by Karen Bruce

On Saturday while many Labour members in Yorkshire were at the leadership hustings in Leeds I was with my ward colleague Cllr David Nagle running our local Labour party stall at the Rothwell carnival.

It’s a great opportunity to be seen by hundreds of local people and to chat with them about local issues. This year we decided to ask them two questions. The first was a specific local issue about how to spend £180,000 of ‘Section 106’ money from housing developers that has to be spent on environmental and greenspace projects. The second was to listen to what they thought about the four Labour leadership candidates.

To make it a bit more fun we had buckets with each leadership candidate’s picture on and lots of coloured balls so people could put one in their choice of candidate’s bucket.

We also created a one-page profile on each candidate so people could read and find out a little bit more about them. I’d originally wanted to put a 35 word statement from each candidate saying why Rothwell people should vote for them. I tweeted all four campaigns at 10:25 on Friday morning, but unfortunately only Andy’s campaign replied so we had to create the profiles ourselves.

The first paragraph of the profile was about their personal history – where they came from and what they did before they entered politics. The second paragraph detailed their experience in parliament and government. Both of these were taken from information on each candidate’s website and Wikipedia. The third paragraph was from their websites and was quotes about what they stood for and believed in.

Both of our questions sparked quite a bit of interest. The photos of the candidates on our buckets certainly made people look to see what we were doing. The results were interesting.

Rothwell is in the neighbouring constituency to Yvette so she was the most recognised candidate and several people came up and immediately put a ball into her bucket. A few also came up and immediately put a ball in Jeremy Corbyn’s bucket saying that Labour needed to be more left-wing or that their trade union was supporting him.

The two most interesting were Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall. Neither had as much of the ‘instant’ appeal of Yvette or Jeremy, although both had some. However, when people who said they didn’t know enough about any of them to give an opinion, the picture began to change. When these people read the four profiles they nearly all chose either Andy or Liz.

A few people, including local Labour party members, said they were undecided so we let them put a ball into more than one bucket. After all it was just a bit of fun to get an indication of what people thought, but also to hear what they said about each candidate.

These were some of the things that we said:

Yvette: “She’s very boring, but I could imagine that would make her a safe pair of hands to be prime minister.”

Jeremy: “If he’s been on the backbenches since 1983 he should stay there.”

Andy: “I’ve seen him on TV and he comes across as if he really does care. You don’t know if you believe any politician, but he sounds passionate.”

Liz: “I like what she says about the economy and Labour winning trust back on the deficit”

Yvette: “I know I shouldn’t say this, but she’s married to Ed Balls and we’ve just managed to get rid of him. I’m a Labour voter you know, but didn’t vote for him.” [Note, Rothwell also borders Ed’s old constituency and many people at the carnival will have come from villages there as they are artificially divided from their natural community by constituency boundaries.]

Liz: “I know who she is. She’s the one that said something first so she must have guts, I’d go for her.”

Jeremy: “Labour needs a proper left-wing leader again, it’s forgotten what it is for.”

Andy: “He says some good things, but looks and sounds really scary. Have you seen his eyes!”

Liz: “Labour needs somebody new, I don’t want those two again and I like what she has to say.”

There were lots of other comments, but I’ve only reported some of them so you can get a feel for what people were saying.

And now you’re hopefully wondering how many coloured balls went into each bucket.

The results were:

Jeremy Corbyn: 7

Yvette Cooper: 11

Andy Burnham: 14

Liz Kendall: 16

This was a surprise to me as I’d expected Yvette to do much better, given that she was local and also Andy because he’s already such a front runner amongst Labour members. Jeremy’s last place wasn’t a surprise, as while he might speak to some Labour members he doesn’t really speak to communities like mine.

Rothwell is a former mining area with a strong tradition of Labour support that was eroded with all three council seats falling to the Liberal Democrats who made it into one of their power bases in Leeds. Today it’s a mix of villages that merge into each other, with three fairly large council estates, lots of suburban commuter belt type housing and increasing number of new housing estates.

I won the first seat back off the Lib Dems in 2011 and was re-elected this year with a massively increased majority with the Lib Dems pushed into third place. For a traditional Labour area the Conservatives secured a scary amount of votes, largely because nationally we had little to say to many people in Rothwell.

It’s a ward in a constituency we should have won back in May. But, while we did great in the local elections it was a disaster in the constituency with the local Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke doubling his majority. The Tories even did well in Rothwell where traditionally they don’t as the Lib Dem voters we lost locally used to revert back to Labour at general elections. Not this time as the Conservatives did far better than they usually do.

I believe that Liz won our not very scientific poll because she was saying things that disillusioned and former Labour voters in communities like Rothwell want to hear. She recognises that people just want good schools for their children, a decent pay packet and to be proud of their country. All good, solid Labour values that communities like mine value.

Karen Bruce is a councillor on Leeds City Council and chairs the outer south community committee which includes Rothwell, Morley and surrounding villages

Tags: Andy Burnham, Jeremy Corbyn, Karen Bruce, Labour leadership contest, Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper

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