I was born in the great city of Nottingham and have lived and grown up in the area which, via the Brian Clough way (A52) the city is linked to Derby, the other great city of the East Midlands.

Full statement

My working life has been spent in sales and marketing, latterly in a more technical role. I started working at the height of the Blair reform era, where I like many others witnessed the shift of monetary power away from the people to large corporations. Supermarkets were able to monopolise and kill off many town centres.

Then there were new wars which brought much misery and devastation to the world. And constitutional reforms that continually shifted power away from the people to financial corporate bodies. I believe many of the nation's problems can be attributed to self-interest and profiteering, an example being the human trafficking in the channel, which would end if Serco were nationalised.

Blairism, which is ongoing, consolidated power in the hands of wealthy corporate private members clubs and cynically uses well-meaning people on the left of politics to create policy which is then enacted by one of the two ruling parties. The policies of the Conservative party often seem to have origins in Labour party ideas.

I was honoured to be selected for the seat of Mid Derbyshire for Reform UK and help a movement determined to make things right. The state of the nation has become so intolerable that even people’s basic needs, such as housing, are not being met. It has become unbearable to witness the repeat cycle of Conservative-Labour administrations and see greater outrages imposed on ordinary people.

The nation feels oppressed and conformist and our culture is being diverted away from traditional English values. I believe that Reform UK, as a fresh, young party, has the potential to reform the parliamentary system, the continual Conservative/Labour kayfabe and the Civil Service, which carries out the policy decided by the unaccountable.

I believe we must stand above the old dogmas of left-wing and right-wing politics and take the best ideas from both. Power must be returned to the people. Manufactured divisiveness must end, and policy must focus on delivering harmony and balance so that people can live happy, fulfilled lives.