Jonathan Kent - Green candidate for Bexhill and Battle

We don’t have to be a nation that sits idly by while our nation’s assets are sold off to the friends of those in power.

We don’t have to wait on the sidelines while the NHS is dismantled piecemeal.

We don’t have to accept that our children’s education is constrained by a lack of both resources and imagination, where we’re afraid to let them have dreams and develop ambitions for fear that the odds are stacked against them.

We don’t have to surrender our towns and villages and countryside to developers who care for little except a fast buck, and damn the needs of the people who live here.

I’m standing for the Green Party in Bexhill and Battle because I believe that we can, and should, demand better.

Back in 2007/8 we knew exactly who had brought about the mess we’re in; it was the people who ran the banks and the politicians whose lack of courage had led them to stop policing the city properly. The consequence was a system whereby when the banks did well the bankers were rolling in it, and when they did badly the rest of us had to bail them out - and we didn’t get so much as a thank you.

And yet just seven years later people have stopped blaming the 0.1% at the top and are blaming those at the bottom - the disabled, jobseekers, people who come from abroad to do the jobs we don’t want; fruit-pickers, care-home workers, nurses, cleaners.

Let me give you just one fact - according to official (NAO) figures the banking crisis will have cost us £80Bn even after we’ve clawed back what we can. That’s enough to pay the entire jobseekers allowance bill for 25 years.

Let’s look beyond the debt - compared with 1815 and 1918 and 1945 it’s low; we’ve been through far worse. Let’s invest for the future; in our infrastructure and in our people. If we don’t our competitors are certainly investing in theirs.

I’m standing for the Green Party in Bexhill and Battle because this is where I grew up and where I live and because I love the place and its people and because you deserve more. Stop settling for second best and take back your future.