I will walk 500 miles…

By Ruth Smeeth / @RuthSmeeth

Yesterday I finished a 10-day tour of my prospective constituency. I met literally hundreds of people, dozens of organisations and visited every corner of my patch. I was meant to walk the distance (over 75 miles), but twisted my ankle on the eve of the tour, which had been months in the planning – so whilst we walked through the villages and towns (me with a stick), we drove between the main locations. It was an amazing experience and as much as I thought I knew about Burton – I know ten times more now.

The question is: why did I do it?

As a candidate you walk, and walk, and walk, aiming to talk to as many people as possible. Personally I have gone through more shoes then I would wish to count! The problem is that this is generally done within an election timetable.

As politicians we talk about listening – but this has to be more than just a phrase. As aspiring politicians we focus our efforts on where we think our vote lives – this isn’t wrong, it’s just the reality of electoral politics – and we rarely have the time to discover the issues that people really care about. I don’t mean the national headlines or the local infrastructure problems, we rightly hear about those on the doorstep. Rather, as politicians, we miss the issues that people are quietly facing everyday: the fears for their children; the realities of not enough social housing; the true fear of antisocial behaviour; the lack of community.

No single politician (no matter how local, how attentive, or how engaged) knows what is really happening in all areas of their patch. This is even more of an issue when you seek election to a parliamentary constituency. How could any one individual know what is happening to nearly 100,000 human beings on a daily basis? We all have different priorities and issues and whilst constituencies may be geographically sensible, the issues faced are totally different from one end of the patch to the other. Over the last ten days I have discussed everything from the TB threat to farms, to the new homelessness shelter in Burton-on-Trent.

In rural areas you may easily cover 100 square miles. In Burton, even the name of the constituency is disingenuous: it broadly encompasses East Staffordshire. It is home to the towns of Burton-on-Trent and Uttoxeter as well as over 25 villages and can take an hour to drive from one end to the other.

I live in the constituency and I work hard as a candidate. I knew however, that I was missing something. I wanted to spend more than 5 minutes with someone on the doorstep. I wanted to know the issues that were being faced by the different communities across East Staffordshire, but mostly I wanted to talk to people from across the patch about the issues facing them, rather then the issues I think they face.

This led to the “Ruth Responds” tour. It wasn’t just about making sure I have visited every corner of the patch. It was about making sure that I really was an accessible, open and transparent advocate for the issues that matter to my local communities. I don’t just want to be the MP for Burton, I want to be a fantastic MP for my constituents, and one who represents their views and their concerns. To do that I have to know them!

So this isn’t the end of the “Ruth Responds” tour – from next month we will continue with local surveys and town hall meetings. I’ll keep you updated.

Here are some of the videos from my tour:

Meeting with Paul Laffey at the YMCA, 3:30pm, Thursday, 6th August, 2009

East Staffordshire Children’s Centre – 5:21pm, Thursady, 6th August, 2009

Support our Soldiers – 8:50pm, Friday, 7th August, 2009

Ellastone – 03:51pm, Mon 10th Aug 2009