What I really hope isn’t true
What I really hope isn’t true
At the beginning of her book The Life of an MP, Jess Philips writes that when people ask her why she became an MP she has a number of different answers that are all equally true. She says the answer that she gives depends upon the circumstances in which she is asked. When I read this passage shortly after its publication in 2022, that passage made sense to me, because I too knew that there were a number of reasons why I became active in politics and put myself forward for election.
Now that I am an MP, when I get asked what prompted me to stand, I have a number of answers that I can give, and like Jess, all of them are equally valid. I was asked this question at BHASVIC when I visited just before half term. The answer I gave was about the impact that the results of the local and general elections in 2015 had upon me. They gave me a sense that the world was tilting in a direction that I didn’t much care for. There was a shift towards a form of populism in those results that made me uneasy. Since then the gradient of that tilt has steepened both in the United Kingdom and across the world, and in those intervening ten years I have felt that my unease back in 2015 has sadly proven to be well founded.
Why did the 2015 election results have that impact upon me?
Well I think in large part it stems from my appreciation of Twentieth Century history. I loved history at school and continued to study it at university covering at various points Nazi Germany, Italian Fascism, the USSR. This combined with my parents’ perspective on the Cold War - they met on a British Army base in Germany in the early 1970s - imbued in me a sense of the horror of both world wars, a fear of how easy it is for ‘civilised’ countries to slide into authoritarianism, and the value of the peace that was secured after 1945 through organisations like NATO.
My fear now is that this last week will prove to be a line in the sand.
The United States has provided the cornerstone of Western security for 80 years. NATO not only deterred Soviet expansion, but it also guarded against a revival of European authoritarianism. Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein is a painfully brilliant page turner of a book that I am reading at the moment. It has served to remind me about the horror and destruction that authoritarianism - be it Soviet or Nazi - exacted upon millions and millions of normal people right across the continent. I would encourage you to read it.
So this last month I am full of fear that Trump’s second presidency will be so much more malign than the first, with far reaching consequences beyond the borders of the United States.
I really hope that I am wrong.
I hope that the USA will not betray Ukraine. I hope that Trump will think again about adopting the talking points of Putin. I hope that JD Vance’s actions in Munich will not boost the AfD in the German elections. I hope that the cornerstone of our security is not being removed by the United States. I sincerely hope that the visits of the Prime Minister and Emmanuel Macron later this week will be successful in helping the US administration see sense.
We cannot rely on hope.
There are a number of steps the UK must take now as a matter of urgency. We must increase our defence spending to 2.5% of GPD as fast as possible, and work towards increasing it further in the near term. The Lib Dems have proposed increasing the digital services tax which would immediately raise over £3 billion this year in order to meet that 2.5%. £40 billion of frozen Russian assets could be seized across the UK and Europe - this would provide vital support to Ukraine, and a Rearmament Bank led by the UK and other European NATO allies would raise further private capital.
We must be staunch in support of our allies, our UK forces, our security and our values.
But what can I do?
It’s not unreasonable to feel pretty helpless against these massive global forces. Here are three things that help me:
- Focus on the local. Think about what you can have an impact on. For example my colleague Cllr Simon Hicks has launched a petition to make sure that a footpath connecting Brookleigh to Burgess Hill is fully upgraded. We can all sign this.
- Exercise caution in what you believe. In this age of disinformation, bots, and the overwhelm of social media, it is not unreasonable to wonder who you can trust. My colleague Dr Al Pinkerton MP set this out in a neat thread on X at the weekend.
- Don’t fixate. It’s ok to switch off and give yourself a break from a world that at the moment is frankly terrifying. Do what gives you joy, spend time with the people you love, and give yourself permission to have fun. Last week I thoroughly enjoyed (i.e. sobbed through) Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy at the Orion in Burgess Hill.
Getting in touch
My parliamentary email address is: alison.bennett.mp@parliament.uk. If you need my help, please get in touch.
Best wishes,
Alison
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