Local Prospective Parliamentary Candidate James Spencer recently sat down with the St Albans Times. You can read a full excerpt of the original article below.
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Fighting against an incumbent MP is a challenge in itself, but when doing so as a representative of a political party which has all but been wiped out locally makes the battle even fiercer.
Yet James Spencer, Conservative parliamentary hopeful for St Albans, is confident not only of defeating Liberal Democrat Daisy Cooper in the next General Election, but also restoring the Tories’ fortunes in the constituency.
Meeting for the first time over coffee at Café Roma in St Peter’s Street gives us both the opportunity to find out more about each other, while also exploring what sort of campaign he is planning to wage in a bid to win St Albans.
Born in Colney Heath, James spent the first three years of his life there before his parents relocated to Jersey Farm, where they still live.
He then went to Wheatfields primary school, where his mother was a teaching assistant for many years – “I’m an only child so she’s quite protective,” he explained – and then to Sandringham, before studying history and politics at Nottingham University.
Although he stayed there immediately after graduating, a desire for a career change led him to take on a job in London working for the press and media department of the Catholic Education Service.
“I wanted to be nearer my parents as well, because from Nottingham to St Albans is quite a commute.”
The move led him to make his first foray into politics: “I bumped into someone on the street who was handing out papers from the Conservative Party I said, ‘Ah yes, I need to join!’. So I joined the local Westminster branch in Pimlico and slowly worked my way up the ranks until I became a candidate for council. I then had four really, really wonderful years in council, going all the way up to cabinet member level.”
James was responsible for city management, which included waste and recycling, highways, parks and leisure centres and parking.
“If it involved running the city, then it was under my portfolio. I controlled amounts in excess of a million pounds, so it was a really, really interesting portfolio. And I managed to achieve quite a few positive changes as well.”
His proudest achievement is the electrification of Westminster’s waste fleet system. “We bought a whole fleet of electric bin lorries, and the rubbish they collected was taken to an incinerator which generated electricity. I had the idea of buying a plot of land next to the incinerator, running a cable, and charging the bin lorries with the energy produced. It’s the first, I think, in Europe, with a closed-loop energy collection system.”
He was eventually ousted by a Labour candidate in May 2022, an election which saw half the Conservative cabinet on Westminster council lose their seats.
“I lost by about 60 votes, so not many at all, which was obviously a bit disappointing, but it’s freed me up to do other things like coming back home.
“I said to myself I’m only going to go for seats in Hertfordshire this time around because you need some sort of connection – I don’t believe in carpet-bagging your way around the country is quite the same. I was unsuccessful for Broxbourne, I threw my hat into the ring for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, and then St Albans came out and I thought, ‘right, I’ll go for that’, and I got selected.”
James replaces former St Albans Conservative candidate Clare De Silva, who quit the role for personal reasons in June, and feels he can offer a robust challenge to the constituency’s sitting MP.
“I feel I’ve gained this knowledge from serving at the highest levels in Westminster Council and I can bring this to my home city. I know people say Daisy Cooper is around and she’s always visible but I can’t see what she’s done for the city since she was elected in 2019, I can’t name one achievement that she’s actually tangibly won as the MP.
“Has Park Street [rail freight] been resolved? Have there been any sort of tangible improvements in the [Charter] market and return of footfall? Has she been promoting the city at a much wider national level? No, I don’t think she has. I think she’s been doing lots of local campaigns, but that’s what they’ve been, campaigns, they haven’t been achievements.”
While, arguably, expanding St Albans Charter Market is not the responsibility of the local MP, James also feels the role should actually involve holding the local authority to account, especially with a Liberal Democrat MP and district council administration.
“I’d say that the role of the MP is to act as a democratic bench for their constituents, and if they see something which is going wrong or is a poor decision has been made, it’s the role of the MPs to stand up and represent their constituents’ opinions on that. And I think it’s absolutely the role of the MP to be providing that check and balance on local government. What I’ve always said is because Daisy and the district council are of the same political persuasion there is an element of marking their own homework. And that’s got to stop. There needs to be democratic balance for good governance and good decision-making.”
Does this mean there should never be a situation where the council administration and MP are of the same party?
“No, I’m not saying that at all. Growing up in St Albans it’s always been interesting that the district council has always been tight, it’s always been close. Because of this we’ve always had good governance and good decision-making because we’ve had responsible strong opposition on both sides. The current set-up, because it is so skewed to one side, I think that’s why we’re seeing these mistakes and bad decisions being made.”
