Labour candidate Melanie Onn is back. Since last being MP for Grimsby in 2019, she’s revamped her ideas and is now returning for another election, saying that she can remember when people “had a right to be proud of being from Grimsby”. According to Onn, in recent years “things have gone downhill significantly” with “rising crime” and further issues for public health funding, stating how Grimsby “feels very broken”.

With Onn voting for further mass surveillance in 2016, I asked her why she thinks crime is still rising in Grimsby. The former MP stated that she believes the primary root of Grimsby’s issues “largely comes down to drugs” and other “underlying issues” with it being “very much about the feeling”. If she became elected she told us that she would focus on “proper drug and alcohol services” to help for a more coordinated system for helping those affected by “mental health” and “unstable early lives”.

However, not all is ideal with the politician. Despite telling us that drugs are a large cause of many problems, she later told us that we are in fact wasting “a huge amount of police resources for relatively low level issues”, in reference to the drugs she was just telling us were a major issue. Onn also then denied telling us of rising crime in the introduction of her talk and seemingly could not remember any of her votes or allegiances, asking which way she voted on further mass surveillance of people’s communications and activities. Is this perhaps a signal of little focus on votes that impact our lives? Onn then went on to jokingly tell us that “if you earn lots of money you don’t have to pay taxes”, in trend with her votes against matters like raising the threshold of when people begin to pay income tax. Onn also commented on the ongoing Israel and Palestine conflict, saying that “the scale of Israel’s response” is “horrific” but also telling us “Hamas knew exactly the consequences of the actions it would take”. She then moved on to say that the war “is normalised for them” and that “people have to be a little patient”. Overall, Onn said she held “support for a two state solution”.

To conclude her talk, Onn told us that “All is not well with government” and that we should “hurry up and bring on the general election”.