What is in Kelvin's Head?

10 Things I learned from being a General Election Candidate

05/05/2015

Ten years ago today there was a General Election in the United Kingdom and 10 years ago today I was a candidate in it. Indeed, 10 years ago as I write this I was wearily standing at the polling station for the last 20 minutes of polling, thanking a few final voters for turning out. I was standing in the contest to become the Member of Parliament (ie the Westminster MP) for the Stirling Constituency.

Here’s 10 things I learned

1 – You don’t have to win to do well.

I never expected to win and in the end I was rather pleased with myself, doubling the vote that the party I represented had previously got and moving them up a place, knocking the SNP into fourth place. (You can see the results here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

2 – Lots of people know almost nothing about the democratic process
You find out when you knock on doors canvassing that lots of people just don’t have a clue how it all works. Very many people don’t realise that those who come knocking on the door are looking for people who might vote for their party and that’s about all. They want to encourage likely voters to turn out. They are really not interested in those sure they will vote for someone else.

But frightening numbers of people don’t understand how to vote at all. Vast numbers of people don’t understand devolution and have no idea which things are reserved to Westminster and which are devolved to Holyrood. (One discovers that this even applies to some candidates whom one might be standing against).

3 – You are always going to be asked about Trident/Abortion/Euthanasia/Palestine

You are also not going to be asked about them by many people at all. You are far more likely to be asked about the economy, jobs, transport (train fares/cars speeding/cycle paths) and dog poo. Dog poo is a topic that unites people of otherwise different political interests.

4 – Some people trust you if you are religious and others distrust you for the same reason.

It evens out in the end. However, if you happen to be a member of the clergy standing for election, one can find oneself stopped short by nice people saying, “Well we want to vote for you, but you are identified with the church and so we don’t trust you to be a decent person.”

5 – There’s nothing like working with a team all focussed on one thing

I had brilliant people around me who worked their socks off. I had an agent who worked morning, noon and night to get other people working morning, noon and night. Brilliant organisation pays off in the end. But there’s a buzz that is very satisfying about all that which I’ve never been able to capture in my work in the church. In politics, people unite (if things are going well) around the idea of just trying to get more votes than anyone else. It is a simple aim which leads to various tasks that can be easily monitored. In the church there are a thousand reasons for every person being present. Motivation is much more complex.

6 – Activists have more in common with activists from other parties than with non-voters

There were comparatively friendly relationships between political activists where I was fighting, which is why I feel the pain of some public bad behaviour in the current election campaign so keenly. Particularly after the election, we had informal pacts to take down one another’s lamppost posters. (Except the Tories, which we left in place for their own people to go round taking down, obviously).

7 – People are often nicer to one another in politics than the church

I know, I know. People don’t like to be told this, but it was very much my experience.

8 – It is incredibly moving to see the crosses by your name

It is one of the most extraordinary things going to count where your name is on the ballot paper. I was always moved to see the number of people who trusted you enough to make their mark by your name. Even if your stomach is churning with what might happen (which could change your life forever) it is still incredible to see that you’ve been winning people around.

9 – All politics are local

You don’t realise this until you go knocking on doors and delivering leaflets. “So Mrs Voter, I hear that the roads round here are terrible?” “Oh no, the roads here are fine, the road surface at the top of the street is terrible”.

10 – You learn more by standing in an election about mission than you do by anything anyone teaches you in the church

You learn that everything is a communication problem. You learn that every communication problem is worth trying to solve. You learn that change can happen. You learn that change will happen anyway so you might as well try to influence it. You learn the limits on power. You learn how hard it is to change someone’s mind. You learn that democracy is a sweet thing and not to be taken for granted anywhere. You learn that you need to aim to speak to 50 000 people as though you are addressing them each as an individual. You learnt that ideas matter, campaigns matter and above all that people matter.

2005, candidate, clergy, general election, priest, stirling

8 responses to “Assisted Dying – Why I’ve changed my mind”

BobS

16/03/2026

You lucidly illustrated an example of a family seeking to pressurise someone to influence the process of death. But what was possibly missing was the voice of the person nearing death. Where was their perspective, their reasoning? Assisted Dying starts and driven by the person dying. They are the ones who, with mental capacity, take those steps, if necessary, to expedite death at that final stage. They, together with medical experts, make those decisions.
The examples cited refer to a family desperate for a skiing holiday and your concern of funeral directors making money through direct cremations.
I fully agree with your desire for a better palliative care system. Having witnessed their work it is amazing. But that is another argument. To conflate the two dismisses the voice of those seeking assisted dying.
Your concern over assisted dying seems to be interwoven by a call for improved palliative care and a demise in direct cremations.

