Interview with Sachin Patel, LibDem candidate in East Finchley, Barnet

 Interview with Sachin Patel, LibDem candidate in East Finchley, Barnet

• Why a LibDem candidate in East Finchley?

I’ve lived in East Finchley for some time, a number of years, I know the area well and I got to know it better in the last general election (2019) we had in this country, where we did a lot of campaigning in the area. It forms part of a constituency called Finchley and Golders Green, which was very contested in the general election, including by the Liberal Democrats, who finished second; and over the course of that election I got to know the individual kind of neighbourhoods in that area, and it felt that at some point I’d like to represent it myself at a local level. I’m the chair of the Barnet Liberal Democrats. Barnet is one of the largest boroughs of London, and the LibDems are the only political party I’ve ever been a member of, I actually joined some time ago during the era of the coalition, which was between the Conservatives and the LibDems. At that time I realised having not been party political until then, I thought the Liberal Democrats were a moderating force in politics; they were offering centrist pragmatic solutions. They have a strong credibility but also a great sense of equality and opportunity for all. 

Our values are civil liberties and individual freedoms, which are very important for me. I couldn’t imagine being a candidate when I joined the party and I think actually that the values we have as Liberal Democrats are very much in tune with the values many people have in this area of London; to give you one example, I think we were one of the top 30 constituencies in the country in terms of percentage of people who voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, that generally tells you something about the demographic, because people generally have an open attitude to other cultures, economies, trade and globalisation. They are welcoming of many communities, we have a very diverse community where we live. For so long people hadn’t really thought of the Liberal Democrats as being a force in our area, but the last general election changed people’s attitudes.

• What are the main issues you prioritise in this campaign?

There are three things, I’m glad you ask me about it at this point because we just finished writing our local election manifesto, so the number one priority for us is a strong approach for the environment and the climate emergency. This is the thing that’s in most people’s minds leaving aside near term priorities, it is the looming challenge of our time and I really believe that the other two national parties (Labour and the Conservatives) are nowhere by comparison on this issue and I feel when we talk to voters of all generations, they are very aware of this burning platform in terms of climate change and the environment. They know that people need to take radical decisions and implement radical proposals if we are really going to make headway with this, so in this election for us, having a strong package of ideas for what we will do on the environment side of things and in a local setting is really important, and we try to be realistic and focused it on what will work in the community, but crucially we are getting out there and saying we would do certain things like insulation and those kinds of home energy efficiency measures that are very tangible for people because it’s not just important in terms of climate change but also in terms of cost of living and health. It’s things like a local infrastructure for cycling, walking and electric cars, these are the things people want. I’ve talked to people who bought electric cars and can’t find anywhere to charge them, because the infrastructure is not in tune with what people want to be doing in terms of individual decisions. We see that in terms of cycling, people want to take alternative methods of transport but they don’t see the infrastructure to support that. It’s really tangible things we are talking about in terms of the environment and climate change and it’s also about things that we can do as a council, like leading from the front whether that’s about our food and drink or being more planet-friendly, it’s working with other elements of the public sector to put in place small changes that can make a difference in terms of how we get around, like schools (what they can do to work with neighbourhoods to encourage people to travel to school by bike or bus); so environment is the number one priority.

The second big thing is to focus on local priorities, it’s the things people see around them that they feel maybe are overlooked or ignored: the state of roads and pavements, the way that traffic and parking on roads are seen by people in their particular neighbourhood and what it feels like to me when I talk to people in this area is that they have ideas on how to solve these things but instead what they experience is a top down approach from local government, so I think there needs to be relentless focus on those local issues people can touch and feel and not just the things for the communities that shout the loudest. We’re seeing the steady erosion of green spaces in areas where there’s social housing, I think this is a real problems because these are communities that actually don’t have so much of a voice and I want to make sure that if the council is trying to build more homes on top of existing green spaces this community has to have more of a say, because you can’t have your rights and freedoms trampled over for the sake of a top down target in terms of the necessity to build a number of homes. 

A third priority would be looking at the widening gaps and inequalities, specially for our younger people. As a political party we’re very focused on early life chances and educational opportunity, I think what we’ve really seen (that the pandemic has shown) is that there’s a lot of inequality in terms of what provision there is and how different families have been able to pick up the Slack when schools weren’t running. There’s such a gap between those who don’t have internet, digital devices in their homes or quiet places to work from and the rest, and now businesses have gone back as usual without thinking about what are the measures that are going to recover what’s been lost, so what we want to see is what can we do in terms of better use of available sources of funding to target those who have really been hit hard by the pandemic, not only providing additional resources for education but also what can we do to make sure that those schools aren’t being disrupted in the future. One of the things we want to look at is how schools can invest in stuff to improve the air quality in their environment. That’s just one example but we generally want to do more in terms of the opportunities we are providing for younger people. We’ve seen an erosion of youth services, things that occupy the time of our young people and I think what we can do is really empower and join the dots between the voluntary sector (charities and organisations working in the area). 

• Why are the LibDems the best alternative for the other parties in the area?

At this election for us it’s really about continuing the momentum from the last general election in 2019. It was the Liberal Democrats that posed a challenge to the Conservatives and we want to demonstrate that was not a flash in the past and that many people who lent us their vote in 2019 and helped as come second are not abandoning us now and going back to their old political homes. The should know that we’re actually there, we’re listening, we want to do more for the community basically and continuing with that support the LibDems will achieve those outcomes. 

The other thing I would say on this that we are the party that is building the bridges to people from different political perspectives, if I look at people who have joined the party whether it’s ordinary members locally or even councillors leaving their previous parties and moving over to the Liberal Democrats, it’s people from both sides; and what that tells me is that when we’re talking to our voters people might be a traditional Conservative voter but they might be really angry at the national government and Boris Johnson, they’re probably not ready to jump completely to the other side and vote Labour: we really are that kind of centrist moderate party that people who are disillusioned with either of the other big parties can actually turn to, and also people who are not themselves party political and just want to see stuff get done. It is the Liberal Democrats that actually are the best place to take the challenge to the Conservatives at the next general election and therefore we want to send a really strong message at this local elections that there is that sustained trajectory from 2019 by this local elections through to the next general election whenever it happens, and I think at that next general election there is a great opportunity to finish what we started in 2019 and unseat a Conservative MP which is growing less and less popular by the day because of his association with an extremely unpopular national Conservative government.