Richmond Park prospective candidate: All the Lib Dems support is the status quo

This article is part of a series of comment pieces by the shortlisted candidates for Labour’s candidacy for the Richmond Park by-election. You can read them all here.

The Richmond Park by-election is an unusual event. It has been caused because our Tory MP, Zac Goldsmith, resigned to fight a by-election as an Independent – though with clear Tory support – on the issue of the third runway at Heathrow, as he so often has said he would do. Many people in the Labour Party, including most of the local Labour MPs such as Ruth Cadbury, Andy Slaughter and John McDonnell, whose constituency includes the airport, don’t disagree with Goldsmith’s basic standpoint on this issue. Nor do the Liberal Democrats and indeed a number of local amenity and pressure groups in the area. Richmond, Kew, East Sheen and Barnes in particular are directly under the flightpath to Heathrow, and it’s been a major issue here for many years. So why should Labour oppose Zac Goldsmith in this election? 

The answer is that a member of Parliament has to be accountable for all his and her political actions. Goldsmith has very rarely rebelled against the Tory whip on any other issues. All the austerity measures brought in by the last coalition government and by the present majority Conservative one were introduced with his support. So too the bedroom tax and other cruel policies which have impacted most on the most vulnerable in our society. Only in May, he was the standard-bearer for the Conservative Party in the election for Mayor of London, and fought a widely-derided campaign in which he used dog-whistle tactics shamelessly against our successful Labour candidate, and now Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Goldsmith has to be brought to account for his record as an MP and for his Mayoral campaign, in which he showed beyond any doubt that he does not really understand the multicultural nature of London, of which his constituency is a small but important part. Some have suggested that the Labour Party should not stand a candidate in the election and give support to the Liberal Democrats, who have been second in the constituency in the last 2 elections and ahead of Labour for many years. The local Greens have apparently decided to do that already. But we have to be in the field, for a number of reasons.

The Labour Party came into being in 1900 because working people knew that the Liberals did not represent their interests and primarily supported the status quo, and within a generation Labour had acquired a majority of the votes of working people, ahead of the Liberals. The Liberals have changed their names a couple of times since then and are now the Liberal Democrats, but despite the passage of over a century since our foundation the reasons for our existence have not fundamentally changed. The Labour Party in 1973 called for “a fundamental and irreversible change in our society in favour of working people and their families”. This remains our ultimate goal, and it is the exact opposite of what the Liberal Democrats ultimately have as theirs. Our philosophy is different, our history is different, our policies on so many issues remain completely different, and we cannot just brush aside the coalition with the Tories which only came to an end a year and a half ago. Some have looked at current opinion polls and concluded that we have to form some sort of “progressive alliance” to kick the Tories out of government, forgetting that polls change very rapidly with events (not least the accession of a new Prime Minister and Tory leader) – only in May Labour beat the Tories nationally in the local elections, and won the very difficult Merton & Wandsworth GLA seat close to here. Although Richmond Park has many prosperous residents, it has a large minority who have not been able to share in the prosperity which the country still sees, and Labour has to be in the fight, as our CLP Secretary Edward Jones so eloquently demonstrated in his article in LabourList only a few days ago. But more – any progressive alliance needs more than one to tango. I have been actively involved in politics since Jim Callaghan was Prime Minister and seen at the closest of quarters how the Liberal Democrats and the Liberals before them operate, not just here in Richmond and Kingston but in other places such as Manchester and Bermondsey. There is no political will within the Liberal Democrats for any sort of pact which would involve them standing down in favour of Labour in any constituency, save in the most exceptional circumstances like the recent by-election which was caused by Jo Cox’s tragic murder. No, we must stand, and we must be ready to expound our vision, which is not the same as theirs.

As well as Heathrow, we also have to deal in this by-election with other huge issues where we stand implacably opposed to the Tories and to Zac Goldsmith. He has shown himself to be completely out of touch with his constituents who voted by something like a 70-30 margin to remain in the EU. All of the shortlisted candidates for Labour as far as I know, including myself, also voted to remain. We should campaign for the sensible line taken by Labour in parliament and outside, that we respect the democratic will of the people, but that we also fight for the best possible deal for working people and the most vulnerable in our society. The hard-won rights of workers cannot be sacrificed on the altar of Brexit. We have to show that Tory economic policies since 2010 – supported by the Liberal Democrats for so long – were based on a false premise and have done far more harm than good. We have to fight hospital and other health cuts and closures which impact everyone in our community in this area. And we have to work to resist the Tories’ divisive rhetoric and actions which are helping to undermine race and community relations in this country.

I’m hoping to be nominated because I’ve lived in the constituency all my life, have a strong record of commitment to and work for the election of Labour candidates here and elsewhere, and feel that I understand our opponents too. I have been involved in winning seats even here in Richmond Park – it can be done with the right message and actions, unity of purpose and sheer hard work. I’m looking forward to a hard-fought and successful campaign in the constituency.