Laura Pidcock Stood Against Me

I did not "stand against Laura Pidcock". Laura Pidcock stood against me. I have been politically active in North West Durham since she was a small child, she never set eyes on the place until after she had been imposed as the Labour candidate here in 2017, and the fact that I would eventually make a bid for this seat had been common knowledge in political circles here for a quarter of a century.

Even if all of my supporters had voted Labour, which some of them would never have done, then Richard Holden would still have won. But it is worth mentioning that whereas my proposer had been Deputy Leader of Durham County Council, no one who signed her nomination papers had ever been elected above Parish level, if at all.

We got her in 2017 because Ronnie Campbell had refused to retire and see her hand Blyth Valley to the Conservatives, but since the Conservatives won Blyth Valley in 2019, then she would still have been out of Parliament by now. Here at North West Durham, the right-wing Labour machine is determined to have the candidate that it would have produced this year if the 2015 Parliament had run its course.

It is also engaged in obsessive, never-ending lawfare to stop me, with a full Parliament's notice, from taking 1500 votes and keeping this seat blue. But I have 650 options. If I could raise enough money to be a viable candidate, then I would contest the seat where the most people had offered to sign my nomination papers. Please give generously.

In the meantime, there are 34 MPs in the Socialist Campaign Group, and 17 of them, half of the total, were first elected on the night that Laura Pidcock lost her seat. If there are future and even rising leaders of the Left in the Labour Party, then that is where to look for them.