This article originally appeared on Shaun Bailey's website. Shaun is a London wide GLA Member and the 2021 Conservative Mayoral candidate.

It’s not every day you get to run for the Mayor of London. We sat down with Shaun Bailey to find out more about the rising star in politics, growing up in a council house under the shadow of Grenfell Tower, looking deeper into who he is, and find out what drives his ambition to bring change to the London boroughs.

Family and Politics

It’s shaped my view of young people in the world in a very particular way, as I’m as much about responsibilities as I am about rights. My ethos of service has shown me that we are at our best when we accept our responsibilities to serve other people.

I love working with young people, but I like to challenge them. Let’s not only focus on your rights, let’s focus on your responsibilities. It’s your responsibilities that will develop you. If someone is robbing you of your rights, then I’m prepared to have that fight. But in order to develop you we’re going to have to look at your responsibilities and how you react to that, and that’s what all the youth work, all the street work has shown me, all being involved in policy, I often had to say, don’t talk about young people as if their helpless and useless.

It is absolutely our duty of adults to support them, but don’t define them as useless, instead challenge them to do better and step up, and for me that has always been the cornerstone for discussions with young people…less patronizing and more asking them to do things, as I believe that when you ask an individual or community to take on a task, that is when their true strength starts to show.