Hélder Costa planned to complete a degree in Business Management in the UK and return to Portugal to set up his business, but eventually changed careers and stayed in England, where he is a candidate for the local elections on Thursday.
Plans changed in the final year of the course, when he was elected president of the student union and began working with non-governmental institutions.
“That was the point that changed my career direction”said Agência Lusa, the 26-year-old man from Porto, who currently heads several organizations that support and encourage young people to participate in social and political life.
Costa recalls “a fantastic year” dealing with the European and UK parliaments due to the ‘Brexit’ process, which gave him the confidence to take a different professional path.
However, he was a father, which weighed on his decision to stay in Sunderland, near Newcastle, in the north of England, and his involvement in local politics was a continuation of his experience as a student leader.
Membership of the Liberal Democrats, the British opposition party, was the result of reflection on its own principles: leaning towards a right-wing economic ideology, but attached to the social value of the European project.
The campaign for councilor in the Southwick area of Sunderland focused on access to quality housing and advocating for more local investment.
“We must create jobs and improve existing ones”argued the Portuguese, at a time when there is a lot of decentralization in the north east of England.
Although the region largely voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum, it says many voters are dissatisfied with the Conservative Party government, confirming its unpopularity in polls.
“I hope to get elected. It is difficult to distinguish a councilor from a deputy in terms of party values, so local voters will be influenced by the behavior of parties at the national level”he said.
On the other side of England, in Brighton, 29-year-old Renato Marques is running for the Greens, a party whose only member, Caroline Lucas, represents this coastal town about 50 miles from London.
An administrative officer of the UK public health system, he moved from Bournemouth seven years ago, delighted with this “vibrant and much more diverse town, with people from different backgrounds”.
Born in Covilhã, he arrived in the UK in 2004 at the age of 10, with his parents, who left precarious jobs in the textile industry in Beira Alta to “seek a better quality of life”.
Marques first woke up to politics during the 2010 protests over increased tuition fees by the coalition government between Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats and David Cameron’s Conservatives.
After moving through the trade union movement, he joined the Greens, with whom he shares a pro-European and left-wing political outlook, as a candidate in the Westbourne & Poets’ Corner area.
The main campaign themes were housing costs, recycling and composting, but also the risks of car traffic, especially near schools.
“We are facing the same problems as the rest of the country, such as the rise in the cost of living, the deterioration of living and working conditions and wages”he said to Lusa.
In the 2019 election, the Greens elected 20 councilors in Brighton, but they are in danger of losing ground to Labour, whose popularity has soared and they are at the forefront of the polls nationally.
All elections are differentsays Marques, who encourages the Portuguese to get involved in local politics because “it’s a way of listening to what communities have to say and making sure we can solve problems together”.
Like Hélder Costa and Renato Marques, Daniel Carvalho is also running for councilor in an area without a significant Portuguese community, just because he wants to contribute to the community.
He is a professor of physics and mathematics and has been living in Lincoln, in the north of England, for seven years, after spending several years in Spain. He has a Portuguese passport as he is descended from Goan grandparents, but he has not lived in Portugal.
“Children need more opportunities, we have a lot of homeless people and drug addicts and I think I can influence several generations”he said to Lusa.
He is running for the Conservative Party for a third time, following attempts in 2021 and 2022, this time in the Boultham area, where many immigrants, including Romanians and Lithuanians, live.
Traffic congestion and lack of street cleanliness are other campaign issues.
“This zone traditionally votes Labour, but change never happens overnight”he says, hoping voters will be more interested in local issues than the national-level controversies facing conservatives.
More than 8,000 representatives from 230 local authorities across England will be elected in Thursday’s local elections.
Carla Barreto is running for re-election as an independent in the Thetford Burrell area of Breckland, while Aurelio Spinola is running for the Conservative Party in Great Yarmouth, in the Central And Northgate area.
Both Thetford and Great Yarmouth, both in eastern England, have tens of thousands of Portuguese residents, most of them employed in food processing plants.
Agência Lusa identified other candidates who were Portuguese or of Portuguese descent, but they declined to make statements.
Last year in UK local elections in England and Scotland, a record seven Portuguese or Portuguese descendants were elected as councillors.
Source: DN
