If you follow these things, there’s been a flutter of excitement around the local political scene on the Isle of Wight, over the last day, about the formation of a new group at County Hall. It’s called Empowering Islanders.
We heard from Cllr Chris Jarman that his call to News OnTheWight was the first call he’d made after the first official meeting of the formation of the new group, Empowering Islanders.
Cllr Jarman had previously been a member of the Alliance Group at County Hall and sits on the Cabinet, responsible for Strategic Finance, Transformational Change and Corporate Resources.
Why was it formed?
Trying to understand why the group had been formed, we started with the seemingly obvious question: asking him what the divisions were with the Alliance. He replied,
“I don’t know, within the Alliance. I think the initiative we’ve undertaken here isn’t specifically to do with the Alliance – it’s not specifically to do with any political party or any other group. It’s just that we feel there’s a need to remove the politics from the equation.
“And we are very hopeful – indeed, from all the phone calls today – that a large number of other councillors will see the issues that they are then faced are best addressed by taking them out of a political session.
“And rather than spending our time lobbing our hand grenades from one side to the other, it’s much better that we have a non-political environment and address things in a very sensible and pragmatic way.
“So it’s not really about the problems any group may or may not have. It’s very much more about taking politics out of the equation.”
Seeking a deeper understanding
To get a deeper understanding of what was underlying this reply – and as the Alliance Group are not politically aligned – we ran through the political parties currently represented in the Isle of Wight council chamber – Lib Dem, Green (part of the Alliance), two strains of Labour – and the largest party there, the Conservatives.
He responded,
“Well, I think all you’ve seen in the main chamber has been very much between the Alliance on the one side and the Conservatives on the other.
“And because of the setup we’ve got, it means that very able and capable, Conservative members who rarely have an opportunity to put forward their views and to capitalise on their experience and expertise, are excluded from that debate. And I think that’s regrettable.
“And I think they’re working on a cross party basis, we can attract people into a central environment, which gives them the opportunity to use the skills they’ve got. Hopefully, people from different persuasions, indeed, from any political party, will see the advantage of that.”
Conservatives traditionally have a united front
News OnTheWight put it to Cllr Jarman that it was widely understood that as being a member of the Conservative Party, when you sign to the party, you unite. The line on a policy or vote is set – there’s one line and you’ve got to follow that line.
We detected from what Cllr Jarman was saying that current members were frustrated with having to follow that line. He responded,
“I don’t think people like to be dictated to. People like to have the opportunity to represent their residents and not to be stymied. And I think the system we have at the moment stymies people terribly, and we need to move away from that.
“So here’s an opportunity for people to come into a non-political centre environment, to be able to participate fully in the discussion, and I think to have some degree of representation.
“And if we end up holding the middle ground and perhaps eventually becoming, you know, a much larger party, I think there are an awful lot that would welcome that.
“And I think Islanders will benefit from taking politics out of the equation.
“This isn’t a time, given all the crises we’ve got in this country – you can list them all out – this is not the time for the Isle of Wight to be worrying about politics. This is a time for us to be very focused on meeting those Islanders’ problems.”
How many others?
We asked about other current Isle of Wight councillors that had been in touch.
“I think there will be more who will find a centre group like us very attractive and be able to – I hope very much – to let go of the shackles that they faced in the past as part of something bigger. And the key thing is to be non-political about it.”
How many people had been in touch we asked, beyond the founding four?
Cllr Jarman replied,
“About six so far.
“And we’ll see where it goes. I mean, I’m sure more will come now that the announcement is out and it’s formalised.”
