Slugger presents the East Belfast Hustings….

The East Belfast seat is one of the most contested in Northern Ireland.

Come and watch Gavin Robinson and Naomi Long debate the key issues for the upcoming Westminster Election.

Sam McBride from the Newsletter, Allison Morris from the Irish News and columnist Alex Kane will also be in attendance to pose questions to the candidates.

This event is brought to you by sluggerotoole.com and our partners Chambré Public Affairs & Lucid Talk.

Tickets are free but you do need to book. We will not admit anyone without a ticket.

Tickets are now sold out but click here to put your name on the reserve list…

Explantory Note:

This is a non-selective hustings. The organisers have sought to create a short and focussed hustings in East Belfast. It would have been impractical to run a short hustings event with all the candidates present as the time allocated to each candidate would have been so short. Instead criteria have been applied to shrink the field of candidates invited to participate tonight.

• We have invited candidates from parties that had a significant share of the vote (10% or more) in the constituency at the 2010 Westminster election http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/aeb.htm, while taking into account more recent elections (2011 Assembly http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/aeb.htm and 2014 Local Government http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/nlgbcc.htm) in case there was evidence of a significant shift in support
• Three parties qualify: Alliance, DUP and UUP. The UUP are not running a candidate. The two candidates invited have a much greater local prominence than any of the other candidates standing in 2015 and occupy distinct and different areas of the political spectrum found in East Belfast.

The organisers and chair of the hustings have no links to the parties running in the constituency.

The invited candidates will be given equal time to answer questions and reasonable opportunity within the overall hustings to respond to points made against them by other candidates. After opening statements by the invited candidates, they will be asked questions by our panel who work and write across the full range of Belfast daily newspapers. Finally the candidates will have an equal time to question each other.

As well as listening to the invited candidates, the audience will be informed about the other candidates and parties contesting the election in East Belfast.