The reason why this is the case is because the Conservatives lost substantially in 2021’s district council elections, with many of their councillors disappearing overnight. Has St Albans therefore become a bubble of Liberal Democracy, where people have reacted against the national Conservatives with a protest vote?
“In 2019 and 2017 I would have said yes. I think the way Brexit took place and how it landed here in the city, I think that played a massive part in it. But look, one of the things I really want to bring to this campaign is a bit of youthful verve and a bit of drive and passion about it.
“One of the things I really want to get across in my campaign is my enthusiasm and drive. I want to represent a generational shift in terms of what representation looks like, because St Albans is getting younger, we are seeing more and more young people, more people my age moving out of London back into the suburbs. And we’re going to need to have a role like that, presenting these new ideas, because you look at the older generation, the previous generation of councillors and MPs, it was just a bit static.”
James is 33. Daisy Cooper turns 42 this weekend.
He is also keen to draw on his experience in the planning sector to radically shake up the existing development system at a national level, which he feels will be of great benefit locally as well.
“Westminster’s got one of the biggest planning departments in the country. I think I did more planning applications in one year than the entirety of Wales. So I know the planning system like the back of my hand.
“As MP, what I really want to do is work to develop a planning system which works for local residents, but also means that we’re not just in this quasi-state of limbo around young people not being able to get on to the property ladder.
“I mean, there are some parts of St Albans where I’d die in a ditch to stop house building or any sort of construction, because our green space is precious. But likewise, there are areas of shrubland and car parks which are still Green Belt, so I think there is room for national legislation change about how we categorise these areas, and I’ve always said it should be moved to a point-based system about how we see various types of land. It can’t just be Green Belt you must never touch, but brown you can do whatever you want.”
He also highlighted the complexities surrounding the different levels of planning.
“The first thing officers told me was ‘You’ve got to understand that planning is an art form’, and that, to me, is just bonkers.
“We have Local Plans, we have national plans, we have regional plans, we have town plans, we have Conservation Area plans, and we have different policies that counteract different policies, we have guidelines which counteract different guidelines, and as a councillor, when you’re presented with a planning document, you have to weigh up certain things that work more than other things.
“There’s no clear points-based style of assessing whether an application is good or bad, and of course that’s bad for local residents because they don’t have clarity and they don’t have transparency.
“They can reel off a list of things which mean a planning application is against policy, and then they’re left completely frustrated when a local authority says, well actually we’ve got all these things which says it’s in favour of these policies and we’ve gone that way. So I think the planning system as a whole is broken.
“I think discussions around [housing] targets are really unhelpful without first looking at the planning system as a whole.
“Just mandating that councils have to build X number of houses, or as St Albans council’s doing, ramming through this new planning policy, without thinking about services, without thinking about schools…
“There’s a finite number of school places in Sandringham, there’s a finite number of people that Jersey Farm Surgery can see, there’s a finite number of cars we can have on the road. Unless we think strategically about services and about local amenities, then just building for the sake of building is going to result in bad decisions being made. So that’s one of the things I’d really like to do as MP is champion this new approach to planning.”
The current housing targets set by the Conservative government are based on figures from 2014, so should we really be looking at what the demands for homes are today?
“Personally I think any national target is going to come up against a lack of local understanding and knowledge and demand. The role of national government is looking at zoning of land and long-term strategic planning. Really the Local Plan should be looking at what the demand is in our bigger urban areas. There is plenty of place in London where we could build to fulfil the housing demand. And when you look at the other side about building to reduce property prices, I mean, if you look at the new development just off Sandpit Lane, has that brought house prices down in St Albans?
“I think that brutal and radical planning is needed, but it needs to have local support and bring local people with it. The trouble we’ve had over the last 20 years of planning is that governments and councillors of all colours haven’t been able to communicate to residents why planning has to change and why we need a new planning system. So that would be one of my big campaigns to push ahead.”
Careful not to make any promises, but James also feels he can do something to resolve the ongoing issue of a strategic rail freight interchange proposed for Park Street, which originally given planning permission by former Conservative Secretary of State Eric Pickles.
“Look, I’m not going to raise false hope and say that I’m the only man who can fix it, because that would be irresponsible. I would never say never, because there’s always a challenge.
