LightningMinion started his final campaign by visiting the town of St Ives to hold a Q&A about green policy:

Q: “The River Cam is a rare and ecologically important chalk stream yet is being overburdened by humanity: its water levels are unhealthily low as we are simply pumping too much water out of it to be used in our homes and buildings. How would a Labour government tackle this?”

A: “You are quite right - the River Cam is being overburdened by our demand for water. East Anglia is, relative to other parts of the UK, a dry region. It is also a region which is expanding rapidly - for example, you have the Northstowe housing development not far from here. Cambourne is also home to housing developments, as is Cambridge. These new housing developments will all require more and more and more water yet as you’ve pointed out, our water sources are overburdened. This is why a Labour Party will draft a white paper regarding how we manage water in the UK, and one of the issues it will explore is this issue of how to get more water to this region. I think that the best solution to this issue is to build a high-capacity water pipeline between here and a wet part of the country, such as the Midlands, to bring more water here and thus enable new housing developments and to stop our chalk streams and the Cam being overburdened by our demand for water.”

Q: “Why should the UK commit to net zero emissions by 2035 when countries such as China are still polluting the planet?”

A: “It is disappointing to see that the world’s largest emitters are not committed to making the drastic and rapid cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions which the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change has called for. One foreign policy priority of a Labour government would be international cooperation on the climate crisis - it is a global crisis and international diplomacy is key to tackling it; and through international diplomacy, I am hopeful that we will be able to convince nations like China, Indian etcetera to commit to drastic and wide-scale cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions so that the world keeps to the goal of limiting temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius as agreed to at Paris.

However, a refusal by other nations to cut emissions is not a reason for us to ditch our climate targets and to keep on polluting the environment for multiple reasons. One of these is air pollution: the air of our major cities, such as London, is filled with toxic and hazardous pollutants which contribute to around 40 thousand premature deaths per year. These deaths are all avoidable and reductions to our greenhouse gas and atmospheric pollutant emissions are needed if we are to prevent these premature deaths. Secondly, air pollution is also damaging our natural environment - the buildup of toxic pollutants within animals can cause disease and birth defects, and air pollution can kill plant species and damage crops. And the third and final point I’d like to make is that if the UK shows that we can make drastic, wide-scale and rapid cuts to our carbon footprint, then so can other countries, which I believe will help encourage nations like China and India to commit to the ambitious climate action we need to combat the issue.”

Q: “Will a Labour government end the use of dangerous nuclear power?”

A: “The short answer is no, and I’d like to explain why. Firstly, I disagree that nuclear power is a dangerous method of energy generation. While we have seen that in some situations nuclear power can go very very wrong, for example at Chernobyl, such incidents are very rare and I do not believe it is likely that the UK will ever have its own Chernobyl for the simple fact that our nuclear power stations have extremely stringent safety checks and procedures to ensure that nothing can ever go catastrophically wrong at nuclear power stations.

Secondly, I’d like to explain why the Labour Party supports the use of nuclear power. The simple answer is that it is very efficient - each gram of uranium can produce much much much more electricity than one gram of let’s say coal every will. Due to this it is a cost effective and reliable way to generate a large amount of electricity for the National Grid, and I believe that investment in nuclear power is therefore essential to replace coal, gas and oil power stations. This links to the other reason why Labour supports nuclear power: in the rest of the decade as a Labour government would work to meet our target of fully decarbonising our energy grids by 2030, we will need to invest in nuclear power as a replacement for oil, coal and gas power.

Thirdly, I’d like to briefly mention nuclear fusion. Recent breakthroughs in its research in Oxfordshire mean that I am hopeful that within my lifetime we will be able to discover how to utilise it to feed our energy grids. Such a discovery would revolutionise electricity production - nuclear fusion is a highly efficient and safe way of releasing energy which requires only the most abundant element in the whole universe, hydrogen, to function.”

