AIBU to ask if anyone here has experience of standing to be a MP? If you have, AIBU to ask what it’s like?
(Sorry in advance for this very long post!!)
To give (a lot of) background, I’ve always been interested in politics and current affairs.
It was only after I went to university and then graduated, though, that I thought about perhaps standing to be an MP one day. I left university around three years ago, and don’t plan to think about standing to be an MP until at least around fifteen to twenty years from now.
This was partly because of becoming even more interested in politics at university. I’ve also become more interested in how I can get more involved in making my voice heard since the Brexit vote and since hearing about the passing of Jo Cox, the MP.
I read about her life since, and admire her hugely. I’ve also just finished reading a book written about her by her husband, which was absolutely brilliant - I really felt it showed what she was like as a person and as a politician, and I found the way she chose to live by her principles really inspiring).
In the book about Jo Cox, it goes into quite a lot of detail about the challenges that are involved when deciding to stand as an MP - such as deciding where to stand as an MP and how to become known and connected within the local community. It also makes it clear that, after being selected to stand and then elected, working as an MP is incredibly challenging and tough.
I’m unsure though about how much my interest in standing as an MP is coloured by my admiration for Jo Cox and her principles and my own genuine desire to work as an MP (I understand that working as an MP can be a hugely effective way of helping people, and am sure that I want to spend the rest of my career helping people, but am unsure of being an MP is the best way of doing this. I think it would be an incredible opportunity though, and I would regret not standing to be an MP as I feel I could be capable of standing to be an MP one day).
This might sound really minor, especially because I wouldn’t stand until at least fifteen to twenty years’ time, but I think it’s important - one of the things that’s putting me off even considering standing as an MP is the fact that, during my life so far, I’ve moved around quite a lot.
Because of this, I haven’t really lived anywhere long enough to have a proper established base there, and so I don’t really have anywhere that I could claim a local connection to so that constituents would feel like I truly know their area and the issues that it’s affected by.
Would this be a big problem?
Incidentally, one of my colleagues (in my current job in the civil service) stood as a candidate for his home constituency, where he works as a councillor and has lived all of his life, in last year’s election. He worked very hard to get elected, and missed out in the end unfortunately.
The other reason why I wouldn’t think about standing to be selected for a while is because I don’t have any political experience at all at the moment, and very little professional experience (I’m in my mid-twenties, and only started working full-time at the start of this year after working in temporary roles whilst being unsure about what I wanted to do since leaving university). Since leaving university, I worked as a tutor and volunteered with Citizens Advice for several months (which I found hugely interesting and rewarding). Now, I’ve carried on tutoring and also work as a volunteer tutor and separately as a mentor for female students at a local school alongside my job.
The other issue is now thinking about standing as an MP would affect my career ambitions and interests. I currently work as a civil servant - although I’ve only been doing this for less than a year, I really enjoy the work.
This probably sounds very premature, but I would love to carry on working in the civil service for many years to come. As there are so many different opportunities and departments available in the civil service, at the moment, I’d be happy to spend my whole career working for the civil service.
The work done by civil servants is also of course very closely linked to the work done by politicians and members of the government, so it’s within the same area of work that would be done by MPs.
Another thing I’ve been thinking about is that civil servants are required to be politically neutral at work. We are allowed to work voluntarily as councillors, but because of the political neutrality,
I wonder about the logistics (several years down the line) of combining preparing to stand as an MP with working as a civil servant. I’ve thought about this recently, and the only experience I have of this is knowing that my colleague did this - I don’t know how common it is, though.
The other issue is the reality of working as an MP. At the moment, I would be uncomfortable with a very demanding career in the public eye and all of the pressures and scrutiny that comes with it.
For now, I feel that working as a civil servant (doing similar work that benefits people and that contributes to society, but anonymously and not in the public eye) would be a much more suitable career choice for me.
But I don’t want to regret not standing as an MP when I’ve retired and finished full-time work one day.
Any advice please?
Thanks so much in advance for your input and advice - I really appreciate it!