17:27 Thursday 10th January 2013
Drive BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
[C]HRIS MANN: While I’m talking to you, let me ask you about another issue. Labour have published a list of 106 hit seats they say they’ll be trying to win. Yours is on it. Are you worried?
STEWART JACKSON: Do I sound worried Chris? (BEAT) Really, I understand the game. This is politics. They want to talk up their chances. But until they can put together a credible programme for government, including tax and spend, and until they’ve apologised for the debt millstone they bequeathed to the Coalition Government, they’re not going to be taken really seriously by the electorate. I’ve got a strong record, and will have, of ten years working as the local MP in Peterborough, not beholden to anyone, speaking my mind, as a proud Conservative but thinking for myself. And on that basis I think it will be close, but I’m not unduly worries. But good luck to the Labour Party.
CHRIS MANN: You say “as a proud Conservative.” But increasingly you’re a Conservative rebel. Is the stance you’re taking on certain things like Europe, is that key to you keeping the seat?
STEWART JACKSON: Well I think I’m in touch with the views of people in my constituency, on things like immigration, on crime, on Europe, on welfare. And sometimes you do have to speak the truth to power, and make yourself unpopular if you think you’re doing it for a principled .. and for the right reasons. And for those reasons in particular, I feel that people respect you for speaking your mind and being who you are, rather than just being another Identikit cut-out and keep politician, which I think people are fed up with.
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