Election candidates in focus: George Wright (Independent)

With the General Election now less than a week away, the Advertiser has contacted each of the seven candidates standing in the Maidenhead constituency for their final pitch on why you should vote for them.

Check out our dedicated General Election page for more on each candidate or follow the links at the bottom of the page for each of our ‘candidates in focus’ features.

Independent George Wright’s ‘whirlwind’ campaign, which calls for electoral reform, has recently seen endorsement by the Wessex Regionalists – a group which ‘exists to represent and defend the wider interests of the people of South and South West England’.

“I’d like to simplify local and regional government and make a more stratified system,” he said.

“At the moment, the county system is all confused – the regions are also a mess. One of the things I’m standing on is self-determination which means people can choose which region they’re in – so making sure we have a fair way for referendums, for separatist movements like Scotland.”

He said Labour is likely to get a ‘big majority with a minority of people supporting them’ and believes this ‘lack of proportionality’ is wrong, adding: “A vote for me is a vote for electoral reform.”

He said: “I think the first past the post system has allowed both main parties to just rely on being slightly better than the other to get in.

“To be democratic you have to allow everybody to express themselves and that means there are going to be extremes or what people perceive to be extremes but that also means that you as an individual with your vote can vote against those extremes.

“The more competition there is among politicians, the better our political system can be.”

He backs a ‘two-round voting system’ in the House of Commons and proportional representation in the House of Lords, and says people in Maidenhead are unsure where to place their tactical vote this year.

“I'm not realistically going to be able to change things single-handedly with proportional representation but I can use my platform to advocate for it as much as possible and then the actual job is representing my constituents and fighting constituency causes,” he added.

Mr Wright advocates for intergenerational living as one of the ways of solving the housing crisis and wants ‘proper control over our immigration system so that it’s fair for everyone’.

“I think we should welcome as many as we can take on without causing our public services to crumble,” he said.

“I think it's really important to offer sanctuary to refugees but we need to look at how we can be a positive influence in the rest of the world and improve living conditions in the rest of the world.

“Year after year parties have let people down on this promise of getting immigration to the tens of thousands and I think because they rely on scaremongering of the other side, they can get away with not really meeting their own targets themselves.”

He said he was ‘turned away’ by the Liberal Democrats’ ‘excessive anti-Brexit’ stance, having previously believed the party could have changed ‘the way we do politics’ before ‘14 years of fairly mismanaged Tory government’.

Mr Wright sees an opportunity for the UK to become a world leader in the renewable sector by investing and exporting renewables as one of the country’s main national industries.

He believes he’s a voice for those who are ‘disaffected with the system and have taken things into their own hands’ and advocates for a ‘community led approach’ by standing up for groups who don’t have representation like the Maidenhead Great Park project and the Marlow-Maidenhead Passengers’ Association.

Other 'Election candidates in focus' features:

Tania Mathias (Conservative)

Joshua Reynolds (Lib Dem)

Jo Smith (Labour)

Andrew Cooney (Green)

Tim Burt (Social Democratic Party)

Qazi Yasir Irshad (Independent)