Rotherham Council: Councillor wants to 'push for the interests of the local community'

Councillor Firas Miro won the Rother Vale seat in last May’s election, unseating Labour councillor Bob Walsh with 551 votes.

Councillor Miro says he wanted to get involved in politics ‘to see if anything could be done about Brexit’, after becoming ‘frustrated’ with the process.

Coun Miro says adds that he became ‘more frustrated’ with the government and Brexit, ‘to the extent that I felt that I really needed to kind of get involved personally with politics, at whatever level I can I try to make a difference to what’s going on’.

He began working with the Liberal Democrats in Rotherham in 2019 after the general election, and is now one of four Lib Dems on Rotherham Council, three of whom are doctors.

Councillor Miro moved from his native Syria to study medicine at St Andrews University, graduating from Keele University before moving to Waverley last August to work at Rotherham Hospital as an acute medicine registrar.

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Councillor Miro felt ‘angry’ before the last general election, with ‘the amount of lying and deceiving that was going on’ around Brexit.

Coun Miro said: “I thought that I personally needed to do something to try and prevent that from happening if at all possible. And it kind of looked possible just before the election in 2019.”

Councillor Miro said he is concerned about the long-term effects of Brexit, such as ‘consequences in terms of travel, and being able to live and study and work in Europe, trade being more difficult leading to inflation, and the potential strain on the NHS, after EU doctors and nurses left the country’.

He added: “For example, we hear a lot about UK expats needing to leave Spain now in large numbers, because i’s not sustainable for them to live there anymore.

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“This will lead to a bigger burden on the NHS right at the time when it is failing to deal with its current workload due to more than ten years of conservative government’s cuts and austerity”.

“The NHS will start to have to take those people back with all the chronic illnesses that we have, most of them are elderly.

“And that will increase the pressure on the winter situation, because we have more illness in winter, the Covid situation.”

Speaking of conditions in his native Syria which he has not been able to visit since 2010 due to the security situation, Councillor Miro said,’“there is really no future, as the cost of living is so high, and people of working age are getting out of the country as soon as they get a chance’.

“Damascus airport [is] pretty much full of young men because there is no prospect for work or employment. Even if you were employed, sometimes transport to and from work takes all the money you have.

“That is another reason why I wanted to get involved in the democratic process in this country, because it is something that large swathes of the Syrian populations do not experience at all, and I feel privileged to be in the position that I am currently in.

“In Syria it is more like – forget about getting ahead, and just work for your food everyday.”

Councillor Miro says he is proud to have won the election last May, and is hopeful for the future at Rotherham Council.

“I will say I’m very proud of the recent successes of the Liberal Democrats, and I do hope that the next election will produce something of a coalition government between us and Labour that will restore some sanity to the political situation in this country.

“I used to hear complaints from local people, and I was hoping that by standing, I could potentially try and push for the interests of the local community.”

Some of the complaints he hears regularly include lack of a local shop in the area, meaning residents have to drive to the Morrisons at Catcliffe, and although it is a national problem, lack of sizeable housing to accommodate families, and better infrastructure.