With the General Election quickly approaching the troop’s Patrol Leaders, our senior 13 and 14 year old scouts, decided that they wanted to have a night themed on it and decided to invite the candidates for the Cambridge seat at May’s election to an evening to be grilled by the troop in a “Question Time” style event.

We were joined for the evening by Valerie Holt, campaigned for Liberal Democrat candidate Julian Huppert, Labour candidate Daniel Zeichner, Green Party Councillor Oscar Gillespie and UKIP candidate for South East Cambs Deborah Rennie.

Just like on the tv show none of the candidates knew any of the questions in advance and some were clearly surprised by the nature of some of them which varied between the voting age, use of cycle helmets, GCSE grade inflation and immigration. UKIP’s Deborah Rennie said “I was really impressed with the questions” and Labour’s Daniel Zeichner said ” it was actually the most interesting event we have done so far, because the audience was a much more genuine cross-section. I was very impressed by the young people”

They were clearly not the only ones to enjoy it as one scout called it “the best night I’ve had at scouts this year”, it looks like we may have now got some budding politicians in the making. The event also got coverage from the local press

The group would like to thank all those who gave up their time for the group in what is a very busy time in the run up to the election.