Blog
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Deputy Leadership candidates answer C&C questions
Thanks to positive engagement from both Deputy Leader campaign teams please see their responses to our Coast & Country questions; we hope that helps you decide how you will vote; and will give us a Deputy Leader we can work with to continue Labour’s presence and representation of communities of Coast & of Country. Bridget’s…
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Fair Funding for Rural Areas
Kerry Booth, Chief Executive of Rural Services Network Public services are the backbone of this country, quietly carrying on in the background, making sure that our bins our emptied, our children can get to school, and our most vulnerable are cared for. At the Rural Services Network we believe that every council should have the…
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Bridging the Rural Services Gap
Graham Biggs MBE, FCG, Chairman of Directors for Rural England CIC This summer, Rural England CIC published its latest State of Rural Services report, providing an up-to-date picture of life in rural England. My role gives me a front-row seat to the realities faced by rural communities, and the findings of this report confirm much…
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Lessons from New Labour – Labour’s appeal to rural voters
Neil Ward, Labour:Coast&Country Steering Group The 2024 General Election proved (again) that Labour could win previously safe Tory seats in rural areas. Labour hold almost 50 of the most rural constituencies and almost twice as many County Constituencies (those containing some rural territory) as the Tories. Capturing so many rural seats shows how Labour can…
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Majorities, made on the coast and in the country
Hywel Lloyd, LCC Co-founder We hope you’ve all had time for family, friends and yourselves this summer break; and perhaps, like us, that’s given you time to refresh and reframe. Philip Collins’ “Memo to Keir Starmer: the three things to remember before you give the speech of a lifetime” in the Observer gives us a…
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What have coast & country ever done for us…?
Ant Reid You’ll remember the scene from Life of Brian, where the character Reg ends up listing out a long, long, list of what Romans bring for the people in the city. It’s worth having a quick refresher, John Cleese at his best, most dismissive…! It got us thinking. You see, with summer here and much…
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Securing our Community Assets
Emma Foody MP *The Assets of Community Value (Sports Facilities) Bill – Second Reading due on 11th July In towns and villages across the country, vital sporting facilities have slowly disappeared. Hundreds of swimming pools, leisure centres and sports clubs have shut their doors, meaning people – especially those living in rural areas – have…
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Winning May’26 ….. the on-going ‘Slo-Mo Rural general election’: Learning from the USA
Jack Risbridger “We are basically all the same people we just live under different systems” This was said to me at the end of this informative event, and I can’t stop thinking about what it could mean for us moving forward. The intent of the comment was to highlight how “rural” campaigners across different countries…
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The run into May 2026 …. Winning the Slo-Mo rural general election
Hywel Lloyd, Co-founder Over the past year we have highlighted that much of the elections in 2025 and 2026 amount to a Slo-Mo rural general election. Now we have the results from May 2025 there is, as ever, an opportunity for learning. With learning and improvement being key elements of a mission-based approach, we hope the government…
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Rural England – your time has come…
Back in 2019 we wrote a call for action at the local elections of that year: A Manifesto for 2019: Town’s of England, your time has come. With a new Labour government experiencing a ‘do you really like rural England?’ situation akin to that of the first Blair administration, now is surely the time to apply ourselves…