It was a privilege to join Labour Coast and Country recently to talk about how Labour can rebuild support in towns, rural areas, and coastal communities. Currently, the electoral map shows England as a sea of blue, with small clusters of red in and around our cities. Our road to power must encompass towns and…
Join us for an informal Zoom discussion on Thursday (25th) at 6:45pm about the organisational tools needed by rural and coastal CLPs to win and the motions we should send to this year's virtual party conference to make that a reality. We'll be joined for the session by David Drew, the former MP for Stroud and Shadow…
One of the familiar strap-lines of the Scarlets; and an oft repeated remark of my west coast friends and family. Last weekend saw a significant pick up in the campaigning for the Welsh Assembly elections. We joined comrades on the Gower, in Llanelli and in Ogmore to support their respective AM West is best candidates – Rebecca Evans…
In recent years my campaigning activity has been limited, but having been made redundant from local government I was able at last to play an active role at the general election this year. I hit the streets with gusto wearing my ex-council demographer hat to find out the lie of the land. Now, being a…
Sunday lunch-time of the first day of Conference 2015 saw over 40 members from across England and Wales gather to reflect on what next for Labour in communities of coast and country. After moving to a larger room to accommodate everyone more comfortably, a wide ranging discussion occupied those present for almost two hours. That discussion…
On Saturday, we marched. In May we campaigned. We blog We tweet. We try. But what for? A socialist, I live in a safe Tory constituency, rural and largely affluent. But there are people here as elsewhere who are not affluent, who need the support of the State, even just for a while. So should…
As a One Nation Labour Party we need to expand our horizons beyond haphazard thinking on rural issues in order to secure a sustainable economy for Britain’s countryside and reach out to the rural electorate. What must be recognised is that rural areas are subject to an intrinsic ‘separation’, a root cause of so many…
The penultimate weekend of July was one of the hottest of the year when sensible people were heading to the coast or country. However members of the National Policy Forum were instead gathering in Milton Keynes to finalise our policy platform for 2015. As part of the National Policy Forum, Ed Miliband gave an excellent…
The Rural Group of Backbench MPs that operated throughout our 13 years in power did invaluable work to raise the profile if Labour in rural communities. What it established beyond doubt was that Rural Britain faced exactly the same issues as Urban Britain, but that the scale and sensitivity of the way in which they…
