UK

Why I’m standing against Keir Starmer in his constituency

Starmer is offering more of the same. I’m fighting for an economy that works for people, not corporations

Andrew Feinstein
2 July 2024

Andrew Feinstein Campaigns For General Election |
Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images

The UK’s electoral system creates a two-party race between Labour and the Tories, with smaller parties and independent candidates sidelined and largely ignored by the media. openDemocracy is platforming some of these candidates so you can hear what they stand for. Articles published do not necessarily reflect our editorial stance.

Would you rather have austerity delivered by somebody in a red tie or a blue tie? That’s the choice the UK faces at Thursday’s general election.

Because while Labour leader Keir Starmer has claimed his party won’t return us to austerity, he has also refused to rule out public sector spending cuts.

And while he and his shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, often talk about the need for economic growth, they can’t explain how it will be achieved given their refusal to support a wealth tax.

The fact is that Labour is promising more of the same on every issue this country faces. ‘Growth’ is just a cover for more privatisation of public services, more austerity for working people and more freedom for Labour’s billionaire backers to go on accumulating money as though the vast majority of ordinary citizens don’t matter.

We simply can’t suffer another decade of this. That’s why I’m running against Starmer as an independent candidate in Holborn and St Pancras in north London.

I recently visited the plush offices of Camden Council, a Labour-run local authority in the constituency, found just behind Kings Cross station. It’s an area that bears absolutely no resemblance to how it was when I first moved into the area 22 years ago. The distinctive brick warehouses and small independent businesses have long since made way for huge glass office blocks, luxury apartments and overpriced chain restaurants and cafes.

Last year, Camden Council removed the tents and belongings of a small number of people experiencing homelessness who were sleeping directly outside its offices in the hopes of getting help. Instead, they were cleared out and replaced by bike racks and pot plants, their tents crushed in bin lorries.

You might expect a politician who heads a council that destroys the tents of vulnerable human beings to be made to step down. Instead, Camden Council leader Georgia Gould has been rewarded with a Labour safe seat, having been chosen to run as the party’s candidate for Parliament in the new north London constituency of Queen’s Park and Maida Vale.

The decision is as indicative of Starmer’s Labour as Camden Council seeking to maximise its income by greenlighting office and retail space while more than 7,600 households in the borough are stuck on a waitlist for social or council housing. The move risks pushing the poorest members of our community out of it altogether.

This is emblematic of everything wrong with our politics. Billionaire donors and the needs of mega-corporations are prioritised over the ordinary people in this constituency whom Starmer is supposed to represent.

For a representative democracy to work, the people elected have to be of the community, we have to see them in our community, and they have to represent our community. If Starmer is failing to do that in Holborn and St Pancras, what do we imagine he’s going to do across the UK as a whole?

Starmer is offering us the same as the Tories. Across the UK, millions of children live in poverty – 12,000 under-16s in the borough of Camden alone. Labour says it can’t afford to take steps to lift them out of poverty through measures such as scrapping the two-child benefit cap. Yet then we hear, in a series of trailed manifesto pledges, that there will be money to build 20,000 more prison spaces and increase defence spending. It’s an absolute disgrace.

We need a totally different approach to housing and local services that puts the people of Holborn and St Pancras first. That means addressing homelessness, the housing crisis, the lack of council housing and bringing in rent controls.

Starmer isn’t offering this – or any real change. That’s why I’m standing against him. I was an MP in South Africa serving in Nelson Mandela’s government between 1994 and 2001. I exposed corruption at the heart of government and have continued to campaign against it ever since.

I want to use my experience to fight for an economy that works for people, not corporations. As an independent candidate, I will listen to local people, not billionaires. I will work for more and improved social housing, funding for our public services, and an end to the main parties’ support for genocide. I will keep my promises and I will not engage in corrupt deals.

Starmer and his Conservative rival for PM, Rishi Sunak, view us all as stepping stones to power and wealth. We deserve politicians who genuinely want to serve their local communities.