Q: “Why should workers in the fossil fuel industry lose their jobs due to decarbonisation?”

A: “The business practices of fossil fuel firms are unsustainable, environmentally damaging and are destroying our planet. Workers in the fossil fuel industry should not be penalised for this decision by fossil fuel firms to wreck our home in exchange for profits, which is why a Labour government will ensure that workers are not negatively affected by the transition to renewables. For example, the Rose Coalition funded a Green Jobs programme, which is funding retraining programmes and other schemes for workers in the fossil fuels industry to shift them away from the fossil fuels industry. The Labour Party stands on the side of all workers and so we would continue such funding to ensure that workers are not left behind by the transition away from avaricious, environmentally-damaging and unsustainable business practices Unfortunately I do not have the time to answer any more questions but I would like to thank you all for turning up today and for asking me some brilliant questions and I’d like to remind you all to vote for the Labour Party this Friday for a government which will take the climate crisis with the seriousness we need to tackle it!”

LightningMinion then hopped on a train to St Neots to give a talk entitled “Improving public transport in St Neots”:

“Hello and thank you for turning up to hear me discuss the Labour Party’s plans to fix our broken public transportation system.

One major issue with public transport is that it is ridiculously expensive - commuters are having to pay several hundred pounds each year for public transport tickets. You’d expect that if we are having to spend so much money to commute each day, we would be provided at the very least with a decent, on-time and comfortable service. However, anyone who has used public transport here will know very well that’s not the case at all. Buses and trains are often delayed, they are crowded and congested, and Stagecoach often uses old, polluting buses.

The Labour Party, however, has a plan to fix our public transport system. One of our plans is to end the failed privatisation of our railways and instead return them to public control so that they are democratically accountable to you and so that services are run in the interests of commuters not in the interests of wealthy shareholders like they currently are. On the 26th May last year the Rose Coalition introduced the Railways Bill drafted by the former Transport Secretaries model-elleit and SomeBritishDude26 to the Houses of Common to bring our trains into democratic public ownership and to ensure that train tickets are genuinely affordable for all. The Conservatives Coalition! delayed the bill on many occasions because they do not believe that the people of the UK deserve well-run, reliable and modern public transport networks. Fortunately for commuters, they were not successful in blocking the passage of the bill and on the 1st of March our railway services will be brought into public ownership! Electing a Labour government will safeguard the Railways Act from being shredded up by the Conservatives and their pals in Coalition! due to an ideological hatred for well-run public services.

Another one of our plans is the delivery of East-West Rail. Since I was elected to represent Cambridgeshire last year, I have continuously campaigned for its construction to improve connectivity across Cambridgeshire and successfully lobbied the Rose Coalition to commit to building it. The manifestos of the other parties running candidates in Cambridgeshire make no mention of whether they will back East-West Rail. However, this election campaign the Labour Party has committed to finishing its construction.

But why should East-West Rail be built? The simple answer is that it will improve connectivity across the region. Currently, if you wish to travel from St Neots to Cambridge, you need to either get in a car and travel on the congested A428, go on a time-consuming bus journey, or go on a long and convoluted train journey. East-West Rail, however, will provide a direct train link between St Neots, the Gransdens, the town of Cambourne, the city of Cambridge and other destinations further afield in East Anglia. It will also connect St Neots and Cambridgeshire to the west of the country to cities like Bedford, Bletchley, Bicester and Oxford. Public transport along the Cambridge-to-Oxford corridor is poor and currently relies on the X5. The construction of EWR, however, will massively improve it and will thus boost connectivity across the region.

The right-wing has a plan to continue with the broken status quo of expensive, delayed and unreliable public transport. However, it is clear that the Labour Party has a plan to massively improve public transportation across Cambridgeshire and to deliver genuinely affordable, reliable and modern public transport. If you agree with our plans, then this Friday cast your vote for the Labour Party! Thank you St Neots for welcoming me and agreeing to bore yourselves listening to me discuss trains and buses!”