Barnsley Central: Opportunities and threats

By George Lindars-Hammond / @george_bloggs

Eric Illsley was certainly dishonest with his expenses, and will resign after admitting fraudulently claiming over £14,000 worth of council tax and other bills.

His record came out long before the general election and a question that could be asked is why was he reselected for his seat when others (Morley and Chaytor for example) were not? The answer lies the nature of Barnsley itself.

Being an ex-coal mining community, the national party in London would have faced mutiny if they deselected a former NUM official, especially when Illsley was still protesting his innocence.

Now he is gone, Labour have a by-election to fight in order to reclaim the seat. Winning won’t be a problem though – the general election majority was sufficiently large, before even considering our current strong poll position. To complement the naturally good position, the local party selected Dan Jarvis whose rugged good looks and heroic war record should easily offset the fact that he isn’t local enough to have heard of local maverick ‘Kipper’ Jackson.

Our comfortable starting position points to an opportunity for Labour. I believe that we can afford to start a proper conversation over the next month with the people of Barnsley Central and without the pressure felt in Oldham. Labour should focus on high quality interaction with people on the doorstep and work to rebuild the trust that has evidently been lost in places such as Barnsley. You only have to look at the difference in our vote between 1997 and 2010 where Labour lost 11,000 votes, the Lib Dem and Tory shares nearly doubled and the BNP climbed to 8.9%. Going back to winning in style will be hard in an area that is has plenty of reasons to be disillusioned with politicians. Rather than sell people ‘What the coalition are cutting in Barnsley’ we should ask people how they want to see things change. We should show that the people of Barnsley are part of the Labour movement, not just votes for the taking.

This by-election will, worryingly, be the biggest effort by the British National Party since Barking in May. Then, this seat provided their 7th best result and there is already evidence of a significant activist effort. Their candidate Enis Dalton is not, I suspect, the ‘well known community worker’ they claim she is and hasn’t impressed in media appearances, even on their own BNPtv. However, her non-traditional BNP image may aide her.

Dan Jarvis shouldn’t worry about the BNP. The reason for this is that they garner many of their votes through the ‘Bring home our Boys’ message which he is uniquely placed to counter. Rather than allow the BNP the oxygen of being talked up, it is old-style positive campaigning that will ensure a good result for us here. We can only do this with enough committed campaigners coming up and helping start a proper debate in a seat which for too long we have taken for granted.