NEWS STORY : Caroline Lucas to Stand Down at General Election
STORY
Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, has confirmed that she is planning to step down at the next General Election. In an open letter, the former party leader said:
“I love this city and its people, and I know how incredibly blessed I’ve been to have been given the opportunity to represent you, and to work alongside you. I have always prided myself on being, first and foremost, a good constituency MP. The people who have come to me in my regular surgeries are often desperate, feeling like they have nowhere else to turn – they’re looking for care and compassion not the tangled bureaucratic web that passes for a safety net, and that all too often just causes confusion and complication. I’ve done everything possible to help wherever I can and always worked to ensure that people feel heard, that their concerns matter, and that they are not alone.
But the intensity of these constituency commitments, together with the particular responsibilities of being my Party’s sole MP, mean that, ironically, I’ve not been able to focus as much as I would like on the existential challenges that drive me – the Nature and Climate emergencies. I have always been a different kind of politician – as those who witnessed my arrest, court case and acquittal over peaceful protest at the fracking site in Balcombe nearly ten years ago will recall. And the truth is, as these threats to our precious planet become ever more urgent, I have struggled to spend the time I want on these accelerating crises. I have therefore decided not to stand again as your MP at the next election.”
Lucas is the only Green MP in the current House of Commons and she currently has a majority of 19,940 over the Labour Party.
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