A gap year in the frontline of politics
Former Vine Editor Louisa Dollimore (far left, pictured with former speaker John Bercow and MP Siobhain McDonagh, far right) is spending her gap year working for a Labour Member of Parliament. She reports back on her experience of being in the thick of it during the General Election - and life after Labour's defeat.
It’s election day. The polls close in less than half an hour, and having been outside in torrential rain for twelve hours, we are all drenched through to the bone. For the moment at least, the downpour has stopped - and we are sprinting up a street, knocking on as many doors of predicted Labour voters as possible. We’ve been informed that the polling station for this area, which has one of the highest proportions of Labour voters in our constituency, has received only half the turnout of other stations. ‘Sir, you’ve still got time - if you run you’ll make it!’ These words are echoed down the street as we desperately try to convince people to cast their votes.
How much difference can we really make? Well, winning and losing can hang on just a few votes: in 2017, the constituency of North East Fife was won by the SNP with a majority of just two. (My cousin, who lives there, insists his roommate is solely to blame for this, having forgotten to deliver both of their postal ballots.) The reality for us, though, is that we don’t have to worry: our South London constituency of Mitcham and Morden is a safe seat. Our adrenaline isn’t fuelled by fear, but rather the excitement that comes from knowing a long, miserable election campaign is almost over.
The day isn’t done yet, however: we spend the hours after the polls close in our roles as official counting agents, watching votes be tallied up through sleep-deprived eyes. By this point, the exit poll has already been announced - we know we’re heading for the worst Labour defeat since the Second World War. Quite frankly, as I suppress a yawn and point out a Labour vote that has been put into the Conservative box, I couldn’t care less.
At three in the morning, the result is declared: with a majority of 16,482, we won.
Our constituency victory reaffirms our faith in the strength of our party and community locally - but it doesn’t do much else. This is what I am thinking of as I stand in the converted office block used by our council as housing. The smell is enough to make you gag. Residents share their accommodation with rats and mould. Thin interior doors are the only thing between me and the countless families crammed into one-bedroom flats.
I stood here six months earlier, in my first week. Nothing has changed. Actually, that’s not quite true: the council have re-evaluated its status from temporary accommodation to a place suitable for permanent residence. As I knock on doors, listening to residents’ stories, I wonder if the people seem a little more depressed; a little more defeated. Most know, this time, that they won’t be leaving.
I am reminded of a woman in a wheelchair I met last time. She told me, excitedly, of where she and her partner were going to go when they finally left this place. A place called Camber Sands, she said, with golden beaches and sand dunes and blue skies. She’d seen photos on the internet. I’d been there, many times, growing up.
This woman’s account of life in this accommodation was harrowing. She was pregnant; a few weeks before, a man living in the building (housed there despite a documented history of mental illness and instability) came screaming at her door with a hammer: ‘I’ll put this hammer through your belly and kill your baby, and then I’ll put it through your head and kill you.’ She escaped, somehow, through the window, but lost her baby in a miscarriage. If she did ever manage to leave this place, she’d just be moved to another residence unfit for human habitation.
This place is a dumping ground for the people society doesn’t want. Most are addicts, or women fleeing domestic abuse, or families who simply cannot afford to put a house over the heads of their children. All are victims. All of them will pay the highest price for Labour’s failure in the election: they will live this life for at least the next five years. These are the people we have abandoned.
Politics isn’t about winning an argument. It’s about helping real people who are living real lives. It’s about strategy, and campaigns, and, always, power.
Louisa Dollimore, alumni
It’s election day. The polls close in less than half an hour, and having been outside in torrential rain for twelve hours, we are all drenched through to the bone. For the moment at least, the downpour has stopped - and we are sprinting up a street, knocking on as many doors of predicted Labour voters as possible. We’ve been informed that the polling station for this area, which has one of the highest proportions of Labour voters in our constituency, has received only half the turnout of other stations. ‘Sir, you’ve still got time - if you run you’ll make it!’ These words are echoed down the street as we desperately try to convince people to cast their votes.
How much difference can we really make? Well, winning and losing can hang on just a few votes: in 2017, the constituency of North East Fife was won by the SNP with a majority of just two. (My cousin, who lives there, insists his roommate is solely to blame for this, having forgotten to deliver both of their postal ballots.) The reality for us, though, is that we don’t have to worry: our South London constituency of Mitcham and Morden is a safe seat. Our adrenaline isn’t fuelled by fear, but rather the excitement that comes from knowing a long, miserable election campaign is almost over.
The day isn’t done yet, however: we spend the hours after the polls close in our roles as official counting agents, watching votes be tallied up through sleep-deprived eyes. By this point, the exit poll has already been announced - we know we’re heading for the worst Labour defeat since the Second World War. Quite frankly, as I suppress a yawn and point out a Labour vote that has been put into the Conservative box, I couldn’t care less.
At three in the morning, the result is declared: with a majority of 16,482, we won.
Our constituency victory reaffirms our faith in the strength of our party and community locally - but it doesn’t do much else. This is what I am thinking of as I stand in the converted office block used by our council as housing. The smell is enough to make you gag. Residents share their accommodation with rats and mould. Thin interior doors are the only thing between me and the countless families crammed into one-bedroom flats.
I stood here six months earlier, in my first week. Nothing has changed. Actually, that’s not quite true: the council have re-evaluated its status from temporary accommodation to a place suitable for permanent residence. As I knock on doors, listening to residents’ stories, I wonder if the people seem a little more depressed; a little more defeated. Most know, this time, that they won’t be leaving.
I am reminded of a woman in a wheelchair I met last time. She told me, excitedly, of where she and her partner were going to go when they finally left this place. A place called Camber Sands, she said, with golden beaches and sand dunes and blue skies. She’d seen photos on the internet. I’d been there, many times, growing up.
This woman’s account of life in this accommodation was harrowing. She was pregnant; a few weeks before, a man living in the building (housed there despite a documented history of mental illness and instability) came screaming at her door with a hammer: ‘I’ll put this hammer through your belly and kill your baby, and then I’ll put it through your head and kill you.’ She escaped, somehow, through the window, but lost her baby in a miscarriage. If she did ever manage to leave this place, she’d just be moved to another residence unfit for human habitation.
This place is a dumping ground for the people society doesn’t want. Most are addicts, or women fleeing domestic abuse, or families who simply cannot afford to put a house over the heads of their children. All are victims. All of them will pay the highest price for Labour’s failure in the election: they will live this life for at least the next five years. These are the people we have abandoned.
Politics isn’t about winning an argument. It’s about helping real people who are living real lives. It’s about strategy, and campaigns, and, always, power.
Louisa Dollimore, alumni
