Another candidate has declared to stand in this year’s general election.

Joney Faragher is hoping to represent Douglas East in the House of Keys for the Manx Labour Party, which began in 1918.

She is currently the leader of the political group and believes if elected, she would uphold the principles of the party.

She told the Manx Independent: ’I’ve been interested in politics for a long time. I studied politics in A-levels and in recent years, I’ve seen what’s happening in inequality and people’s life choices being impacted and climate change.

’I was elected leader of the Manx Labour Party last year and decided I wanted to stand and see if I can make a [positive] difference in the Isle of Man.’

Ms Faragher said that her main objectives as a politican would include education, climate change and mental health. ’My manifesto will include lifelong education - to drill-down on the impact of people’s earliest experiences of switching-off in education, which can impact later in adulthood; the climate crisis; mental health - including suicide prevention; health and wellbeing, such as early intervention schemes which I’m passionate about and proven to be the most efficient use of money, and social care such as housing, which I feel is in crisis now and I feel too many people are in some form of poverty and there’s inequality.’

She added: ’It’s social issues for the climate crisis too that I’m passionate about. We need to be doing a lot more in our society to help most people as well as vulnerable people [in our society]. I really do feel like we can only judge the strength of our society by how well we look after the more vulnerable people within society.’

The general election is still planned to go ahead on September 23 2021, but the local authority elections have been postponed until July due to the current Covid-19 situation on the island.

Ms Faragher said she doesn’t think there should be a delay to the general election.

’What we really need to be looking at doing is actually modernise our election/democratic system so that we can inbuild more postal and digital voting,’ she said.

’At the moment, of course door-to-door campaigning can’t go ahead, but if we hopefully get back to our Covid-free scenario in future, there’s no reason why people can’t go out and canvass again, providing that there’s no restrictions.’

Other candidates standing in the general election for the Labour party so far are party chair Sarah Matlby for Douglas South and Gareth Young for Garff.