THE Green Party’s candidate for North Wiltshire failed to appear at General Election hustings in Calne yesterday.

Bonnie Jackson sent her apologies to the organisers for being unable to attend as her young three-month-old daughter was poorly.

Margaret Green, the party’s candidate for Chippenham, stood in on her behalf, saying she would do her best to speak on the party’s policies.

Mrs Green stood down in the nearby Chippenham constituency after her party’s political pact with the Liberal Democrats.

At the hustings, she was up against the other three candidates, including sitting Conservative MP James Gray, Brian Mathew for the Lib Dems, and local Calne town councillor Jonathan Fisher for the Labour Party.

The event at the Calne Methodist Church was chaired by local author and radio playwright Edward Barham and attracted nearly 120 local residents.

Mr Gray has been the constituency MP for the past 20 years and urged voters to give him five more years, saying “I have been totally and utterly committed to North Wiltshire.”

Jonathan Fisher played on his local credentials, saying he and his family has chosen to live in Calne and were “very proud” to call it home, and that his three children all went to local schools.

Brian Mathew was keen to push the national Lib Dem line of revoking Article 50 to keep the country in Europe.

He said: “The UK is at an historic crossroads. We are at a fork in the road for our country. We cannot walk away from our friends in Europe.”

Mrs Green outlined the Green Party’s policies and said climate change would be one of the big determining factors for voters in the General

Election on December 12.

Each candidate was given four minutes to address the audience and then Mr Barham allowed time for a lengthy question and answer session which ended promptly at 9pm.

Questions from those present covered topics such as climate change, the environment, Brexit, whether it was democratic to have a second referendum on leaving the EU, the NHS, poverty and the homeless, foodbanks, and whether billionaires should have a moral obligation to help those much poorer than themselves.Everything was very civilised: there was no acrimony, harsh words or heckling from either the four candidates or the audience.

Indeed, Mr Gray even said at one point “all of the candidates would make good MPs.”

Afterwards, the candidates stood chatting to supporters and answered further questions from those interested enough to stay on past nine o’clock.

In the 2017 General Election, Mr Gray won the North Wiltshire seat with 32,398 votes (60.32 per cent) from Mr Mathew in second place with 9,521 votes (17.73 per cent) and Peter Baldrey with 9,399 votes (17.50 per cent)for the Labour Party.

Phil Chamberlain for The Green Party got 1,141 votes (2.12 per cent), Paddy Singh for the UK Independence Party got 871 votes (1.62 per cent), and Independent candidate Lisa Tweedie got 376 votes (0.70 per cent).

The turnout in 2017 was 53,797 (75.34 per cent), with 91 votes spoiled.

The 2019 General Election is likely to be a much tougher fight with only four candidates battling to win the seat, which takes in Malmesbury, Calne, Royal Wootton Bassett, villages to the north of Chippenham and those on the edge of Swindon.