Labour’s candidate to take on Boris Johnson as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip says the party may have to win the seat for the first time to gain power at the next election.
Danny Beales, 34, a councillor and charity worker who grew up in the area, admits he will have to work “exceptionally hard” to overturn Johnson’s 7,210 majority.
Since being selected as candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Beales is convinced Labour can gain from local exasperation at the checkered record of the former prime minister.
“I think it will be a bellwether seat – it is exactly the sort of seat Labour needs to win to deliver a Labour government. The issues in Uxbridge and South Ruislip are also the key issues nationally – on the doorstep people say they feel poorer.”
Labour’s hopes of toppling the then prime minister at the 2019 general election proved wildly overoptimistic, as Johnson increased his majority by more than 2,000 votes in an outer London constituency that has been Tory since it was formed in 2010.
But according to analysis in the New Statesman by the co-founder of the polling group Britain Elects, the seat is now winnable for Labour.
Beales says: “I always take polls with a pinch of salt, but it’s good motivation for activists to feel we should really be going for the win.”
At 34, he is too young to remember much about Labour’s landslide victory in the 1997 general election, but says his family and friends talk about the “Michael Portillo moment” when the then defence secretary lost to Labour’s Stephen Twigg in another outer London constituency, Enfield Southgate.
“Potentially, there could be a ‘Boris Johnson moment’,” says Beales, “but my interest in standing isn’t about headlines, it’s because I think the area deserves a Labour MP and we desperately need a Labour government.”
But he will also be targeting Johnson personally. “People deserve a full-time MP, I’ve heard so many times from people of all political persuasions that they don’t get a response from Boris’s office, and that he only turns up once a year.”
Beales, who is Camden council’s regeneration chief, says: “The basic job of being a representative, is that you’re available, accessible, and responsive.”
As the son of a single mother, Beales taunted his future opponent in his selection victory speech, reminding the audience that Johnson once dismissed children of single parents as “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate”. It was a proud moment for his watching mother, says Beales, adding: “I couldn’t be more proud of my upbringing. It’s people like my mum and grandparents that make places like Uxbridge and South Ruislip, not people like Boris Johnson.”
The selection of Beales, who is regarded as a Keir Starmer loyalist and once backed Liz Kendall as party leader, was criticised by some on the left as a stitch-up. The local selection panel was disbanded on a seemingly flimsy pretext and the process passed to Labour London, the regional party that overwhelmingly backed Beales.
Asked why the panel was disbanded, Beales began to answer by saying: “I am not aware.” He was then interrupted by his smart watch, which in a computerised voice said: “I don’t know what you mean by ‘I am not aware’.”
Seemingly corrected, Beales says: “I am aware that the selection committee was disbanded, I’ve never been told exactly why.” Unruffled, he adds: “Members were given a vote. I don’t know how much of a stitch-up that can be.”
Beales describes himself as a “pragmatic socialist”, and says he is keen to focus away from internal Labour politics and towards the community he needs to win over.
As a child he was made homeless in Uxbridge when his mother lost her job. He says the experience gave him an insight into the cost of living pressures facing voters now.
Beales is head of policy and campaigns at the National Aids Trust and a proud member of the LGBT community. He expects his political opponents will try to use his sexuality to try to gain support in a socially conservative area.
“Maybe the Conservatives will use it to distract from their failings in office and the failing of the incumbent to be a decent full-time MP,” says Beales. “But knocking on doors, I know people like my grandparents are worried about the cost of heating and housing. They’re worried about the ability of their kids to stay in the borough to get jobs to be afford the weekly shop. They’re not worried about LGBT people.”
His grandparents, like 56% of people in the area, voted to leave the EU and have voted Conservative in the past. They moved out of the area recently but said they would vote for him if they could.
Beales now needs to convince thousands of other former Tory voters. “It’s potentially going to be a two-year-long hard slog of a campaign. The challenge is turn frustration and desire for change into a positive choice for Labour,” he says.
