PPC Profile: Tom Miller

Full Name: Tom Miller

Age: 23

From: Woking. Mostly.

PPC for: Woking. Completely.

Selection Result:
Got over 3/4 of the vote in the final round of counting, but I shan’t go into details. It’s only been a short while since the initial selection. Our old PPC stepped down to contest Erith, so we had to run a selection at the same time as local elections.

Member of the Labour Party since:
Oooh, some time around 2003/04. Not that it was Iraq that attracted me, I joined at what I regard as the lowest ever point in Labour’s history in government, in that respect. They ask this question in selections over and over again, by the way, and I can never remember.

CV:
Well, I have a degree in Law with Politics. I preferred the law, but could never afford to take it any further. Without getting too extensive, bearing my age in mind, I’ve spent most of my time working in the service sector, restaurants and bars. I have also briefly been an organiser and worked for some planning public affairs people, and of course spent a few months at LabourList before the McBride affair rinsed us out of cash. Good to see that you’ve managed to run it and rebuild it without receiving any potentially libelous emails. It shouldn’t be that difficult really!

I was inspired to go into politics because:
There is whole world in need of change. Our neighborhoods need it too. I could wheel out a million quotes, but probably the best is from Robert F. Kennedy: “I believe that while there is plenty, poverty is evil”.

My main policy interests are:
Well, I suppose policy priorities change with time. At the moment I would support the line ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’. There are things to be done in the world, which all need labour power, but we have rising unemployment and poverty, as well as lots of concentrated wealth. This whole situation is patently absurd.

In terms of interests, I would say that my main policy interests are probably public transport, public service reform, and the environment, which I suppose is a bigger priority for our generation than for a decent sized chunk of Labour politicians before us.

Those are my interests, but my actual immediate priorities are a bit different. For obvious reasons at the moment I’m interested almost exclusively in creating and saving decent jobs, and getting people spending money.

I believe in balanced budgets, but I think the best way to do that is to make sure we come out of recession without having completely devastated our potential to recover. Increased investment and borrowing is needed, because it’s a slow rise we need, in other words.

Three things I think should be in the next Labour manifesto are:
1 – Restructure. Break up and permanently mutualise state banks for stability, and to avoid monopoly, split investment functions as far as possible from retail banking, and have trade union and small shareholder reps sit on company boards where applicable. Maybe not the most populist one, this!

2 – Bring in a local living wage system, to be set by local authorities based on a set of guidelines built around prices…basically, peg the bottom rate of pay to inflation.

3 – I’m stuck between ‘promise a representative voting system’ and ‘regularise illegal immigrants so they work and pay for what they use’. Sorry, cheated.

I think people should vote for me because:
If they don’t I can’t win? But seriously, I think Woking deserves better than the Conservatives. It never gets it. And ecumenical as I am, I am in this party for a reason; despite my departing from the ‘third way’, and general social democracy, I see little alternative. Labour is the only vehicle for progressive politics as things stand. The Lib Dems will never be a feasible government, or have any sense of political responsibility. They have no constituency.

I was never on the panel you need to be on to be an MP until the local vacancy unexpectedly arose when the PPC stepped down. I grew through my adolescence in this area, and I care about the people who live in it, particularly (but not only) in those pockets of tough areas that our local political establishment chooses to completely ignore and deny.

And I have decent policies.

I appreciate that I am (very) young, but the commons is full of rose-cheeked guffawing old men, and few of them know how to make a slippery nipple, or what it feels like to shower stale fag ash out of your hair. There is lots of public service, but very little service sector. In New Zealand, Labour put Jacinda Ardern near the top of their list. Why don’t we have any young parliamentarians?

AOB:
You should all know that Derek Draper subsists almost entirely on doughnuts. Eat enough of them and you’re sure to pull someone from GMTV!