Assembly Speaker – 19 January 
Nick Timothy, Conservative MP - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
On Monday 19 January, the Sixth Form was joined for an assembly by Nick Timothy, a Conservative politician who is the MP for West Suffolk and serves as the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor, about his views and his opinion on the state of the country.
Timothy began with a background on his political career. He grew up seeing politicians as people who he could never hope to relate to, or become. He spoke about impostor syndrome and how one can overcome it, as politics should be for everyone, and no one should feel that they don’t deserve their achievements. He encouraged us to get involved with politics by voting, or by joining local parties. Timothy then spoke briefly about the current Tory situation, stating that the party has behaved poorly in the past few years and failed to keep promises that they made in their manifesto.
Timothy then proceeded to identify three crises that the UK was currently facing. Firstly, he asserted, the UK’s economic model is broken, illustrated by the fact that there has been no 2 years of consecutive economic growth since he was at university at the turn of the century. He stated that our current economic model relies on “selling tomorrow to live today”, which he thinks is wrong, and that the problem will be painful to fix, but that it must happen. The second crisis that Timothy mentioned was our loss of a sense of shared identity in the UK, which he identified as necessary in order for trust to exist, something that we currently lack. Lastly, Timothy referred to the problem of the “state”, which, he claimed, is so fragmented that there are no real levers of power, making it difficult to get anything done. Timothy ended by telling us that these crises are all complex and interlinked, making them a huge challenge to solve. He cited this difficulty as a reason for the recent growth of the Reform party, which channels the despair and frustration of UK citizens.
The assembly then opened up to take questions. Timothy was asked about the situation in America, and how the UK was responding to it. He justified the UK’s lack of action by explaining that the UK had underinvested in security, and so lacked hard power with which to counter actions taken by Trump, as although international laws exist, there are no mechanisms in place for their enforcement. When asked about the views that he and the Conservative party represent, and how these clash with other peoples’ views, Timothy responded by stating that he had been elected by his constituency of West Suffolk, and so represents the views of the people there. He asserted that there are divides in values and interests in every society, and it is important to uphold peace and respect when dealing with these divides.
Timothy was also asked about his opinion about the violence in Gaza. He stated that he wanted hostilities to come to an end, supported a 2-state solution, and believed that Hamas was a terrorist organisation. When asked about the nature of the violence, Timothy repeated the Tory assertion that Israel was not committing a genocide, as the situation did not fit the accepted definition of a genocide. This caused much discussion and debate amongst students after the assembly. Timothy also stated that he thought that using personal attacks to label MPs as war criminals is wrong, and told us that he has received death threats in the past for the stands he’s taken, a very unpleasant experience.
It was a very engaging and thought-provoking assembly.
Malaika
Sixth Form Senior Prefect
