As election fever nears its peak, High Wycombe voters will be given two chances to grill their next Wycombe MP at hustings events next week.

Your Bucks Free Press has teamed up with the Wycombe branch of national campaigning organisation, 38 Degrees, to present two Question Time style debates in the town centre on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The BFP debate will take place on Tuesday, April 28 at the Bucks New University at 7 pm. The event will be chaired by well known former Doctor Who star and BFP columnist, Colin Baker.

The 38 Degrees event will take place the next evening on Wednesday, April 29 at 7.30 pm at the All Saints Church in the High Wycombe town centre. Dr Sarah Crowther, a resident and humanitarian worker, will chair that event.

You can submit your questions in advance to peter.grant@london.newsquest.co.uk or wycombe38d@gmail.com. You can also submit questions on the night prior to the commencement of the debates.

 

Here, 38 Degrees' Peter Clarke assess the state of play in this year's General Election and where the land lies in what is one of the most unpredictable votes of recent times.

In recent elections, parties have tended to crowd together in the centre, leading to people complaining that they were all the same. This time around, you can hardly find common ground between any of the parties with each party trying to stake out unique territory.

This gives local voters more choice - and power - than they’ve had in many years. Policies on the NHS, HS2, how to deal with the deficit and the environment all sharply divide the parties. Voters and tax experts are also looking more critically at the affordability of promises made by parties.

The two debates will be impartially chaired but the public can expect frank exchanges of opinion. The questions will be taken from the public without prior warning to the candidates to keep them on their toes. Members of the public will be invited to express their own views so that the communication flows both ways.

The age of multi-party politics has clearly arrived and the age of coalition governments, or at least the likelihood of coalition governments, seems to be the new norm. This has been normal in other countries such as Germany and Denmark for decades and it seems that this is fast becoming a fact of life in the UK.

Judging by the carefully choreographed courtship rituals going on between the party leaders, they are clearly already getting used to it. This election is shaping up to be the most unpredictable in at least a generation. Will it be Labour-SNP? Conservative-UKIP? Will the LibDems be part of a coalition? Will either the Conservatives or Labour manage to scrape a majority against the expectations of all the experts?

The truth is that no one knows. Like 1997, this could be an election to stay up and watch.

This time it’s clear that turnout is going to be the key deciding factor, with the parties battling to get their supporters to the polls. Politicians of all parties across the country are nervously watching their once safe seats look increasingly vulnerable to volatile voters.

Several former cabinet ministers are reputedly nervously wondering whether they will even be returned to parliament at all. The explosive combination of factors is leading to a lot of uncertainty about what will happen and voters have never had more power to make their demands heard if they are going to part with their votes. It’s as though politics has finally caught up with Dragons’ Den and the X Factor.

In our first past the post system, parties don’t need to win more than 50% of the votes to win a constituency - they simply have to win more votes than any of the other parties standing in a constituency.

Some seats are won on as little as 35% of the votes cast, which is tipped to lead to some unexpected results this time. The Scottish referendum produced a turnout of 85%. Were that turnout to be replicated in south Bucks, the additional votes could go any way as voters, especially younger voters and people who haven’t voted before, are increasingly saying that they are less likely to vote tactically this time.

With no fewer than six candidates standing in the Wycombe constituency, spanning the full spectrum of political opinion, the stakes are high in this south Buckinghamshire seat.

If there is one thing that politically unites most residents of Wycombe and its surrounding towns and villages, it’s the loss of full A&E and maternity units at Wycombe General Hospital.

As yet there is no plan to return these services to Wycombe. But what does the changed electoral landscape have in common with getting our hospital services back, you might ask. More than you might think is the answer. Simply put, political parties and governments have traditionally paid more attention to marginal seats because that’s where elections have traditionally been won and lost.

But with restive voters demanding more from politics than ever before and all the building blocks for a higher, unpredictable voter turnout in place, no seat in the UK can be taken for granted. Simply put - voters are more empowered to demand the restoration of the local hospital services than ever before.

British votes have become very cynical about politics over the years but this time there is more reason than ever before to hear what the candidates have to say and vote. Your vote could make the crucial difference to the outcome.

And of course, it isn’t only about Wycombe General, important though that is. There are many other subjects that get people going.

The organisers of the 38 Degrees and Bucks Free Press debates have suggested topics as controversial as education, bankers’ bonuses vs food banks, HS2, immigration, the Middle East and affordable housing.