My 24 hour non-stop challenge – one week on

You may remember last Monday on LabourList, I announced my intention to start the week by leaving my house at the break of dawn to talk to early morning commuters at East Croydon station, knowing that I wouldn’t be returning until the following day. My plan was to complete a 24-hour, non-stop, no sleep tour of Croydon Central, where I’m standing to be the first woman MP in May.

I spoke to commuters, parents, teachers, pensioners, knitters, small business owners, charity workers, volunteers, supermarket workers and street market traders in my bid to find out what they need from the next government to make a better future for themselves and for Croydon.

You can follow my 24-hour tour and see the people I met along the way on my website.

A week later, what can I say I learnt from my tour?

1. Make sure you have support

Firstly, a huge thank you to the fantastic response I got from LabourList readers who shared my launch blog post and then followed my day on social media. Your words of encouragement (along with the occasional caffeinated beverage) helped motivate me to keep going to the end.

If you’re involved in any capacity with a political campaign, then talk about it on social media. If you like what a candidate has been doing, send a word of support. It helps the candidate keep going and seeing a constant stream of support gives the whole campaign a moral boost.

2. People do want to engage with politics

Secondly, we’re told that we live in an age of political apathy, where the general attitude towards politicians is that they are all the same and only in it for themselves. And yet, every person I met and listened to was keen to discuss their concerns with me and help me understand what they needed for a better future.

We have a responsibility as political representatives to see beyond counting up the number of people spoken to during a door-knocking session and make sure that we take the time to really listen to and understand what voters are telling us.

3. The British public want a government that will help them 

Thirdly and most importantly, what I heard Croydon residents say time and again was that they need a government that will help them make a better future for themselves and where they live.

Last week’s budget shows just how out of touch the Tories are and how little they understand the day-to-day concerns of the British public. No one wants to be told by those in power that, on average, they’re doing better than in 2010 when their personal experience is one of struggling to pay the bills and put food on their plates.

Does Labour have the right policies to help the British public make a better future for themselves? I believe we do and, one week on, I believe more strongly than ever that only a Labour government can deliver for the residents of Croydon and for the British population as a whole.