections in this country for many years.

This is going to be the last County Council election before both County and district Councils are abolished under plans being pushed forward by national government. Elections after this one are most likely to be associated with the new Unitary Authority which will be formed in Oxfordshire, although currently exactly what form that will take is unclear.

The option preferred by the Greens is one of 2 unitaries formed from Cherwell District, West Oxfordshire District and The City Councils with a second one formed around South Oxon and the Vale plus West Berkshire. We feel that would keep decision making as local as possible as well as ensuring that councillors don’t become too remote from the people they represent. The County Council Cabinet recently voted to push forward their preferred option of one huge council across the whole of the County, while the City Council are proposing they form their own Unitary Council by absorbing areas around them such as Kidlington, Yarnton and Begbroke. I would certainly strongly oppose that, as, I believe, would most of the residents in those areas!

Map showing the two new Kidlington County divisions

The outcome of all these options could largely be driven by those people elected to the County Council tomorrow, so not only is it important to vote because it may be your last opportunity, it’s also doubly important that you get a councillor who is going to represent your views on what your future council may look like.

Of course my advice is to vote Green at least in areas where you already have a Green Councillor such as the two new Divisions in Kidlington which make up nearly 80% of the area I currently represent on the County Council. As I can’t be in 2 places at once I have decided to stand in the new East Division because I am involved in several ongoing issues there, Not least the proposed football stadium and the huge Oxford North development. But my fellow Green Councillor Fiona Mawson is standing in the other part, now called Kidlington West even though 2 thirds of it comprises Yarnton and Begbroke. As the only candidate in this election that actually lives in that new division, I’m hopeful that she will get a good reception from voters.

Map of the new Kidlington West Division highlighted
to show Green and Conservative representation

Currently the whole of the Kidlington East area is represented by me as the County Councillor and by me, Fiona and Linda Ward as District councillors. I’d like to think we’ve done a good job of representing the everyone there, we all certainly work hard to achieve that, so I hope I will receive your support in the East whilst Fiona is elected to replace me in the West.

It’s a rather complicated scenario , especially given that the whole set up is likely to change in 2 or 3 years so neither of us are likely to see out a full term as County Councillors, but in the meantime it’s important that both areas keep consistent Green representation so that work I and Fiona have started on things like ensuring development proposals are beneficial to the area can continue into the next few years, along with our input into the re-shaping of local government over the next 2 years.

However you vote (and I hope it will be Green) do make sure you vote. It may be the only chance you get to make a decision that affects you and your local community for the next few years.

If you need any further information from me or Fiona please let us know. We have knocked on a lot of doors over the past few months, so if we missed you we’d be happy to talk.

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Why should you vote Green on 4th July?

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So the day is finally here. The chance to vote to end 14 years of Tory misrule and see change. But is it really?

Two parties are saying they would provide change, but only one is offering REAL change and REAL hope – The Green Party.

The Labour Party slogan ‘Change’ is so reductive and self fulfilling it’s almost worthless as an electoral ambition. Will Labour provide change? Well yes, if they’re elected as the majority government we will see a change by definition. Where there was once Rishi Sunak, there will be Keir Starmer. A clear change of leader and administration, but is that all we want? Will we see REAL change? I rather doubt it.

Labour’s manifesto suggests otherwise with so many policies seemingly just a continuation of what we have with the Tories. Things like the Bedroom Tax, The Two Child Benefit cap, a continuation of the oil and gas drilling licences granted by the Conservatives, including the highly questionable Rosebank. None of that will change and neither will things like private provision in the NHS or a really progressive tax regime.

So what real change will we see with Labour, or any of the other parties for that matter? It looks like the only thing that will be changing will be the climate!

Even the Liberal Democrats haven’t really committed to change on important things like tax reform or tuition fees which of course they were instrumental in bringing in. Their candidate in Bicester & Woodstock is a well meaning guy, but he was also an adviser to the coalition government during the first period of austerity, as was the Conservative candidate, so not much change for the better there!

Can I win in Bicester and Woodstock? That depends on you, the voters. It’s a circular argument that Greens can’t win so we don’t get votes, but if we don’t get votes we can’t win. But even if I don’t win my purpose is still to raise more awareness of the Green Party and our values. A party I’ve supported for 12 years and voted for for even longer, back when they were even more unlikely to be elected. Since then there’s been a huge surge in support for Greens, something I’ve seen first hand after being elected to 5 different councils as a Green and re-elected to one of those since.

If the Green Party didn’t exist and people hadn’t voted for them, do you think the other parties would have taken any notice of climate change or other Green issues? I very much doubt it and that’s even more obvious now that parties like Labour and the Conservatives are backing away from their climate change commitments because to stick by them is electorally inconvenient.

So the Greens have brought about real change over the past decade and will continue to push for more in the coming years, especially as we are looking set to at least triple our representation in Westminster. Change on things like the NHS, social care, social security, justice, equal rights, animal welfare, nature recovery, climate change and so much more.

I’d of course love to be one of those parliamentarians helping to make those changes, as our new MPs will do through careful lobbying and internal pressure on whomever is in power by the end of this week. But I know that’s unlikely. But every vote for me and every other Green candidate still counts. It counts as part of the message the whole country needs to send to Westminster, even more so as the ruling party is likely to have a majority so large that they probably won’t be in the mood to listen to anyone else.

But I have faith that Greens will always find a way to move the needle and work for positive change. And I’ll continue to do that whatever happens in the polls on Thursday. I’m content to play a role, no matter how small in helping to make the future a brighter place for the next generation. Your vote can help me and every other Green candidate to do that, so I hope you’ll give that thought some serious consideration when you mark that cross on the ballot sheet.

