The Chesham and Amersham by-election is a great opportunity to demonstrate the power of a progressive alliance and issue a warning to this corrupt and negligent Conservative government. The late Cheryl Gillan won 55% of the vote in the 2019 General Election, down 5% from 2017, with the Liberal Democrats taking 26% (up 13%), Labour 13% (down 8%) and the Greens 6% (up 3%). The constituency’s demographics and voting habits are moving in a progressive direction, but not quickly enough for those of us fed up with being represented by an MP who will always put the interests of the Conservative Party before our own. If nothing changes, we are still years away from a progressive candidate winning this seat.

But things don’t have to be this way. Over 55% of the constituency voted Remain. The new planning laws in the Queen’s speech are deeply unpopular. HS2’s desecration of the Chilterns AONB continues unabated. The Tories assume that seats like ours in the ‘blue wall’ will always return a Conservative candidate, no matter what they throw at us. The fact the Lib Dems wrestled control of Amersham Council from the Conservatives in May shows this assumption no longer holds.

The arrival of a progressive MP in Chesham and Amersham can be accelerated, but only if you are willing to work together to agree on one unifying candidate to stand against the Conservative party and represent us all in this by-election. We the signatories of this petition pledge our support in campaigning for whichever candidate you decide is best placed to win here. Failure to act decisively and put forward just one candidate will inevitably condemn us to another indefinite period of Tory misrule and misrepresentation. We deserve better. And so do millions of other progressives across the country. If we are given the chance to demonstrate what’s possible when Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens work together in Chesham and Amersham, imagine the forces of progress that could be unleashed across the ‘blue wall’ and the wider country.