Would You like a feature Interview?
All Interviews are 100% FREE of Charge
The 2024 election will mark the end of not just the Conservative government, but an era.
Dozens of lawmakers who have held ministerial positions or made their mark on election campaigns are stepping down as a new generation of lawmakers prepare to take over their positions after July 4.
Former Prime Minister Theresa May, pioneering feminist and cabinet minister Harriet Harman, Conservative reformer Michael Gove, Britain’s first female Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckettare among those stepping down.
But what does it mean for the new lawmakers expected to succeed the congressional giants? And are the candidates vying for these seats at all intimidated by the challenges ahead?
The Labour candidate for Peckham is Miatta Van Burle, who is running for Labour’s seat in the constituency where Harman retired after serving as deputy leader and interim leader of the party for more than 40 years and holding a number of ministerial roles.
Mr Van Burle, a Liberian-born economist who will represent one of London’s most diverse constituencies, said he often heard his target voters tell him to “keep it up” when they realised Mr Harman was not standing.
Van Burle said she felt a “heavy responsibility” to be selected, but was “grateful and truly honoured”.
She said that although Herman would not intervene, he had left an example for her to follow: “For me, Harriet set a really good example of how an MP should do their job.
“So she’s had a huge national impact and has left a legacy on everything from the minimum wage to the Equality Act and has changed politics at a national level. But she’s also done a fantastic job as a constituency councillor and that’s what makes me so humble.”
“When I go door-to-door, people say, ‘Harriet solved our housing problem,’ or ‘We had an immigration problem and Harriet solved it.’ There are so many stories of how she touched people’s lives, and 40 years later, there’s still so much love and affection in the community. I think, ‘That’s the way you do it, because sometimes people ignore one or the other, but he did both, and he did it with star power. And that’s what I aspire to be.
“She set an example for all members of Congress to follow.”
“She set the template, and I think every member of Congress should strive to fit the mold that she created.”
Van Bulle would not be the first politician to try to forge his own path after a key national figure.
Joanna Cherry, the SNP MP for Edinburgh South West, was succeeded by former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Alastair Darling.
“Even though we were on the opposing side in the independence referendum campaign, I respected him as a man of principle and ability,” she said. “To succeed someone like him not only does he need to do a good job in Westminster, he also needs to fill local incumbents – he needs to get out there, get his name out there and set up local offices.”
“My constituency was used to being represented by bigwigs in Westminster so it helped that I quickly became justice and home affairs spokesman for a third party and was a visible Remain campaigner during the Brexit fiasco, eventually winning the court case to stop Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s unlawful suspension of Parliament.”
She and Ms Darling, who died in November, remained in contact despite the political divisions north of the border.
“Eventually, I got to know Alistair and his wife and realised that although we may have been opposed in the independence referendum, we had a lot in common,” she said, adding that she was touched to be invited to his memorial. “We were all Remainers in the Brexit debate, as were 75% of my constituency, and they supported me when I received criticism and threats because of my gender-critical stance.”
Karl Turner, the Labour MP for East Hull, was elected to replace the seat previously held for 30 years by John Prescott, who served as deputy first minister throughout New Labour’s 13 years in power.
“I still get people on my doorstep talking about John, but I’m not trying to take John’s place,” Turner says. “They say, ‘JP would do it this way,’ or ‘JP would do it that way.'”
“That wasn’t really an issue for me.”
Turner stressed that times have changed, saying that while Prescott might receive 30 to 40 letters a week, his team gets 150 emails a day, and that while his predecessor was able to communicate through programmes like the BBC’s Question Time Or Radio 4 today As a relative unknown in the program, he had to spend a lot of time going door-to-door to local residents.
“All my staff are in my constituency office,” he says, “I don’t have any in London. I have staff in my constituency because that’s where the action is and, frankly, that’s where people need to be represented.”
“So it’s a different model to the one that John had. John was obviously based in Westminster and Whitehall while he was deputy first minister because he needed people around him. Even when I was in the shadow cabinet I’ve always been constituency focused.”
He believes it will be difficult to replicate the work of “giants” like Harman and Beckett.
“I’m not going to go toe-to-toe with these people.”
“I don’t think you need to try and counter these people,” he says. “Just do your best as an MP and some people will think you’re doing a bad job and others will think you’re doing a good job. Just do your best as a local MP and speak up for your constituents as often as you can.”
Similar advice was offered by Ian Wright, the former MP for Hartlepool, who won a by-election when former business secretary and New Labour architect Peter Mandelson resigned.
“If you’re not yourself, it comes across as insincere,” he says. “Maybe it was the arrogance of youth, but I wasn’t scared then. Maybe I am now, but at the time I was just like, I’m just going to do my job and keep working on local issues.”
“Peter was never one to watch from the back – when I became chairman of the Business Select Committee he advised me on industrial strategy but never got in the way.
“I learned two things: one, all politics is truly local and you see that when you step outside your constituency door, and two, time flies, even in the big things.
“People want to know what you’re going to do tomorrow. They don’t want you to focus on the past.”
A total of 132 MPs have resigned ahead of the July 4 general election, which, if opinion polls are to be believed, is sure to see a host of new faces in a new political environment where Labour and Liberal Democrat voices will dominate.
Don Foster, a Liberal Democrat peer, won a shock victory in Bath in 1992, defeating Chris Patten, John Major’s Conservative chairman. “Chris lost in 1992, I didn’t win,” he says, “and now, like a lot of people, the tide is turning against the Conservative party.”
Being well-known can be a “huge disadvantage”
Foster believes Patten’s high-profile national role was actually a “huge disadvantage” in the eyes of voters.
“Fairly or not, he was not seen as a very good local councillor and in fact spent very little time in Bath during the election,” he said. “He would fly to Bath in a helicopter for a few hours and then fly out again to campaign nationally.”
Foster believes many new MPs will find themselves “quite stigmatised” by the circumstances of their departure, no matter how well-known their predecessors were.
He increased his majority in both 1997 and 2001, and held his seat until 2015, when his party was punished at the polls for governing in coalition with the Conservatives and lost. Critical to maintaining his support was establishing a focus on local issues early on, Foster says, and his advice to the next generation of new MPs is to start by employing the same tactics, relentlessly.
“Do something that specifically draws attention to the fact that you’re not going to spend all your time trying to be a minister or a secretary of state or a prime minister, and you’re not going to spend all your time in Westminster,” he says. “Be your local MP and do local things, for local people, with local people.”
“The first thing I did the morning I was elected was attend a local protest calling for the installation of a pedestrian crossing just around the corner from my office.”
“All replies to letters from constituents are signed by Foster,” he said. “It’s vital, particularly in rural constituencies, that I be regularly present in places in my constituency where people can come and see me,” he added.
“Obviously people compared what I was doing to Chris Patten, particularly when I was up for re-election in ’97. People said, ‘He’s not as good as Patten’ or ‘He may be OK, but he’s not a cabinet minister so he doesn’t have any clout in government’.”
“So you need to think these things through well in advance. You need to build trust early on as a hard-working local councillor and be confident that it will serve you well in the future.”
2024 Election
Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer and other party leaders are campaigning. I‘s election live blog is your go-to place for everything general election news.
All the major political parties have released their manifestos. Iof A breakdown of all pledges from the Conservative Party, the Green Party, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK.
I People have signed the Save Britain’s Rivers manifesto, calling on all political parties to work to improve our waterways. The Liberal Democrats were the first to back the campaign, followed by the Green Party. Keir Starmer called the campaign “hugely important” but stopped short of fully endorsing it.