General Election 2024: Bucks faith leaders urge candidates to show ‘respect'

With the mud-slinging well underway, faith leaders in the county have called on MP hopefuls to love thy neighbour – even those ‘those with whom we disagree’ – in the run up to the 4 July vote.

In an open letter to the candidates of 2024, more than 40 signatories representing the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Quaker and Baháʼí faiths ask for their campaigns to ‘challenge hate’ and be contested on values of ‘community cohesion’.

The reverends, rabbis and other religious figures also warn against ‘treating communities locally as political footballs’ and to ‘avoid deliberate efforts to sow division and enmity’.

Reverend James Dwyer who has been helping coordinate the call for kinder campaigning, which is hosted on the website of ‘Faith in Bucks and West Herts’.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “As candidates set out their election pledges, it’s so important they do so in a way that seeks to bring people together rather than force them apart.

“Our call as faith leaders – united by a desire to see communities flourish – is a call for candidates to see our diversity as a strength and work together for the betterment of our society.”

The Vicar of Christ Church Flackwell Heath has welcomed the dozens of faith leaders from Buckingham to Berkhamsted who have added their names to the open letter.

He said he was also encouraged by the growing number of political candidates who have signed the public commitment to campaign kindly.

The list includes Catherine Bunting, the Green Party’s candidate for Wycombe, Gareth Williams who is representing the Conservatives in Chesham and Amersham and Liberal Democrat Dominic Dyer in Buckingham & Bletchley.

The faith leaders’ intervention comes as Buckinghamshire’s runners and riders have already begun trading barbs in the run-up to 4 July.

One of the most heated contests is in Wycombe, where Steve Baker is projected to lose the seat he has held as an MP for 14 years.

The veteran Tory came in for major criticism last week, just days into the election campaign as he refused to cancel his holiday to Greece.

The Northern Ireland minister was accused of ‘giving up’ by the crowded field of seven hopefuls vying to replace him as MP for Wycombe.

Labour’s Emma Reynolds – who also signed the commitment – claimed she was ‘staggered’ that Baker had jetted off to Europe, while George Galloway also lambasted him as he launched Khalil Ahmed’s campaign outside Wycombe’s Guildhall last week.

The Workers Party of Britain leader told the crowd: “That’s how much he cares about you. He is in Greece while we are here on the back of a truck.”