As your Confelicity MPs, Lee Clark and I will lead the charge for Southend in the House of Commons. No wasted votes here!

A local party for the national stage is the right idea. Who better than to voice our concerns in the House of Commons than Southend residents?

As residents of Southend, you are all free to attend our public meetings and vote on the issues of the day. If you become a member, which is permitted even if you belong to another party, you will be able to directly influence decisions taken at a national level.

If you ask me my political views and what I will do as your MP, although I have my opinions which I am more than happy to share, and a manifesto 70 pledges strong, we say it is the other way round: what do you think about all that goes on?

While all the other parties rely on their HQs in London to dictate policy, we are obliged by Confelicity to put all issues that would require a vote in government onto our monthly manifesto agenda, where members can then discuss, debate and take a vote on the policies of the day.

It means if Lee and I become your MPs we can never take a vote without you and your voice and vote will directly affect the decisions taken in Westminster.

Unless a vote on any particular subject is unanimous (I will spare you the details of our our ‘Undivided Democratic’ voting method for now), we will be free to make our decisions as we see right, but it will be taken with a comprehensive understanding of the consensus of Southend East and West residents in the room and the arguments of any objectors. We will know the percentage of Southend residents who are against or for a motion and how strongly they felt about it, and we will feel the consequences of whatever vote we would have taken at the next meeting!

For the first time you, yourself, will be able to influence what is outside your door on the national stage. One of the many reasons people in general are so turned off by politics is they can’t see how they can make a difference - well, this is it.

Wasted Votes a Myth

I want us to break free from the shackles of the ancient party’s dogmas, agendas, bureaucracies and personal ambitions that plague them and our country as a consequence.

The main parties say don’t waste your vote on a fringe party, but that is one of the greatest political myths of all time. It is not the voting system that is necessarily the problem, it is the fallacy that you can only vote for who you think can win or stop winning.

Overnight this could change if everyone washed that mindset away and voted by whom they connected with, whose manifesto they liked, which people they believed and believe in, and what organisation they could trust. This is perceived as naivety, but this is in fact the reality of our voting system.

The most powerful moment we have as citizens of the UK is the 30 seconds at the ballot box. Everything that has influenced us beforehand will determine where we put our cross, and my hope is you do so with a clear mind with a need to find out where all of our money has gone, have it spent without waste, corruption or incompetence, and spent in Southend where we know it needs to go!

Change has been a long time coming, we just didn’t know how. As grandiose as it seems, we think we have an answer and it was in front of us the whole time: real local democracy. That is how we developed our manifesto and will continue to do so. I believe wholeheartedly that a truly democratic Southend resident party is the way forward, and that as your MPs we will ensure we will be the Southend voices you can recognise as your own in the Houses of Parliament.