Cambridgeshire police and crime commissioner candidates

[jack]

http://www.choosemypcc.org.uk/candidates/area/cambridgeshire?postcode=CB41RT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19511791

I don't know if electing a police and crime commissioner is a good idea or not, but given it's being voted on, if you know at least as much as an average voter, it's probably better to vote (including spoiling your ballot paper if you want to register your disapproval, or choosing randomly amongst acceptable candidates) as best you can.

Unfortunately, the brief statements supplied are not very informative. Does anyone know anything positive/negative about them?

After a brief scan, my triaging method was to discard any candidate whose statement included the following:

• "United Kingdom"
  
• "England"
  
• "Tough"
  
• "Victims"
  
• "More police on the beat"
  
• Vague platitudes

which eliminated most of them. And then look to see if anyone seemed to be proposing anything specific. The candidates are:

• UKIP and English Democrat. I may be doing them a disservice, but it seems most English/British nationalist parties are simplistic and xenophobic, especially when it comes to policing. Let me know if I've judged too harshly and should actually know something more about one them.
  
  
• Conservative party candidate. Former MP. Election statement kind of platitude-y. Conservative party sympathetic friends say policing isn't the area they'd most prefer conservative party influence.
  
  
• Labour Party candidate. Anti-current government. Relevant experience. Mentions "victims" (probably bad) and "prevention" (probably good) and some platitudes.
  
  
• Lib-dem Party candidate. Reasonably promising manifesto, but I've heard bad things about him personally.
  
  
• Ansar Ali. Lots of relevant experience with specifics. Seems like he has specific priorities even though I find it hard to tell from the manifesto exactly what.
  
  
• Farooq Mohammed. Sounds sincere, but the manifesto is a bit platitude-y. It does mention transparency.

So I guess, based on the extremely superficial profile information, Ali, labour, and Mohammed sound most plausible, but does anyone know anything about the candidates personally? Even just "my second cousin knows er slightly and e seemed competent/hard-working/decent"?

If not, I'll probably guess based on the manifestos (probably Ali, then Labour), but even though that's reasonable for eliminating people, it not really reliable for telling who'd actually be best.

Comments

[mobbsy]

Having looked at them, I think I have a slight preference for Farooq Mohammed over Ansar Ali. My concerns about Ali are that he's too much involved in the local government "establishment" to really be independent (being a long standing council official and a former county councillor), and also that he might just be a Peterborough candidate rather than Cambridgeshire.

[jack]

Thank you, that's a very a good point. Do you know anything about Mohammed?

[mobbsy]

Nothing beyond reading his twitter feed and website. The Q&A there is the best single source I've found for his views, and well, it's still a bit bland but could be worse. I like his commitment to transparency, that he is concerned about data security and other issues in outsourcing but doesn't dismiss the idea¹, and he has a nuanced approach to drugs (if possibly a bit too fence-sitting).

¹ Somewhat radically around here, I don't think all public services are automatically best performed by public sector employees. Outsourcing where appropriate is a valid option.

[jack]

Oh, thank you! Yeah, that Q&A is a good start. I mostly agree with your opinion.

Somewhat radically around here, I don't think all public services are automatically best performed by public sector employees.

Yeah. I think outsourcing that works is mostly invisible and people don't think of it as "outsourcing". I'm very suspicious of any police or NHS outsourcing not because outsourcing is automatically bad, but because it normally seems to go badly.

[catyak]

Don't forget there's also a "none of the above" option.

D

[morwen]

If they were having one in London I'd be spoiling my ballot, for the first time ever. These elections simply should not exist (they certainly should not be taking place in November - seriously what?); the offices they are to should not exist either.

[pseudomonas]

I am quite likely to spoil my ballot (also for the first time). Possibly delegitimizing the role is more important than trying to ensure the least bad candidate is elected.