‘Candidate selection delays cost Labour in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’

Labour’s success depends on early and visible campaigning. In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, delays in candidate selection cost us – and we can’t afford to repeat that mistake.

Politics today has a dearth of trust. Labour is particularly distrusted – we’ve made some tough choices, most newspapers dislike us, and social media is, well, social media. That makes it more important for us to be visible for longer. In Cambridgeshire, we weren’t.

We made it harder for voters to know our candidates. We made it harder for voters to trust us. We must not make that mistake again.

Those in charge should have acted sooner

Firstly, the mayoralty. Nik Johnson announced he would not be standing again on 7th February. At that time, he had not been adopted as our candidate for the mayoralty. 83 days before the election for mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, we did not have a candidate.

READ MORE: Councillors in Reform-won Doncaster were ‘sacrificial lambs over winter fuel’

It is not clear why Nik had not been adopted as a candidate earlier. It’s speculation, but perhaps some in the party were not convinced he should re-stand, but were putting off a difficult decision – perhaps hoping that his health issues would cause him to voluntarily stand down, as he eventually did.

I would hope that party members in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough could have had some say in the process.
But if it was the case that those in charge felt Nik should not have stood again, they should have acted sooner so that the candidate would have had time to get themselves and their platform known.

I can only imagine the frustration of our candidate, Anna Smith. Almost as soon as I read that Nik was bowing out, I messaged Anna asking her to consider standing because she had the skills and, having been deputy mayor and acting mayor, unrivalled experience and would have been an excellent mayor – if she’d had time to run a proper campaign, rather than being selected on the 21st of February.

From the point of view of an ordinary party member who did their best to get our candidates elected, not having a candidate for a metro mayor less than 2,000 hours before the election is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only to find, the moment that the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been left at home in the shed.

Our opponents had already been canvassing for months

We didn’t just choose our mayoral candidate very late. We chose our county councillors very late. We didn’t announce any of our candidates until January 28th of this year. We had selected some at the end of 2024 but they were prevented from canvassing as candidates for over a month. We didn’t announce our last candidate until three days before close of nominations.

Our opponents had already been canvassing for months in seats where we could have at least been competitive.
There are lots of reasons why having a candidate so late is a problem, from writing manifestos to coordinating leaflets to ordering print, but it makes it nigh-on impossible to give enough voters enough time to vote for a candidate even if they’re unsure about the party.

Particularly as the dates for these elections was set well in advance, we should have been ready much sooner. We in Cambridgeshire, and I suspect elsewhere around the country, must revise our selection procedures and timetables, including agreeing and sharing more details with CLPs further in advance.

I do want to pause here to acknowledge that this will be uncomfortable reading for both party staff and members, and that we were all tired after the general election. I can only offer my assurance that this is written with the intent of making our party better able to serve the country.

Scroll to keep reading the story below….

There is a point of light. St Ives – a market town of some 16,000 – has a Labour county councillor for the first time since before the 1974 local government reorganisation in Alex Bulat. Alex is also the first Cambridgeshire Labour county councillor outside of Cambridge since the 1980s.

Our victory in what seems like an unlikely place also suggests how we build enough trust to at least get a hearing. Building on the work done by a popular and effective Labour district councillor whose ward lies within the division, as well as similarly active town councillors.

Alex had been the parliamentary candidate last year and because we started our regular campaigning in what we guessed would be target wards pretty soon after the general election, we effectively had a year’s run-in.

This is all building on the general election campaign. One of the results of doing everything possible to stop campaigning in non-target seats at the general election was to weaken Labour’s connections with the communities we either already serve or wish to serve – and we will be living with that for a long time.

Particular circumstances will vary, but it’s pretty obvious that selecting candidates earlier is better – not just because it makes things like co-ordinating print easier, but because it’s more important than ever to give the electorate time to get to know our candidates in an age of low trust.

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