By Sakeena Sanders, Journalist Leader Year 10

Before the General Election we had our own mock election at NHEHS, which was preceded by all of the candidates: Sonul Badiani (Liberal Democrat), Kate Crossland (Green Party), Julian Gallant (Conservative Party), Samir Alsoodani (Brexit Party) and Rupa Huq (Labour Party), individually coming to NHEHS and being thoroughly questioned about their party’s policies and other issues.

First came Julian Gallant, CON, who was questioned in detail about issues such as Islamophobia in the Conservative party, Boris Johnson’s homophobic comments, the NHS and Jennifer Acuri. The next day, Rupa Huq, LAB, was rigorously challenged about anti-semitism in the Labour party, education and the council.

The following week, Samir Alsoodani, BREXIT, came in, and under the watchful eye of the biggest audience of all the candidates, was asked about Islamophobia and xenophobia in the Brexit party, especially from Nigel Farage and why he wanted to leave the EU. The next candidate was Sonul Badiani of the Liberal Democrats who answered questions on issues including climate change, the revoke policy and tuition fees. Her answers seem to go down well with the audience which seemed to be strongly reflected in our results.

The final candidate to come under scrutiny was Kate Crossland, GREEN, who offered a faster, perhaps more idealistic vision of tackling the climate emergency; although she was asked about Jonathan Bartley (the co-leader of the Green party) wanting to ban halal meat. Interestingly, Crossland faced much less opposition than all of the other candidates.

In our mock election there were 30 seats to be won, representing the 30 form groups, meaning that 16 were needed to win an overall majority. After an exit poll that looked promising for the Liberal Democrats, the results were:

• Brexit Party: no seats
• Conservative Party: 1 seat
• Labour Party: 2 seats
• Green Party: 4 seats
• Liberal Democrat Party: 23 seats

These results indicate a Liberal Landslide at NHEHS!

Although these results were not mirrored by the Ealing Central and Acton ward, they could indicate huge changes to the borough, and possibly the rest of the country if these results were reflected in the future, notably with 54.8% voting Liberal Democrat at NHEHS. Perhaps, once our generation are all able to vote in General Elections, we will have the opportunity to vote to rejoin the EU, as the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker has said he hopes that Britain will rejoin the EU after Brexit.