Vincent Lo: Why I’m standing to be Labour’s NEC treasurer

Conversations about finances or money can be difficult and rather complicated. I had to learn the hard way whilst working and living in my mum’s chip shop. After a long day of serving customers with the finest fish and chips, I had to do the books! People from all walks of life came into our shop, from the nurse who had just finished the night shift to the office worker grabbing a quick lunch, to students after classes. As well as people who just wanted something to eat, but who did not have any money. We would always scoop a large bag of chips and a cup of tea for anyone who came in.

“Nobody should go hungry,” my mum would say. And I started to ask the question: why should people go hungry when we live in one of the richest countries on earth? Why do some people have a home whilst others are homeless? How is it that some people can have an education, yet others cannot? As I chatted away with our customers, working in the shop taught me an invaluable lesson: to never, ever judge anybody. Listening to all of these stories, I realised just how lucky I was to have a roof over my head, food on the table and a desire to learn and hopefully to make a small difference someday. I was told: “Well, this is how it is… it’s their choice… don’t waste your time… nothing changes… that’s life.” These chats, in time, became conversations amongst friends, teachers, colleagues, Labour members and eventually conversations on the doorstep.

The pandemic has laid bare the fragility of our politics, the uncertainty ratcheting up our anxiety and fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of sickness and fear of death. Make no mistake, Covid-19 has changed our country and our lives for the foreseeable future. And yet we are led by a Prime Minister, a government, who has reduced our once admired democracy into a farce. The laughing stock of Europe and indeed the world. It has exposed the pettiness of our politics, the gaming of the system to ensure they maintain control whilst we are left to pick up the pieces. One rule for them, another for everybody else.

This Prime Minister is unfit to run our chip shop – let alone our country of 65 million people. We must defeat him at the earliest possible opportunity. In order to defeat him and the Tories in 2024, we need to ensure our own finances are in order. As a councillor, I know how tough budgets can be – ours has been cut by £174m over the last ten years. I fear Tory austerity will rear its ugly head once again but, if we are well-organised, we can make every single penny work for the many, not the few. I look forward to serving as your treasurer and building a well-funded and highly-resourced Labour Party to take on the Tories in every single election. This is how we can make a difference, it doesn’t have to be this way.