The polls suggest that the outcome to this election is a foregone conclusion. Labour will comfortably win a huge majority and in Bicester & Woodstock the Lib Dems will romp home. If nothing else people will vote for them just to stop them sending any more leaflets! So you can safely vote Green, knowing it’s extremely unlikely to change that outcome.

So more than ever in this election you can vote with your heart to make real change happen. Change that means more than a different name on the House of Commons letterhead. Otherwise we’ll be right back here in 5 or 10 years time, probably with the Conservatives promising the change that we never really seem to get.

As someone else said during this election “If you want change you have to vote for it”. If you want REAL change you have to vote Green!

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High Street Recovery Needs Input from People Who Have Been on the Inside

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I’ve been involved in retail for as long as I can remember. From my first proper job as a Saturday boy in a menswear store in Lewisham through my days as a market trader in Camden Lock and Greenwich to being co-founder of a national high street chain that started with a small store in Oxford selling silver jewellery. and grew into a national chain trading in 6 of country’s major retail locations, including London’s prestigious Covent Garden.

In that time I saw almost as many ups as I did downs. I’ve half jokingly said that I spent 20 years building the business and then another 10 trying extricating it from the failing high street. Like so many other retailers who entered the high street during the boom years in the early 1990s, I fell foul of the simultaneous boom in commercial property development. So many new malls were opened in the 90s and early 2000s it was difficult to keep up and I opened stores in some of the most iconic examples such as the New Bullring in Birmingham and Bluewater in Kent.

The other boom at the time was in business rates, which along with rents skyrocketed through that period as institutional landlords, mostly backed by large pension funds, cashed in on the retail bubble ploughing millions into new shiny malls based on the emerging US model. It was great while it lasted and we all became caught up in the heady days of seemingly limitless opportunities. But we soon discovered there were limits.

The Financial crash in 2008 gave us all a pretty sharp reality check and things soon started to become far less buoyant and rents that had been agreed on the back of rude profit margins started to look far less tenable as turnovers started to fall.

I’ve been fighting for a fairer deal for High Street retail for over 15 years

There soon followed a series of frantic rounds of renegotiation with landlords who themselves were facing the prospect of huge hole in their new developments as retailers started to fall over with alarming regularity. In many cases we were able to come to mutual agreements to keep us trading at the shopping malls looking full, but the one thing that couldn’t be re-negotiated were business rates. Set as they were, by the central valuation office, and administered by local authorities, they were completely devoid of any chance of concession unless you had an understanding council. In my experience their understanding was rather limited, and after 5 years as a local councillor myself I now understand more about why that was.

So we were all caught in a perfect storm that only a few managed to emerge from. My business was one of the luckier ones as I managed to negotiate deals that gave us breathing space. But I could see the writing on the wall and it was telling me to get out of the high street and decamp to the internet where so many of our competitors were lurking. Thereby hangs another very long story.

But suffice to say I have an intimate understanding of the plight of the high street, in fact much more intimate than I would prefer. For that reason one of my personal priorities as a fresh faced new MP would be to push for a new system of business rates or local high street taxation. Other things like rent controls and use classes would also be high on the agenda, but none of this will be an easy fix for an industry in the doldrums after so many years in decline. But I know from my own experience that smaller independents are both the lifeblood of local high streets whilst also being the most vulnerable.

In terms of the dreaded business rates, I think I could take elements from the land tax approach of the Green party and add in some aspect of a local purchase tax as seen in the USA. Such a tax would be far more progressive and have more respect for the ability of businesses to pay such an additional tax. That would give a far greater connection between the local community, local authorities and the retailers themselves. If all retailers did well then they would all reap the benefits.

Speaking to local councillors and retailers about business rates reform

I don’t really have the answer to full business rates reform, but I’ve been campaigning for a better system for over 10 years. I would advocate a situation where we involved existing high street retailers in the process of finding a solution. There have been past attempts at doing this, but very few, if any, involved small independent retailers. I think that was a mistake.

The Labour Party have boldly announced that they would scrap the current business rates system, but they haven’t said what they would replace it with. I’ve been here before many times, and both Labour and the Tories have frequently promised reform but never delivered on that. One of the biggest reason is that business rates are a virtually guaranteed income for government bringing in over £13bn a year. Even if the premises are empty, the landlord cops for the bill so it’s a win-win for Westminster. So any new system is likely to be just as iniquitous and damaging, especially to smaller operators.

I think there is a way of developing a system of local high street taxation that could benefit all sides of the equation, including the consumer. Just scrapping the business rates system with no plan for what would replace it is not a solution, yet its the current proposal from the part that is most likely to form the next government in a few weeks. If I was in Westminster I’d hope to be able to provide a far better insight into the problems on the high street and how to engage with the people who face those problems every day.

I’d like to see genuine consultation with high street stakeholders, including landlords and local councils, about the best way forwards. As a long term retailer, having moved from being a small business, through a larger expansion and back to being a ‘born again independent’, I’d like to be involved in that process. But I guess it remains to be seen what the outcome is on July 4th.

I’ve just published a video I made during a recent visit to Bicester with some thoughts on how we can work towards a better system of high street business taxation and help to repair our broken high streets and you can watch that by clicking here.

If you’re a retailer or just someone who enjoys browsing physical shops, I’d suggest you vote for someone like me who has the experience to make that a viable possibility again. Retail is at the heart of every village, town and city and needs political support to make it vibrant again. Many politicians claim to have the answer but few of them have been on the inside of the industry. I think that needs to change. I’d like to change it.