Six years ago I stood up in the Commons and made a lot of confident promises. Today felt like the right day to actually go back and check my own homework.
Marked six years representing this constituency today, an anniversary that arrived, as these things often do, without much external fanfare, and spent part of the evening doing something I have not properly done in a good while, actually rereading my own maiden speech from six years ago, genuinely uncertain, sitting down to it, whether the person delivering those confident promises would recognise or be particularly proud of the considerably more experienced, and I think considerably more realistic, version of myself reading them back tonight.
The speech itself, reading it properly for the first time in years rather than simply remembering the general shape of it, is genuinely earnest in a way that struck me, tonight, as both slightly embarrassing and, in its own way, worth genuinely honouring rather than simply cringing at from a more world-weary present-day distance. I made specific, concrete promises about local investment priorities, about the kind of accessible, responsive representation I intended to provide, about a handful of particular local causes I pledged, with real, unguarded sincerity, to champion consistently throughout my time in this seat.
I think the honest accounting, six years on, is genuinely mixed in a way that feels considerably more true than either a purely self-congratulatory or a purely self-critical version of tonight’s reflection would actually be. Several of the specific commitments I made in that speech, I can point to real, concrete progress on, a local hospital funding campaign I promised to champion that did, eventually, after years of sustained pressure, secure meaningful new investment, a specific transport infrastructure commitment that took considerably longer than I promised but that did eventually, genuinely materialise.
Other specific promises, I have to admit honestly tonight, have simply not been kept in any way I can point to with real confidence, a particular local regeneration commitment that got genuinely, repeatedly delayed by factors both within and beyond my own direct control, a promise about a specific kind of constituency engagement structure that I described with real enthusiasm six years ago and that, if I am honest, never actually got built with anything like the consistency I originally envisioned.
I think there is a real, worthwhile discipline in actually doing this kind of honest, periodic accounting against your own past, specific commitments, rather than simply letting six years of accumulated, genuine effort and genuine activity substitute, in your own private assessment, for the considerably harder question of whether that effort and activity actually delivered on what you specifically, publicly promised when you first asked people to trust you with this job.
I am going to write a proper, public version of tonight’s private accounting for my next constituency newsletter, genuinely naming both the commitments I believe I have kept and the ones I have not, rather than simply offering constituents the more comfortable, generally positive summary of six years in office that would be considerably easier to write and considerably easier for them to read without any real discomfort attached.
I think six years into this job, the specific, sometimes uncomfortable honesty of actually checking your own work against what you originally promised is exactly the discipline that keeps this job feeling like genuine public service rather than simply a comfortable, ongoing position to occupy. I am not entirely sure the person who delivered that maiden speech six years ago would recognise everything about who I have actually become in this role since. I think he would, on balance, be glad I sat down tonight and actually checked.
My wife, who has lived through every single year of this journey alongside me, read through the old speech with me tonight, and pointed out something I had genuinely forgotten, a small, specific line near the very end about wanting, above everything else, to still be the kind of representative who actually returns phone calls personally rather than letting every single constituent interaction pass entirely through staff. I think that one, at least, I have genuinely kept, six years running, and I found real, quiet comfort in being reminded of it tonight, amid everything else in that old speech I am considerably less confident I have fully lived up to.
I am going to keep this specific practice going, actually, a proper rereading of that maiden speech every single year on this same anniversary, rather than letting six years become sixteen before I next sit down and genuinely check my own work this carefully again. I think a representative who stops periodically, honestly measuring himself against his own original promises risks becoming, gradually and without ever quite noticing it happening, simply a person occupying a role rather than someone still actively, deliberately trying to earn it.
I think that is probably the most honest note to end six years on, not a tidy verdict of success or failure, but a genuine, ongoing commitment to keep actually checking, year after year, rather than letting the comfortable accumulation of activity quietly substitute for the harder question of whether that activity has genuinely delivered what I once, considerably more nervously, stood up in that chamber and promised.
More from this author at Margaret Colley, prat.uk.
