WHEN it comes to products and services, quite often a business will advertise or market itself as being 'local'.

This can have certain advantages if it leads to convenience, but what really persuades people about using a local business is the knowledge that it is rooted in the community and that there is an obligation that the product or service provided will befit as well as benefit that community.

Likewise, in politics, you often hear a lot about a candidate being local or having local connections.

But it does make me wonder what exactly 'local' means in politics. You could have a candidate who is born and educated in an area but then moves and lives away for their formative years, where they pursue a career in a completely different part of the country. They could even make a commitment to becoming a councillor in that new area, and to put down roots there.

If they then want to return to the area of their birth for reasons of political expediency, does this make them a 'local' candidate? This type of thing is actually quite common in politics.

And what about someone like me, who moved to an area decades ago, put down roots, helped build up a business which now employs more than 60 people in the area, married a local girl – and first entered public service in the area by becoming a councillor on the Carlisle City Council.

Carlisle is my home, and regardless of my political career, it always will be. This, to me, is true localism.

The final scenario is a candidate with no local connections who is effectively 'parachuted' into a particular constituency – if they are high profile or well-regarded within a political party, this can often happen with 'safe seats'.

It would be wrong to say these individuals never make good candidates or representatives – I know some who have – but this is where the 'local' is truly taken out of politics!

I do think that truly knowing a local area, being part of a local community, and having a commitment to that area means that an MP properly rooted in a local area will always be more inclined to make decisions and commitments which better benefit and reflect the constituency than one who isn’t.

However, presenting as a local candidate in order to cover for a lack of credentials or ideas is a far worse scenario than getting the best possible people to represent constituencies up and down the country – local or otherwise.

But the beauty of democracy means that ultimately, the choice of representative is nobody’s decision but the voters’.