On 19 July, we were proud and privileged to host 80 students from Canterbury schools at a pre-Hustings Schools Workshop. In this blog, Freya from The Canterbury Academy 6th form, reflects on what they learnt at the workshop and the General Election Hustings, emphasising the importance of candidate accountability, independence of thought and future thinking.

The hustings were an insightful experience as it was a chance to experience politics in a more personal way.
Before the hustings, we took part in a workshop which involved formulating questions to present to the former MP, Rosie Duffield, who appeared via Teams. Unfortunately, she couldn’t attend the workshop or hustings due to threats she had received by a member of the public due to her stance on transgender identities.
I thought this was disappointing because it would have been a better experience if we were able to hear from her in the hustings. She had been the MP for Canterbury for several years and she deserves to be scrutinised in the same way as all the other candidates, especially as she has already held the position and is running for re-election. Potentially, she could have joined via Teams, as she did for the workshop, which I think would have satisfied the audience.
I found the atmosphere quite exciting as I had never previously been so involved in a political event before. I found being a member of the crowd a positive experience because there was a sense of unity when it came to reacting to certain candidates’ answers.
In my opinion, Henry Stanton of the Green Party and Russ Timpson of the Liberal Democrats performed the best. They received much applause from the crowd following several of their policies and they had views which most closely aligned with my own. On the other hand, Bridget Porter of the Reform UK Party was not very persuasive with her policies and received mostly negative feedback from the audience. I didn’t feel like I got to hear her true opinions because it seemed like she just repeated the Reform manifesto.
It was a unique opportunity to be able to play a part in asking questions to the candidates. However, I wished that more questions could have been asked from the students because personally, I feel that only two questions do not accurately represent all the things that we are passionate about.
Overall, I really enjoyed my experience because it gave me a chance to become immersed in the current political landscape, especially because I want to pursue politics later in life.

Our Politics and International Relations courses allow you to explore all these issues and more, experiencing politics both as a subject to study and as something that we ‘do’, affecting every aspect of our lives.  Follow these links to find out more about our undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.