Vox Political’s Mike Sivier is standing as a Labour Party candidate for Powys County Council’s Llanbadarn Fawr ward – not Jeremy Corbyn. [Image: Mike Sivier].

“I don’t like your leader!” announced one lady. I told her it would be me in Powys County Council, not him.

“I don’t like your leader in Cardiff!” she responded. I told her he wouldn’t be sitting on Powys County Council either.

“Well I don’t like your policies!” So I asked which policies she didn’t like – our promises to protect social care and education, or to bolster statutory services like waste and recycling?

“I’m not going to vote for you, no matter what you say!”

Maybe not – and I doubt she thought much about the encounter afterwards – but I hope you do.

Like all Labour Party council candidates, I’m not standing for election as a proxy for Jeremy Corbyn. I’m standing on my own merits.

Readers of This Site should have a pretty good understanding of what those merits are.

My local Labour Party has written a manifesto, tailored to the needs of the people of Powys. Labour candidates elsewhere will have done the same for their own local authorities, matching the policies to the needs of each area.

We support national Labour Party policies, of course – and this should not be a problem for the majority of voters, if the polls are to be believed.

But anybody voting Labour in Llanbadarn Fawr ward will be voting for me, not Mr Corbyn.

Don’t let the Tory media brainwash you into making a mistake on May 4.

Labour will not need to “defy the critics” in the local elections in fewer than three weeks’ time, a leading ally of Jeremy Corbyn said today.

Shadow cabinet minister Barry Gardiner criticised the idea of “presidential style local council elections”.

Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, spoke out after a ComRes poll for The Independent and Sunday Mirror handed the Tories a 21 point poll lead over Labour and after May’s party won a surprise council by-election in the opposition’s north-east heartland.

Last night Gardiner said the media was trying to “personalise” the local elections around Corbyn.

“These are local elections with local councillors. Some local councillors will have done a sterling job for local people and they will be re-elected. Others may not have done,” he told the Westminster House on BBC Radio Four.

“Labour will not need to defy the critics in the way you suggest. Time and time and time again you guys focus this around the personality of the leader instead of around the policies. I am trying to focus on the policies, on the doorstep it is the policies I will be talking about.”

Source: Local elections not all about Corbyn’s leadership, shadow cabinet minister says | LabourList

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