An evening with Felicity Buchan MP

Madeleine Ross (Social Secretary) is a second year reading Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Balliol College.

OUCA’s first speaker event of Michaelmas term was with Felicity Buchan, the new Conservative MP for Kensington. Educated in Scotland, she came to Christ Church a year early, studying law, before going into banking and then politics. As MP for Kensington, a seat that was won by only 150 votes last year, she was keen to highlight the difficult but ultimately rewarding nature of being MP for a marginal seat. The discussion further included the Grenfell inquiry, the likelihood of another national lockdown and also environmental concerns, alongside problems with the union. 

 Members were keen to quiz her on the Grenfell crisis, especially her recent vote against an amendment brought forward by Labour that would have required the government to act on all recommendations made by Phase One of the Grenfell inquiry. This would, she argued, potentially have required the inquiry to be shut down and begun again. On an issue so close to the hearts of her constituents, she emphasised that many of the Grenfell survivors have been placed in permanent housing since she took office, and that the council has set aside £50 million for their well-being (matched by the NHS). 

Recalling her election day run-in with Piers Morgan, Buchan was keen to highlight the importance of persistence - a message that became ever more pertinent when her WIFI cut out. Morgan tweeted about her the day after the election - in her own words, she accosted him in the street to make sure that he had voted. Despite typically taking a neutral position, as co-host of GMB, Morgan tweeted to his millions of followers how impressed he was by her tenacity. She is, as a former candidate for South Shields, a key constituency in the ‘Red Wall’, and having contested an election in Northern Ireland, someone who practices what they preach - do not give up. 

On the state of the union, she pointed to the hypocrisy of the SNP wanting to be members of the EU, but not to uphold the union that they are already members of. Praising Nicola Sturgeon as a good politician, Buchan made it clear that she believed that the Tory party should be making the emotional and economic argument against Scottish independence. It is especially important to emphasise that they have preferential funding that they would not receive if they were independent. Despite the increase of support for independence in the wake of the pandemic, and although Buchan made it clear that it was something the Tory party should pay close attention to, she also suggested that reports that Scotland was going to walk out the door were probably slightly overstated. 

Buchan was also keen to talk about the wider impacts of lockdown, and why we should support a regional approach rather than a circuit breaker lockdown, as supported by Keir Starmer. As a member of the Treasury Select Committee, she has attended discussions that show that the wider impact of the lockdowns was not yet known, but was expected to be significant. On this point, although she herself is a localist, she was happy to add that adding further levels of regional government can add further bureaucracy and make it far more difficult to take decisive action. She emphasised that the individual was in the best position to evaluate their own risk, and supported the regional tiered system on the basis that it was ridiculous to lock down Devon and Cornwall on the basis of cases in the North East, Andy Burnham or no Andy Burnham.

As an MP for a central London constituency, Buchan is at the forefront of the recovery from COVID for the capital. Much of the office space that will go unused due to drastically reduced footfall will likely be converted into residential property, helping to tackle the housing crisis that has plagued central London in particular. This, she hopes, will allow students and young people to get onto the housing ladder. She acknowledged the generational wealth divide, admitting that although in previous decades pensioners have been the group typically worse-off, the young are the people that the pandemic will hit hardest. However, although she believes that office-workers like her brother will likely continue to work from home after the pandemic, coming into the office one or twice weekly, Parliamentarians will probably return full-time, due to the difficulty of debating online. 

As a committed environmentalist, Buchan highlighted that Britain was the first country to commit to going carbon-neutral by 2050, and was also the G20 country with the biggest decrease in carbon emissions. However, she acknowledged that there was work to be done on the issue, and that greater change was needed. 

Buchan is a shining example of persistence in politics - before her election, she had been on the candidate list since 2011, and had run two failed campaigns in impossible seats in order to ‘toughen’ herself up. Being MP for a marginal seat, she claimed, meant that ministers listened to her more attentively than Conservative MPs from Somerset with 20,000 majorities, mentioning absolutely no one in particular. Whether this is the truth, or whether her precarious position actually makes her more susceptible to manipulation from the party, is not a question that could be answered in this zoom call (or in a political sociology tutorial, I imagine).

Although not the most exciting speaker that we will have this term (more details to follow…), Buchan was an interesting and engaging politician; a central London MP without the London-centric view (despite highlighting how much of the country depends on the income London generates, which we will forgive her for this time). And because I am writing this only for points, and I need to get to 1,000 words, she may have another compliment: she spoke openly and honestly about very difficult issues - ones very close to the hearts of OUCA members present and also her constituents more generally, and was very keen to hear the views of young people. Especially if listening meant that they were more likely to vote Tory.