Candidate Comments:

Oscar Moore (Conservative) writes: 

Standing as a candidate was a fantastic experience that taught me lots about the art of political campaigning. In particular, we had great fun as a team making our Party Political Broadcast and designing posters to put up around the school. The debate was a thrilling event and we all benefited from having three of the Tonbridge candidates accept our invitation to  come in to speak to students. I’d like to say a huge thank you to my campaign manager and agent, and to all the organising team for their work making the mock election a success. 

The Hustings:

A few weeks after the candidate selection and talks from most of the candidates for the real election in Tonbridge, the time came for our candidates to battle it out in the schoolroom in our hustings debate. The format was simple: a selection of questions from the audience posed to all 5 candidates, with a session of political ping pong on particular issues of debate such as immigration.

There was intense competition between the candidates, with emotions running high, and the crowd infected by the electric atmosphere. The Reform UK candidate had particularly strong grassroots support. Occasionally, the crowd applauded when prompted. Principally, the debate centred around the candidates criticising the Conservative, then the Conservative rebutting, however the occasional barb was thrown at Labour and Reform UK..

Results:

The Green candidate won the election with a solid share of the vote, followed by Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party and  then the Conservative Party.

Ms Galvin would like to thank all the staff and students who made this a fabulous experience, especially, Ms Wong and Herr Dabbs for queue control at the polling station and Mrs Kendall and Ms Berry for printing and formatting so much election literature.  Also Lucy Titchener year 12 for running special rosette making workshops. It was great to see so many staff and students questioning the Tonbridge constituency candidates in our lunch time meetings.  We thank Anna Cope (The Green candidate) , Lewis Bailey (The Labour Party candidate) and John Woolecombe (and his Liberal Democrat team)  who all accepted our invitation to spend the afternoon with us.

Johnny Y13

Politics prefect