Seaside town, former industrial heartland, now with high umeployment and deprivation, typical of where Labour is losing voters
Yesterday, my sister lost her job. She found out around 2 o’clock this morning, as the count came in that the northern Labour MP she has worked so closely with for five years lost in yesterday’s UK general election. One of many Labour MPs kicked out.
The Labour MP is hard working, conscientious and has at the heart of her aims to make the life of the most vulnerable in society better. She wasn’t perfect and there are a whole host of issues that I disagreed with her on. As friends would readily say, I’m no cheerleader for Labour or the MP.
My sister’s role was to assist the MP on a local level - she had worked for Citizens Advice for years, which is why she got the job. And she was bloody brilliant at it. For five years she dealt with the everyday problems brought up by constituents. In one of the most deprived constituencies in the UK. By a country mile. On a daily basis she dealt with people with deprivation and mental health problems; she contacted the relevant authorities on welfare difficulties; she got many many thousands of pounds to many people in desperate need from authorities; she got people to food banks. She, on behalf of her MP, did all the largely unheralded things that is vital in these days of searingly ideological austerity.
She didn’t always succeed and there are countless heart-breaking stories. That’s what you get when you live and work in a working-class area with working-class problems.
Ultimately, however, all this counted for little on Election Day. The inept leadership of Corbyn, the fact that the MP didn’t vote for Brexit and opposed the May and Johnson deals, did for her. But it was also the deliterious, constant public narrative, the battering she took on social media and in public, by Brexiters and obsessive Labour Corbyn supporters that also did for her.
She was a very good local MP, doing the best for her constituents. It wasn’t enough. The Tory the voters have put in might not know it, but he’s going to have to do a hell of a lot of local work with one of the most deprived populations in the UK to get anywhere near the work my sister, and her MP, did.
My sister is now unemployed. But she’ll fight back. Because it’s at times like this that people like her are most needed.