What is it like running for Parliament? I’m a first time candidate standing for the SDP in the constituency of Coventry South I’ve taken six weeks off work and I’m entirely self funded. I sleep in a 12 m² student accommodation room and haven’t seen my wife for 2 weeks. My opponent Zarah Sultana ships in around 100 Labour Party volunteers from Manchester, London, Carlisle, Birmingham every weekend.
“The central plank of my campaign is to focus on bringing high skilled, high value added, high paying, jobs back to the city of Coventry”
FedEx lost 10,000 of my 62,000 leaflets and tonight we discovered the post office are delivering my leaflets all over Coventry North. BUT… We talked to 200 to 300 Coventry voters every day and today was our best day ever in terms of the positivity of the response.
The central plank of my campaign is to focus on bringing high skilled, high value added, high paying, jobs back to the city of Coventry because “a rising tide lifts all boats”. Our current MP, Ms Sultana, has used the platform afforded to her by the voters of Coventry South to focus on Gaza with 87 tweets about Gazza to 6 about Coventry in Q1 2024.
“Bit by bit, we have put together a group of volunteers who join me at weekends and evenings after work to support my campaign. I spend 10 to 12 hours a day in one-to-one conversations throughout the constituency”
Having held nearly 2,000 individual conversations, not one single person has raised this issue with me in Coventry South. The local BBC radio station is only interested in talking to me about Gaza despite me pointing out to them that BBC Question Time in Coventry on the first day of the campaign demonstrated that Gaza was not on the mind of Coventry voters.
Bit by bit, we have put together a group of volunteers who join me at weekends and evenings after work to support my campaign. I spend 10 to 12 hours a day in one-to-one conversations throughout the constituency of Coventry South and I think I have a good feel for voters want.
Some of my volunteers struggle with the level of anger and frustration expressed by voters. It can be very raw and very real and not everybody can cope with it. I am absolutely convinced that the mass of elite opinion especially in London is totally disconnected from the majority views throughout the country. Labour support is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Reform is on the lips of almost every white male over 45 years old. Nigel Farage has tapped into and reflected the anger of voters but I believe has no compelling answers. The SDP are committed to a long march across three electoral cycles to build a mass national party that can offer voters a real alternative that the positively want to vote for rather than the least hated.
“This week I’ve started to receive dozens of different manifestos from organisations and pressure groups seeking my endorsement. I have been absolutely clear that my overwhelming focus is to drive the economic well-being of Coventry”
Our 122 Candidates represent a 500% increase from 2019 and we aim to field 350 Candidates at the next election. I know that Solihull next door to Coventry will be the next centre for the SDP growth in the West Midlands as we have three volunteers coming almost daily to help us in Coventry South.
Standing for parliament is a trip! This week I’ve started to receive dozens of different manifestos from organisations and pressure groups seeking my endorsement. I have been absolutely clear that my overwhelming focus is to drive the economic well-being of Coventry. Consequently, I am being very sparing with my responses as I do not want to dilute my message. When our family returned to Coventry in 1969 wages in Coventry were significantly above the UK average and they are now significantly below. House prices were four times average earnings now they are 13 times.
Professor Danny Dorling of Oxford University maps Coventry to the north of the north-south divide but to my mind the line goes directly through the centre of the city. Parts of the south are still doing ok but the north is in a hell of a state. If we could get 50 great new entrepreneurs to set up in Coventry, it would be enough to kickstart the economy and address the physical deterioration of the city.
If I had one wish for Coventry it would be for Tesla or BYD Company to set up the at the site of Coventry Airport where a 5 million square foot planning consent for a battery electric vehicle plant has already been granted, wisely in my view, by Coventry City Council. So my request to X/Twitter world is to tweet this article to Elon Musk and Tesla or BYD Company to raise the profile of this great City and hope that we can rebuild our volume manufacturing business. For full transparency, I’ve been a Tesla shareholder since 2016.
“Big parties can afford to fund lots of the expenses and you have big teams of supporters helping. There is a tiny pool of people who can do what I am doing or attempting to do outside of the two dominant parties”
I discussed with a friend today how many people could take six weeks unpaid leave? Assuming there are 35 million voters we figured that maybe 3% maximum which gives a figure of 1,050,000. We then calculated that may be 5% of these remaining people could afford the estimated £7,500 of costs which cut down the pool to 52,500 potential candidates. We then estimated what percentage of those remaining could bear the anger, resentment and contempt of the disillusioned voters and we thought it was as little as 10% leaving approximately 5250. We then asked how many people in our Venn diagram would map and fit our three criteria and it left us with 525 people (10%). This is the problem the small parties face. Big parties can afford to fund lots of the expenses and you have big teams of supporters helping. There is a tiny pool of people who can do what I am doing or attempting to do outside of the two dominant parties. Not many people realise that the vast majority of reform candidates are paper candidates, who will never go to the constituency and are candidates in name only.
This article is based on an original tweet tread at https://x.com/MellonSdp6741/status/1802851404417036587.
You can find more about Alastair at https://croydonconstitutionalists.uk/alastair-mellon-sdp/ and contact / find him at [email protected] on X/Twitter at @MellonSdp6741 and on YouTube at Alastair Mellon SDP Coventry South.