Picked up by Cllr Dan Lentell (Ind – Willingham) on FB here – something that county councillors Dr Alex Bulat (Lab – Abbey) and Stephen Ferguson (Ind – St Neots East), may well be discussing on Friday morning.
Above – the MP for South Cambs, also a minister at the Department for Transport (but not on light rail policy) supporting the Cambridge Connect Light Rail proposals in the Cambridge News.
“Better late than never?”
I’m not going to do a political hatchet job in this piece. The future of Cambridge is something that should go far beyond the realms of party political punch-and-judy shows of old. In anycase, I’ve written numerous blogposts explaining how all three of the political parties share responsibility for the situation we’re in with the Greater Cambridge Partnership. Both the Combined Authority Mayors could have supported the Connect Cambridge proposals and funded early feasibility studies. They chose not to. The Greater Cambridge Partnership under control of both Conservative and non-Conservative boards could have funded the same early feasibility studies; they chose not to.
It’s not just light rail, but regional rail too
I’ve mentioned Rail Future East many times in previous blogposts. It’s worth browsing through their back catalogue of newsletters here, picking out the articles most relevant to your part of our region.
Above – Rail Future East’s proposals for the western side of East Anglia (Nov 2023, p10)
This is the sort of thing local councillors need to know the essentials of – and failing that know that someone in their party political grouping is the expert on local and regional transport proposals. Talking of transport proposals and Conservative politicians going after the GCP that their ministers created (“Oooh!!”), the former Mayor of the CPCA James Palmer wrote a column in this week’s Cambridge Independent (27 March 2024) calling for a new spatial plan for East Anglia. Some of you may remember the old East of England Plan from March 2010 that his party’s then new Communities and Local Government Secretary abolished a few months later following the general election that year. (I wrote about it here on how more things should be planned for outside of Cambridge, with a new continental European-style transport system (Switzerland?!?) being constructed to link them all together.
“Will light rail be an issue for the city council elections?”
Possibly in the context of Michael Gove’s Case for Cambridge – but in the grand scheme of things it feels harder to judge this time around. In part because a minister-created Development Corporation will take away most of the planning powers that the city council has, leaving the latter as little more than a large town council at sub-district/borough level.
Question: Will the former MP for South Cambridgeshire and the former Health Secretary put himself forward as the person chairing the Development Corporation?
It wouldn’t surprise me given this
I wrote more about the little-known CDF here, also looking at why developers (the major figures) are so shy of scrutiny. Far easier to contract out the ‘community engagement’ functions to a separate company to take the heat from residents.
Queen Edith’s ward has its regular annual hustings/debate – please encourage groups in your part of our city to organise similar ones too!
The provisional date/time is Thurs 18 April from 7pm at St John the Evangelist Church Hall opposite Homerton College on Hills Road. Chris Rand – now sadly departed, wrote this guide on how to organise an event. I’d like to think that by now, every ward or community in Cambridge should have enough people with enough collective knowledge to go about organising one. (If you don’t, and/or need help and advice, contact the CCVS)
King’s Hedges ran a successful local by-election hustings last year. I filmed it and you can see the footage below:
(Note the Labour Party candidate withdrew from the event shortly before it was to go ahead, hence no Labour candidate on the panel)
As I posted earlier, I hope one or two more independent candidates put themselves forward to raise locality-specific issues, generate local debate, and help increase turnout. Because otherwise it will be senior political party figures that decide what does and does not get debated prior to voting day. Furthermore, given the relatively few hustings/local public debates that happen these days, creating the community discussion space for Political exchanges is easier said than done. Not least because the people most involved in politics are inevitably unable to organise ‘neutral’ events themselves.
In the meantime, if you want to see more discussion and debate about the future of our city, there are three things you can do locally – all of which I sort-of listed/linked to in my earlier blogpost:
- Put your name on the ballot paper (deadline 4pm on 05 April 2024), set up a social media page or three, and publish your ideas and record a short video similar to the 17 county council candidates in 2017 across four parties agreed to do for me here
- Join an existing local political party or campaign group and ask how you can help/get involved. (Politics is no fun if you do it on your own – I should know!)
- Work with a local community/neighbourhood group (such as a residents’ association) to organise a local debate/hustings at a local community venue (See Chris Rand’s guidance again) and invite local people to do the questioning. Put your posters on supermarket notice boards, email local newspapers, news outlets, blogs, and radio stations to advertise your event. Also, if you start making it an annual thing, it sets the expectations for the future – making it more likely that you’ll get support in organising next time around. (That’s what we found in Queen Edith’s).
Which reminds me – with the loss of Chris and Sam, Queen Edith’s residents, the QECF needs your help.
Finally, hustings/public debates are also useful convening places to invite people to get involved. More often than not, the public just needs to see things happening (and be invited) to persuade some of them to step up.
Which is what the Together Culture group on Fitzroy Street near New Square (opposite end to the Grafton Centre) are trying with their Citizens’ Studio events in April 2024.
Above – Read the details and take your pick from the events
Food for thought?
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
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If you want some ideas on how to go about this, pop into Together Culture on Fitzroy Street down the road from The Grafton Centre.
The Cambridge Town Owl 