Dear fellow citizens of York. I’m proud to have put myself forward as a candidate to be your MP, which provides you with a fresh choice besides those of the main three parties. Elections are all about choice and every one of you should feel free to vote how you want and not be pressured into voting tactically at the behest of the political establishment.

I’ve been disgusted at the way politics has been conducted both locally and nationally over the last two years and so I‘ve entered this race as an act of rebellion against it.

I’m sure many of you will feel likewise, and soon you will have the chance to join me in expressing your frustrations over the way we’ve all been treated. I will not waste time offering fictitious sums of money to you, instead, I will be campaigning with my ideas for running the city and country properly.

Many of you will have voted remain, I respect that, but if democracy is to mean anything then the overall leave verdict must be honoured. To do otherwise would be an assault against democracy itself and that is something I will never do.

So I ask all democrats, both leave and remain, to support me in ensuring that Brexit happens on the best terms possible to end this national division. This process has also lead to the constitution being deliberately broken by politicians and the wider Establishment. This is both a tragedy and an opportunity.

We’ve been electing our Parliament under the same representative system since the 13th century and now it must evolve.

Party politicians do not represent you in Parliament, they represent their party leaders views during a whipped Commons division. If elected I will start a campaign for a directly elected Prime Minister so that, just like in the referendum, every vote counts equally, no matter where you are in the country and stop the nation’s leader being decided by an internal stitch up within the main parties.

Locally I will work to see that the major roads are both dualled properly, and we get rid of the choke points that are the roundabouts.

Nothing short of a fully engineered solution to make the project future proof is acceptable to me. I want to see the constituency boundaries redrawn by the river into York East and York West so MPs don’t sit in safe seats any more but in tough marginals.

I also want to see the council wards broken up into single seats to level the playing field and ensure every individual standing has to earn victory themselves.

Finally, I want the ultimate decision on major housing developments to become democratic by giving it to an elected representative of the locals, not an unknown civil servant deciding purely on technical grounds.

As an independent, I will have one master and one master alone, the electorate.

No party whip or wealthy backer will instruct me what to think, I will use my own mind to decide how best to enact what the citizens of York want, free from bias or interference.

My campaign will be conducted as I will serve in office. Instead of me visiting your doorstep to provide you with junk mail and ask something from you, i.e. your vote, I will always keep my door open to you when you need something from me.

My policies can be found on my website https://yorkindependentmin.wixsite.com/srmyork, accessible through my twitter account @MarmionScott and I welcome all inquiries from the electors of York to help them decide if I’m the best candidate for them.