Actively Look

Oliver Coppard writes:

Last Monday I was selected as Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Hallam.

As you may know, our current MP is the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, who holds the seat with a 19,000 vote margin over Labour.

The Labour party has never won in Sheffield Hallam and I’ve lost count of the number of people who have told me I’m crazy for believing we can win here.

The question I was most frequently asked in the round of interviews that followed on Tuesday was ‘but can you really win it? But, really?’.

As I write this we have 677 days to overcome that 19,000 vote deficit, but I wouldn’t have taken the challenge on if I didn’t think it could be done.

Nick Clegg has been a disaster for Sheffield. He doesn’t live here or even spend very much time here. He broadcasts his weekly radio show on LBC in London.

His government has cut the city’s budget by £50 million just this year, and last week they have announced yet more real terms cuts to the pay of public sector workers who make up 20% of the city’s workforce. 

Nick Clegg is an absentee landlord who has done nothing for the people who live in this constituency or this city.

I’m actually from Sheffield Hallam; I was born and brought up here. I went to school here, my friends and family live here, and I’m a member of this community.

It may be the circles I move in, but I’m yet to hear anyone I know admit that they’ll be voting for Nick Clegg in 2015.

The challenge won’t be to convince people not to vote for Nick Clegg. The real challenge will be to convince people to actively look to Labour for a real and credible alternative in Hallam, and a large part of that is about our own belief.

No one else will believe we can win here if we don’t believe it ourselves. I think people are genuinely and quite rightly beginning to understand the Lib Dems, despite the size of the majority, can no longer consider Sheffield Hallam a safe seat.

So the big question is how do we win it? It’s not the most glamorous of answers, but the truth is it’s going to take hard work and an active, well organised campaign.

The evidence of the local elections earlier this year shows that where we organised effectively, we did well. Where we put boots on the ground in big numbers and spoke to people, we won.

If we actively, honestly and openly talk to people in a place like Sheffield Hallam, we will find common goals across the community; saving the NHS, delivering an evidence based education policy, combating tax avoidance, building a fairer economy.

People outside of the Labour Party care about those issues just as much as we do. Over the next 680 days we’re going to be working hard to build an inclusive campaign by talking about the issues that we all care about, and values that we have in common, right across this community.

To the extent that Nick Clegg does think about this constituency, I’m fairly sure he isn’t overly concerned by the prospect of losing his seat in 2015. However, his complacency and disregard are his biggest weakness.

This is my home and I won’t sit by as he continues to do so much damage to this community, and neither will the rest of the people of Sheffield Hallam.