Reply
1. Rev Owain Jones
  
  16/03/2026
  
  Respectfully, Bob S, I think you’re overlooking the one thing that struck me very forcefully from this incident. I’ve always felt profoundly uneasy at the likelihood – I’d say ‘moral certainty’ – that the voice of the dying will in some cases be influenced, even swayed, by the dying person’s assumptions, inferences or intuitions (correct or not) about the needs of those closest to them, and even their desires. These desires might not be articulated, or even correctly guessed – but they might, and as soon as the dying person is subject to them, they are, by definition, influenced in their decision. At that point, Assisted Dying can no longer be said “to start and driven by the person dying.” I’ve been there for a long time – but what I suddenly realized reading Kelvin Holdsworth’s post, was that there’s a much darker issue here, and it relates to a fundamental principle to which I’ve always adhered. Please bear with me, and entertain for a moment an analogy which you might consider to be extreme, and which I’d be appalled to hear deployed by the religiously fanatical opponents of Assisted Dying. It’s this. I have always been opposed to the death penalty for a number of reasons, but very prominent among them is that it takes to an extreme the testing of a fundamental principle of justice (which I know I’m modifyng here to make the analogy a better fit, and of course, you’re free to take issue with that): “It is better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one innocent person be punished unjustly.” I’m aware that there’s a very significant separation between that and this, but I don’t believe it amounts to ‘clear blue water’. Let me try and articulate my conviction in a reasonable way, for you to consider, even if you reject it. I think that there’s a huge danger inscribed in legislation which will, of a moral certainty, permit circumstances in which unwilling dying individuals give assent under pressure to the active premature termination of their lives. This holds true even if a hundred times as many individuals assent freely, and even actively seek, such termination. One of the things that always made me uneasy about the Vulcans was the assertion that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. There seems to me to be no way in any legislation to protect the needs and rights of the few in this issue. At the very least, I think that needs to be acknowledged openly by proponents of Assisted Dying. If we’re about to be taken across a Rubicon, I believe that everyone, on both sides of the decision, need to acknowledge that. (Incidentally, I completely agree with Kevin Holdsworth’s horror (I hope I’m expressing that fairly) at ‘Direct Cremations’ and the way they’re advertised. They seem to me to be open profiteering from the death-phobic culture in which we’re immersed. I fear that the impulses behind Assisted Dying as currently advocated may be a good-faith manifestation of the inability of society to look at the full actuality of human mortality and the relationship between life and death. I may be deluding myself, but I think I’d say that even if I were an atheist.
  
  Reply
  1. BobS
    
    17/03/2026
    
    Rev Owain, thank you for your response. I fear your analogy was stretched to fit your argument, and, apologies if my education lacked in this quarter, where the reference to Vulcans was applicable.
    If we are concerned that a very small percentage will be wronged, then many practices today should be stopped. The statistical error you describe will always be possible, albeit minimised as much as possible.
    The proposed law tries to cater for such concerns. What appears to be the argument against assisted dying is that it is not error proof.
    If a person who is deemed to have mental capacity with less than six months to live, with suitable medical provision, seeks to alleviate their suffering, and is capable of themselves administering the medication to ultimately ease that pain, then their voice has been heard.
    I also would hope that palliative care continues to improve but that is a separate argument, as are direct cremations, and now the cost of the funeral to families. These arguments are all used to conflate the underlying issue of assisted dying.
    
    Reply
2. Val Dobson
  
  16/03/2026
  
  You are wrong to connect funeral companies’ promotion of Direct Cremation with the push for assisted dying. Nowadays, many families simply cannot afford a “proper” funeral / cremation, and funeral grants come nowhere to covering the the costs. The funeral companies are simply responding to customer needs.
  
  Reply
  1. Kelvin
    
    16/03/2026
    
    I’m happy to speak out about funerals being too expensive. However, it is manifestly not the case taht funeral companies are simply responding to customer needs. If they did they would promote these as being about price. They don’t – they promote them as being about not causing a fuss, which is the point I’m making here.
    
    Reply
Nigel Kenny

16/03/2026

Thank you for your wise and persuasive words – may they influence MSPs to vote against the Bill.

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Chriatine McIntosh

16/03/2026

Thanks for this, Kelvin – I’ve been thinking more about this as contemporaries begin to vanish from this life.

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Helen Leslie

16/03/2026

Thank you Kelvin. I am someone who has spent the majority of my working life caring for people at the end of their lives. You said exactly what I would want to.

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