“I would never say never because I think there are always avenues to go down, there are always more legal challenges, there’s campaigns that can be done in Parliament as well.
“I think if I won the first thing I’d be doing is sitting down with Eric Pickles and Michael Gove saying ‘What can we do about this?’ That there needs to be an alternative, because if it was a good site, if it was a good location, if it made sense, it’d have been done by now. That’s the reality.”
With rumblings of a General Election echoing in the political distance, the next few months are going to be crucial for James to establish himself as a viable candidate.
A communications specialist by profession, James currently works for the youth leadership charity One Young World, which holds annual summits, and when it’s a quiet period he only works four days a week.
“I’ll move back here every Thursday night and then Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays I’ll spend here. Luckily I don’t have to rent a flat, I’ll just stay with mum and dad, and just start knocking on doors. It’s good old-fashioned politics which is needed.”
He has previously called SADC to account for not mowing grass verges, something which the council argues is to promote biodiversity, but which James disagrees is the case.
“Biodiversity is more than just not mowing the grass. Often when these initiatives come through, it is about wanting to cut costs or just not do the work. Biodiversity takes a lot of effort. There’s a huge amount of research put into soil types, what you plant where depending on what bug life you want to bring back, and sometimes mowing and pruning hedges is an important part of biodiversity to maintain that balance, maintain the stewardship of the land.
“So this whole argument of just saying, ‘Oh no, we’re not going to mow the grass because of the green agenda’, then no, sorry I don’t buy that.”
James’ experience with parks might not have a direct impact on his work should he be elected as MP, but he does believe he can have a worthwhile oversight on major projects, including the Revitalise the Ver initiative planned to improve the condition of both the river and Verulamium Lake.
The main aim of the project is to improve a 2.5km section of the stream flowing through Verulamium Park to Sopwell Mill Farm, including narrowing the Ver to improve the flow, and creating riffles, pools and meanders.
The gravel bed will be naturally cleared of silt and the river’s concrete banks dismantled and replaced by soil, grasses and plants.
As part of the project, trees currently shading the river will be thinned to allow wildlife and foliage to grow, significant enhancements will take place in Verulamium Park to improve the water quality of its artificial lakes.
This will include reducing the small lake in size by 60% and the large lake by 40%, according to the last meeting of SADC’s River Ver working group.
New accessible wetlands providing a habitat for birds, fish and insects as well as plants will also be created.
James explained his concerns: “I’m worried about Verulamium Lake, I really am. I think that we are heading towards a huge mistake if they start tinkering with that lake. I think work needs to be done upstream, and we need to protect the chalk stream and how water gets into the lake, but I think dredging it and turning it into some sort of bio-wetlands I would really worry about.
“Again, on a maintenance level, it’s quite easy to turn something into a bog, a wetland.
“But it takes a lot of maintenance and money to keep a marshland at that sort of level. Again, you can’t just say ‘We’re going to drain the lake and it will look after itself’. It won’t.
“I don’t think they’re considering long-term planning, and we’ll end up in a situation whereby in four or five years’ time, they’re going to need to spend half a million, three quarters of a million to do important maintenance work, and then it’s going to have to have an ongoing budget to keep it at a certain level.
“I don’t think those decisions are being thought about. I think it’s just immediate term, ‘Oh, this will look nice’.
“When I was putting in parks, bedding, plants, all that sort of thing, I would think, well, what’s the cost this year, what’s the cost in five years, what’s the cost in ten years? Like planting trees, for example. Trees have a knock-on impact when it comes to waste recycling and the amount of hours that the street sweepers have got to be employed: more trees, more leaves, more time. All these are knock-on costs of wanting to rightly green the public realm. And I don’t think those long-term decisions are being made, at least I can’t see any evidence of them.”
There is one final issue which James will be focusing on in his bid to win the St Albans constituency, an issue which has been firmly at the forefront of the local news agenda for several years: the future of our beloved Charter Market.
“For anyone who’s grown up in St Albans, the market is core to our city. But I’ve always felt it’s been underutilised, especially its historic nature, and especially when we’re not seeing footfall return in the way that it should have done post-COVID.
“Even though it falls under the district council there’s more the MP could be doing to beat the drum publicly for it and nationally for it. And that’s what I’d be seeing to be doing as an MP.”
