Bean over Britain: Woodcock on Corbyn, media bias and the Tory threat to the NHS

Why are you standing in this election and what do you think you’ve got to offer the people of Barrow?

“This is a highly unusual election, Theresa May called this because she’s 20 points ahead in the polls, she knows she’s going to get returned with a massive majority, so the question in areas like this, across the United Kingdom is: you know you’re going to carry on with a Tory government, but who is best to stand up for you locally?

“And I’m putting myself forward again because of the track record I’ve had in standing up for the community. We’ve had some amazing wins in really difficult circumstances, we’ve saved our local maternity unit, we are defending our post office. I’ve been making the case against cuts to schools and actually got involved in training as a teaching assistant and setting up a summer school which local businesses are contributing to.

“I’ve shown actually, what a strong, independent Labour voice can do, standing up against a Tory government, and that is what we need to stand up against the potential landslide that we’re going to get otherwise.

What is your number one priority for the first week of the next parliament?

“My number one priority will be to put right in the government’s face the impact of cutting back vital services from Furness general hospital. There hasn’t been enough talk from the Tories of what the future of our local hospitals is going to be. You’ve had this opaque, massive strategic review across large areas which have been going on, and the north west area – of which Furness is part – looking at cutting hundreds of millions of pounds from its operating budget. That has the potential to mean the essential community hospital that we have in Furness will be stripped back. We have to make that the fight of the next parliament.”

How would you describe your politics?

“On the kind of ‘how Labour are you?’ test, where people are ‘I came out of the womb singing the Red Flag‘, I didn’t do that! I walked David Blunkett’s dog as a kid, my dad was a Labour councillor in Sheffield, I did, quite embarrassingly, make up my own verse of the Red Flag aged eight.

“I’ve always been Labour, and for the past 100 years Labour has offered communities that hope for people to come together and better their lives, and demand more, demand for the country to be better and to work for them. And that is what Labour governments have delivered whenever we’ve been able to elect them, and that’s what the Labour party needs to continue to stand for.”

How has Brexit affected the seat?

“That has actually been one of the issues that’s surprised me on the doorstep so far, because this was a constituency that voted quite clearly to leave the European Union but the EU just doesn’t really come up on the doorstep in anything like the intensity that I thought.

“My position has been that I voted for remain but the country voted for leave, so now we’ve got to focus on getting the very best deal that we can. I think, in as much as people are thinking about this, they want Britain to win in the negotiations and they want everyone to get on with it.”

You have asked about the Euratom nuclear research programme in parliament – do you think the government has a strategy?

“I am profoundly concerned with Euratom and a whole host of arrangements that are built up, practical arrangements, which have benefited local businesses over decades. The European medicines agency is another one. GSK [GlaxoSmithKline] is building the first manufacturing site in the United Kingdom for more than 30 years and its building it in Ulverstone [in south Cumbria] because we won a national competition.”

“Now if the UK comes out of the EMA then companies like GSK are concerned. One, what will be the alternative? But two – how do you avoid the process of setting up something new being hugely disruptive? The same with European nuclear regulatory agency: it works at the moment, and the industry is profoundly concerned that the government has basically – without seeming to give it a lot of thought – decided we’re coming out of that.”

“It’s an example of an ill-thought out, ideologically driven approach to how we get the best deal as an independent nation outside the EU, trumping what is in our best interests in terms of jobs and standards of living.”

Why does Britain need a Labour government?

“You just have to look at what the Tories are doing. They look like they’re going to screw up the most important negotiations for decades.

“They are imposing – for the first time in decades – real term cuts in the classroom, certainly in the Furness area where we lag behind the national average, and we need to be supporting our schools to get better. There is a monumental crisis that’s been gripping A&Es in the NHS, and that risks getting worse.

“Throughout our history it has been Labour, when we’ve been able to convince people we can be trusted to govern, that’s make a difference. And that’s why I’ve always, throughout my adult life, been campaigning for Labour to win in government.

What has been the biggest issue on the doorstep?

“Jeremy Corbyn.

You’ve taken the unusual step to say that if Corbyn’s Labour party win the election that you wouldn’t vote for him to be prime minister. Why have you done this? 

“I just thought it was important to be honest with the people who I serve, and have had the privilege of serving, who’ve put me into the House of Commons twice.”

“The strange thing about the election is that there is, practically zero chance of there being a Labour government led by him. Theresa May called this election because she’s so far ahead in the polls and at the moment you have this strange alliance between people behind Jeremy Corbyn, the true believers, and the only other people who are saying that [he could be PM] are Tory headquarters.

“Tory HQ are desperate to basically lie to the British public, via the media, and say ‘oh no the polls are wrong, its on a knife-edge, it could be close’. They want this to be a referendum between the two of them [May and Corbyn]. It’s not going to happen, and even if it did happen it’s not right.

“I’ve said this from day one, and got into a lot of trouble, but I stand by it. I’m not sure even Jeremy Corbyn thinks he’d make a good prime minister. What areas like this do need, what the country needs, is a strong Labour voice to stand up for them.

“I don’t want to be in this position, I want to be saying ‘yes we need a Labour government, this is a Labour government you can put your trust in.’ But what would be a disaster for Britain, and for areas like Barrow and Furness, is if you have this Tory landslide, and the House of Commons becomes this sea of blue nodding dogs, who are not going to stand up to their government.”

“We need that strong Labour opposition to be championing communities like this.”

Do you think Labour receives a fair hearing from the media?

“No I don’t, but what’s new? It’s like complaining about the British weather, just get on with it.

“Some of the things that are being said just take an obsessional and slightly weird tone, more than a little weird, with people going after individual journalists – they always seem to be female journalists – it’s futile. It doesn’t work. It makes you look, to the public who you’re supposed to be convincing in an election time, that you’ve lost the plot a bit.

“What is the other force in global politics that we see constantly railing against the media? It’s Donald Trump. I don’t want to see the British Labour party as a sort of alt-Left version of what’s happening over there.

“There’s always been a higher bar for the Labour Party, in the media, but we’ve shown we can win. So let’s just try and get on and do that, rather than booing journalists – it’s just nonsense.”

When was the last moment you had to relax and how did you spend it?

“Last night I watched a couple of episodes of the American Office in bed before going to sleep.

“It’s just so good, I feel unpatriotic to say, it’s so much better than the British version!”